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FOR SALE - SECRETS TO SUCCESS - $2000
Rare books containing methods to excelling in any field. Limited printing, little wear. Hand delivery in the north-eastern United States. Price negotiable. Will exchange for equivalent goods and services.
Do not contact the seller with unsolicited services or offers.

"Turn to the next page," said the ethereal projection of Overseer-6, floating an inch above the seat of a chair in an extremely cheap, extremely beige motel room located just outside Nowhere, Pennsylvania. Egret dutifully turned the page of a book she had retrieved from a dead drop in an abandoned school bus. "Next page." She flipped from one heavily annotated page of Organizational Symbology to the next. None of the red ink notes crammed into the margins did much to improve her own understanding of the text, nor did the new diagrams that had been scrawled over old ones. "Next page."
"I can have the book delivered to you, Overseer," said Egret, turning the page regardless. She might personally consider her time better spent hunting the last owner of the book, but her boss knew best. As always.
"No, I don't want it near me. Next page."
"Should I be wearing gloves or something?"
"Not unless you're also being kept together by a thaumaturgic superstructure, no." The Overseer's apparition sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose between two fingers. "Forget I said that."
Egret did, and quickly too. Tossing aside a few just-passed seconds was as easy as discarding an empty beer can once one was practiced enough. "Should I be wearing gloves? Or like, a mask?"
"It's not dangerous. Next page." Egret recognized the sensation of lost seconds but refrained from looking at her watch. Better to not give her brain any reason to start worrying over what might have just happened. "Next page," the Overseer said again, faster than before. "Next page. Next page. They want you to do what? Not you, Egret. Skip to 46 for me. Next page. No, no, this is absurd. Next page. You can't arrange the substantiation apparatus like that, not without… Next. Next. Hold it there." The Overseer's projection abruptly fizzled out, leaving Egret feeling foolish for presenting the book to an empty chair. Several minutes full of the sensation passed in silence.
"Overseer?" she asked.
"Yes, I'm still here," replied a small cloud of bright shapes, shifting shapes that flickered into existence over the seat. "It's unfortunate, but I believe we're dealing with a powerful idiot."
"Sorry?"
"You'll have to kill them, of course. Whoever edited this copy and whoever was trying to sell it. Bring me their heads. As much of them as you can."
"Yes, Overseer. And the books? If there are more?"
"Burn them all."
Egret's smile leaked out as the last traces of the Overseer's presence vanished from the tiny room. Arson and murder, she could live with that. Whether or not other people could was more of an open question.
The tome itself didn't contain any hints on who had bought or sold it, especially not after it was reduced to ash in a rest stop parking lot. That was fine. She had already been chasing ghosts when she found the book. She could chase them a while longer. Sooner or later, she would draw close enough to hear the beating heart of the conspiracy. Close enough to grab it and squeeze.
A string of informants who toed the boundary of what the Foundation would consider to be acceptably weird led Egret eastward. A man with impeccably awful luck and brothers in the local doomsday cult told her about two strangers who came in the night offering to sell the stars' secret key. A woman who mixed remedies out of spit and swamp water told Egret about a similar pair who came in the night wearing masks and seeking trades. A bank owner (who birds swore at in Arabic) told her of the pair's strange familiarity, and a cigarette smuggler who worked for the Sarkic-connected mob told her of the pair's common strangeness.

Egret caught up to her prey on a chilly morning in the distant outskirts of Philadelphia. Breath clouding in the air, stomach warmed by a thermos of soup, she stole intermittent glances at the pair of booksellers as they left Mack's Taphouse And (whatever came next on the sign had been painted over long ago). It was a known nexus of anomalous activity, though nothing ever seemed to be done about the place. The two booksellers could have passed for any number of normal people, being of intermittent builds and dressed in slightly-ragged parkas, if only they had not been wearing wooden masks carved in the likeness of sheep heads.
Egret could have gunned them down on the curb, of course. She strongly considered it in between mouthfuls of wilted vegetables and mystery meats. The Overseer wanted more than two corpses to pick apart though, and it was hard to imagine these two being at the center of the conspiratorial web. Especially not as she watched them argue over a map of the city. Memories of hollow siblings picked at the back of Egret's mind, but she shook them away.
The booksellers were gone the next time Egret looked over. Whether they walked away or vanished into thin air, she couldn't say, but she had their scent now. Ink, paper, secrets, and the faintest trace of some unimaginable atrocity, it wasn't a bouquet she was likely to lose track of any time soon.
Following as closely as she dared, Egret tracked them around the city, watching as others paid them so little attention as to almost run them over. Each attempt to get close enough to eavesdrop ended in failure, as one would invariably straighten up and look around as she approached. Weirdness never failed to interfere with honest fieldwork.
The pair returned to the bar as the sun completed its slow descent past the cloudy horizon and snow began falling in earnest. Egret watched as they brazenly walked into the building, and why wouldn't they? She was going to have to settle in for the long term to figure out what the pair was up to. Renting an apartment nearby would be the best start, something with a view of the street if possible. Maybe see if there were any kids loitering around who could be useful. Egret began sorting out plans in her head, ordering them from bloodless to bloodiest, and raised her thermos to her lips for the last bit of soup.
"You are a knight errant, are you not?" asked one of the booksellers, appearing from a blind spot Egret never realized she had. Their voice was neutral and distant through the mask, but its black glass eyes felt firmly fixed on her.
"Sorry?" said Egret, coughing and wiping away a few loose drips from her chin with the back of her hand. "What did you call me?"
"A sellsword, then?" asked the other, appearing at her other side and speaking in the same tone.
"I don't know what you're talking about. I work at a bank, and–"
"You are an avatar of violence, clearly," said one.
"Clearly," repeated the other, nodding smugly. "Blood pools in your shadow."
Well, why shouldn't it be some kind of magic bullshit that made her job more complicated than it needed to be? The fact that the two wanted to talk at all was a reason for some hope, but it was difficult to tell their intentions through the masks. "What do you two want?"
"We require a bare blade," said the one to her right, "to address insolence."
"A trifling matter," said the one to her left, "for one with a keen edge."
"I don't do 'trifling matters.' Go do it yourself if you're going to waste my time." said Egret, careful not to make the pronouncement with too much finality. She was in a dangerous place, no doubt about that, but one with a sliver of opportunity. The two booksellers slightly inclined their heads toward each other, pausing for nearly a minute before either spoke again.
"Surely, a grand design may be present," conceded one, "though one wonders if your mettle is sufficient."
"I'm sure you can tell," said Egret, grabbing one of the pair's hooded heads and turning it up toward her face. "Go on. Look into my soul again, or whatever you were doing." That was a well-guarded place, and unlikely to divulge her secrets.
"Your shadow is indeed heavy," said the one not struggling in Egret's grip. They lifted cupped hands up, presenting her with an assortment thin, sparking silver coins. "We can offer commensurate rewards."
Egret gingerly picked one out of the pile. It had jagged edges and a somber face pressed into it. The coins rang like a hundred tiny bells in the figure's shifting hands. "So, what needs doing? Or who?"
"It is difficult for us to speak of it."
"Our liege will enlighten you."
Egret followed the two of them through the bar's front door (grimy glass, sticky handle), and through a surprisingly large crowd (sweating profusely, unfortunately loud). One member of it was a man she had been doing her very best to kill the year before, but she couldn't see any way of finishing that up at the moment. They walked past the bar, past a stairway leading upstairs, and through a poorly lit stockroom stacked high with sagging cardboard boxes that reeked of mildew. One bookseller pulled aside a rusted gate in front of a service elevator and the other ushered her inside. If the buttons could be trusted, it went deeper than Egret would have expected. At least fifteen floors down. Her escort pressed the lowest one and the lift descended with a grinding complaint.
"We aren't of a violent nature, you see," said one.
"It's quite apart from us," said the other. The only difference Egret could make out between the two of them was the undercurrent of smugness in the second's tone. Other than that, even the patterns of band-aids across their hands were identical.
"That's very civilized of you," said Egret.
"Not in the slightest." Both the booksellers shook their heads at once. "Civilization is violent by nature."
"It's but a means to transmute silver into blood."
"Sure, sure," said Egret. It wasn't her first time being lectured on the topic. The lift hitched on something, jerking a few times, caught and struggling like a dying rat before freeing itself and chugging downward again. Darkened floors slid slowly past them, each larger than anything she would have expected to find below the city's streets.
"Civilization is a body too, stuffed with tumorous growth."
"Groups with ill will and vile means."
"I've got some experience with them," said Egret as the last, brightly lit floor slowly expanded in front of her.
"Of course you do," said one bookseller as they pulled aside the lift's gate.
"You work for one," said the other as they pushed Egret inside. It was a hard shove, harder than could have been expected from their slight frame. Egret pushed herself up from her knees and bared her teeth. She was halfway through drawing her pistol from her holster by the time her brain registered on what filled the cavernous room.
Countless book pages were hung on every wall, layered on towering stacks of books, and strewn across the concrete floor. Annotated in red ink, connected by red strings, they formed a wide and bloody spiderweb stretching out around her. It had no visible end and no conceivable conclusion. The knotted yarn stretched back into her past, just as the text flowed out into her future, and all at once it consumed her present. Egret felt the tender tendrils of some impossibly vast, perfectly knowable entity wrapping around her, caressing her, sliding slowly in through one bunch of optic nerves and out through the other like floss around a tooth. She felt it, felt the grooves it left behind in her thoughts.
"You understand now," said one of the booksellers, appearing again at her side.
"Violence squanders precious resources," said the other, flanking her. Egret could feel their glass eyes staring up at her.
"There remains brush to burn away before you are extinguished."
"You are to be a blade inverted. Bleed those who once wielded you."
That much was obvious now, as Egret's thoughts followed new paths through her mind. Of course the Foundation was the world's true problem. How many times had best intentions turned to gruesome tragedies under their watch? Hadn't they been the ones to toss her aside for something she couldn't even remember doing? And the Overseers…
The long tendril of thought tied itself into a knot around that. The Foundation had never been perfect, but she had never served the Foundation itself. It was the Overseers who knew best. For the Foundation. For humanity. And hers knew best of all. The thoughts wound tighter and tighter around that knot of objection, constricting, splitting, and spreading until they reached the deepest parts of her subconsciousness. The fraying strings of thought reached out to complete their net, only to snap in an aching instant.
Egret split her mind into pieces. Amputated the anchors of thought. Carved away the tainted memories and cast them adrift into the sea of forgotten knowledge. Burned them at the altar of ignorance. Pieced the rest back together and forgot that the new holes even existed. The symbols around her meant nothing after that, and the scars barely ached.
Egret grabbed the nearest bookseller by the throat in one fluid motion. It felt remarkably human under her tight grip. With her free hand, she fired most of her pistol's magazine toward the other one in a wide spray. They squealed like a wounded animal and she turned her attention back toward her lingering victim. Violent punches and kicks slowed to feeble clawing, and even that was reduced to weak twitches. Egret calmly adjusted her grip, eyes focused on whatever lurked behind the mask, and smiled at them. Soon enough, the twitching stopped too. She looked to the other bookseller and saw that they had vanished, leaving only a puddle of dark fluid behind. It was a problem that could wait.
As to the issue of the room around her, the solution was obvious. Fire jumped quickly from her lighter to the stacks of paper around her. It all burned fiercely. A bit too fiercely, perhaps. Egret's ride back up the lift was a smokey one, and she felt lightheaded by the time she emerged back into an empty bar, its smoke detectors blaring loudly.
Outside, a faint scent intermixed with the expanding plumes of smoke. It smelled like a shattered fountain pen. Egret followed the smell around the building, through a snaking alleyway that was slowly filling with snow. Lengthening tracks and darkening splatters led her to a figure sitting against a brick wall, flanked by a trash can on one side and a bundle of newspapers on the other. Their bare head drooped low over the mask in their lap. Their breaths were loud and wet.
"You're going to defy me to the end, aren't you?" said Egret, staying a respectful distance away. "I won't hold it against you. There's nothing wrong with going out like that."
She expected something pithy and biting to come from the mouth of her victim. Some dangerous words uttered with the kind of conviction that true finality imparted. Bile spat in bold defiance against all things. Instead, the shivering figure stared up at her with wide, orange eyes, set in an otherwise unremarkable face. "I don't want to die."
"Not much you can do about it at this point."
"I have value. I have worth!"
"You have a bullet in your gut. Maybe more than one."
The bookseller looked away, breathed a long, pained breath, and jammed their fingers into the wound. Black blood splattered out as they dug in, and ran even faster as they pulled their hand back with a tiny bit of metal clutched between dripping fingers.
"I don't think that's doing you any favors," said Egret, scratching the back of her neck as her victim mewled and whined. "I'm not into torture, so don't make this any worse on yourself. Close your eyes. Think of something happy. I won't miss this time."
The bookseller stared at her again, eyes still wide and dry, and finally managed to snarl. "Hail your master instead of yelping at me, dog. Howl for them! Slink to the keep and bark at the gate! Ask of the sheep's worth and see me judged!"
Well, there wasn't anything to lose by it. Nine times out of ten, the Overseer would be otherwise occupied and Egret would watch this odd little thing die at her feet. She hit the proper buttons on her secure phone with one hand, keeping her other on her gun and her eyes on the bookseller. Six rings would mark the end of the whole affair. It only reached five before the Overseer answered.
"What is it, Egret?" she asked, voice heavy with the kind of crushing exhaustion that followed sleepless weeks.
"It's just a small question, Overseer."
Egret never managed to remember the rest of that particular conversation. A few scraps of the following hours survived, frantic field-medicine and an incredibly illegal drive to the nearest underground clinic. Even those were scant fragments, so innocuous as to escape her own meticulous purge. She never remembered why she had been told to forget it all either, but that hardly mattered. She had more important things to do than fretting.

Egret lay prone on a long table in a vacant suite of offices overlooking the shore of a still lake. The summer air plastered her hair to her forehead and left her neck itching, but she didn't look away from the scope of her rifle. Through it, she watched an opulent gala taking place on a long pleasure barge.
"So? Dhole?"
Her companion stared across the lake without a magnifier of her own, picking at band-aid laden hands. Even in this heat, she insisted on wearing an elaborate wooden mask carved in the likeness of a dog. Egret would not have been surprised to hear panting coming from behind it.
"The baron of this land has been heralded. He wears blooded diamonds and a royal noose."
Egret shifted slightly, turning her focus to a scarred man in a white linen suit who had just emerged from the cabin of the ship. A purple tie hung loosely around his neck and sparkling rings covered his fingers.
"You're sure?" asked Egret.
"His coffers are the fullest there."
"Good enough." She pulled the trigger, watched silently, and smiled to herself as a red stain spread across the chest of the businessman's suit. Dhole had not been wrong when she said that money could easily be turned to blood, but even that was at a poor exchange rate. The Overseer's commands traded much more evenly with death.

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Have you ever stared at a word for so long it lost all meaning? Have you ever forgotten how to do something simple, something you do every day? Have you ever forgotten the drive to work, the walk to the bus stop, the name of that one actor who is in that one film and also that one other film?
Then maybe you've touched the edges of our world and it's only by chance your mind didn't dissolve into darkness like an aspirin in water or like an amazing, adulterated, scientifically-manufactured pill that'll make you forget
forget e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g
forgetwithhistongueforgetwithhiscockforgetwithyourneedforgetwithyourlust
Staring down into the alcoholic, dark purple drink, you felt yourself slip. Saw yourself as a tiny creature on the edge of the glass, quickly losing grip, your breath hot and fogging up the glass.
A hand on your hand. Concern. Furrowed brow. What was the guy's name? What was your name?
Led out of the pub, alleyway, darkness, spiralling. See colours. See a doorway to another alleyway that wasn't really there. See graffiti that sparkles and shimmers and begs and whines to be read. Letters as alive as you. Maybe more alive than you.
The writer can only write what they know and then the words come alive and they come alive and they come alive and they come alive
Someone alive made them and they pulse with every beat of your heart. A heart too big for your chest, a heart that has room for everyone, but doors bolted shut, protecting against the zombie apocalypse of emotion and trust and exposure and vulnerability.
Hand in unloveable hand, lyrics float, find their place, and you're humming. He's begging you to say you're okay and all you can think all you can see is everything humans don't normally see.
A thumb threatening to press down on the city. Rain in a colour you can't begin to explain because it's more of a feeling. More than a feeling Graffiti that moves and preys on people who see it so you look away and stare at your feet. It feels like a while since you've done anything human.
Do that thing
that thing that thing that thing
b r e a thing
thing
Maybe you were always a robot pretending to be human. Maybe everyone is a robot. You sneak a glance at your companion. He looks relieved. He looks human. Maybe he's the only human. You're the robot.
You can't feel your face and your lips feel ten times sizer than they should be. You wish for a mirror but at the same time you don't want to see your new face of metal and bolts which you are sure is there.
“I've n-e-v-e-r seen seen this before.”
Your companion is talking and you wonder if your ears are broken or if it only your brain. It's snapped in two. Goodbye old you. Friends, family, siblings, children, past mistakes, future hopes, fading in and out, jostling to wave their farewell. New brain, new part of the brain, sees colours, smells emotions, ignore facts and run on emotions.
Would you believe twenty minutes? Would you believe twenty minutes to lose all your old self and come out new, like a butterfly from a cocoon? A particularly normal, boring cocoon revealing a particularly ugly butterfly moth that will flirt around near flame, enticed and reckless.
Twenty-odd years making you.
Twenty-odd minutes deleting it all.
One little pill.
Not your fault.
N o t y o u r f a u l t
His.
Remember this part.
It'll be important later on.
There'll be a quiz.

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The old house on the corner of Seventh Portland Street and Too Many Portlands Streets Avenue has been legally declared a natural ghost sanctuary.
It's not much of a sanctuary: the house is a husk, a burned-out shell that used to look like a Victorian manor. There are tombstones in the dirt field that passes for its front yard. Various murders and other unsavory happenings have taken place within its walls, and rumor has it that the ghost of Charlemagne himself lives there. The old house has been a fixture of Three Portlands culture for as long as Three Portlands has existed.
It's also prime real estate. The only problem is that its current residents can't be legally exorcised. This is where the Chicago Spirit comes in: a particularly enterprising (and unsavory) real estate developer has hired them to evict the squatters. The specialist's name is Jack, and his specialty is putting the dead to rest.
It's the middle of the night, and Jack is wearing a charcoal-colored slim-fit three-piece suit with a cross and a pinch of salt in the breast pocket. The cross vibrates as he steps into the threshold of the old house, and on cue, a wraith materializes in the foyer - a skeleton clad in a tattered wedding dress with two vines spiraling from her eye sockets. She shrieks and rushes at him.
In a single smooth motion, Jack draws the Colt M1911 pistol on his belt, disengages the safety, centers the sight, and pulls the trigger, sending a silver-tipped .45 through the center of the wraith's forehead. She melts into vapor mid-charge, leaving only a light breeze that ruffles his collar. He adjusts it and enters the old house.
Two spirits lounge on the central staircase. One of them has no head, so Jack puts two through its chest. The other takes a slug in its remaining eye. When they dissipate, he moves to the door by the foot of the staircase and kicks it open to reveal a dreary, cobweb-covered kitchen from hell.
The oven is on, the kettles are whistling, and utensils fly about the room. Three spirits spin about at the center of it all as they direct the cooking of the damned. The first is a brain with two eyestalks protruding from it, the second is a hag wearing a blouse, and the last is a fat bearded bastard in ornate robes who can only be the King of the Romans. The kitchen stops dead when they see Jack, and then he stops it dead proper by blowing the brain apart with two bullets and putting two more through the hag.
Charlemagne cowers in the corner. The magazine falls out of Jack's gun.
He loads a new one into place and racks the slide.
The old house rattles with the sounds of gunfire and spirits being violently put to rest. As the sun rises over Three Portlands, Jack steps outside the old house and realizes that his three-piece suit is mildly rumpled. In a vexed mood, he readjusts the suit and tries to smooth out the creases as he walks down Seventh Portland Street.
The year is 1929, and this is what Chicago spirit looks like.

The magician from the library beyond time and space is looking for the greatest trip possible on this Earth. Shrooms are mundane, salvia is passè, and acid is tedious. She wants space bhang, a special edible made by an old man deep in the swamps who's half bhang himself. The bhangman doesn't just sell to anyone, though - he has friends, and you have to buy from those friends. The Spirit used to have such a friend in mind: a specialist, adept in the art of buying, smuggling, and selling various kinds of organic bliss. But the Spirit and the specialist are long gone, and all that's left is a young man called Scoob.
Scoob is two miles out of Tallahassee when the red-and-blue lights illuminate the night in his rearview. The car is an Eldorado, a sleek, white, boxy ride that screams money. The problem, then, is that the pigs expect its driver to be the same color. Even if they don't find the bhang in the back, Scoob'll be on the ground faster than he can say "is there a problem".
There's also the body in the passenger's seat.
Scoob thinks quick and pulls over to the side of the road. The cop car slows to a halt behind him and then its driver steps out. As the officer approaches carefully, one hand gripping a flashlight and the other his holster, Scoob slaps a hand over the corpse in the passenger seat and whispers a few words of power.
The cop stops and peers through the window. "License and registration?"
Scoob hands over his forged credentials, whispering an extra sentence under his breath. The cop inspects it carefully.
"Is there a problem, officer?"
The cop inspects him equally carefully. "Your taillight's out."
"Damn. I thought it was failing - I was hoping to get home before then. Thank you for letting me know, officer."
The officer looks past him at the corpse. "Heavy sleeper."
"Had a bit too much to drink," he replies mildly. "Today's his birthday."
"That so?" The officer looks thoughtful. "Tell you what - I'll let you off with a warning. Get that taillight fixed before another officer sees you."
"I appreciate it, sir. Have a good night."
The cop walks off and Scoob sighs with relief. At the same moment, the glamour evaporates and his skin reverts from a pale pink to a light brown.
He shifts into gear and drives into the city. The bhang is safe - and so is Scoob's skin.
The year is 1962, and this is what Chicago spirit looks like.

Eugene is moving up in the world. His business recently acquired a contract from an auction house to provide janitorial services, and today is their first job for the client. In his halcyon days, Eugene provided those services to the Spirit. That was a long time ago - but the work hasn't changed. He's eager to make a good first impression, so when the first call comes in at 2:30 in the morning, he and his boys are at the client's by 3.
The auction floor is covered in bodies: men in crisp, bloodstained suits and ties locked in death with balaclava-clad operatives in military body armor. Blood and gore are spattered over all the hardwood chairs. Small fires are burning on the auction floor. Shattered glass, bullet casings, jade pieces, tatters of parchment, and other bits and pieces of antiquity litter the room. It looks like a small tornado has hit.
Eugene's cleaned up worse. He ushers his boys into the room and they get to work. The crew starts with the bodies, wrapping them in cling wrap and then wrapping them again to make sure nothing leaks. The glass, bullets, and fragments of antiquity are briskly and efficiently swept into large piles and then shoveled into large plastic trash bins. The fires are extinguished and the floor underneath is given a thorough mopping, shining, and waxing until the natural hardwood gleams. The salvageable chairs are cleaned and shined - the ruined chairs will make kindling to dispose of the bodies.
In no time at all, the room is spotless - but the memories remain. Corpses are floppy; the wrapping helps, but it's still a hassle for Eugene's boys to shove the lumps into the van, squeeze them past each other, and pile them one on top of the other. Eugene himself sits in the back, touching each of the body bags as they're loaded in turn. Their emotions wash over him: fear, pain, and determination curdling into terror.
The people who died in that room had friends and family. People who will ask questions, and Eugene's clients cannot allow that. So he expands his conscious mind, delving into the few synapses still flickering beneath the plastic wrap and following the trail of emotional connections to the people still keeping these men alive.
The first man Eugene enters has no family apart from a sister wasting away in an asylum. She doesn't do much besides stare at the walls and ask about her big brother. Eugene clambers across the strong familial bonds between the two of them and starts poking around in the sister's brain, searching for all the traces of her big brother, scraping them away, and piling them into his own subconscious. By the time Eugene is done, she doesn't do much besides stare at the walls.
The fifth man Eugene enters has a loving family: a wife who loves him, a son who idolizes him, and parents that are proud of him. One by one, Eugene walks the connections between them, searching for the common link and eradicating it, slowly, carefully, and thoroughly. The man goes from supposed accountant to drug addict - from family man to deadbeat dad. By the time Eugene is done, his wife hasn't seen him in years, his son has never known him, and his parents will always wonder where they went wrong.
To Eugene, it takes hours to erase the legacies of those bodies. To his men, it takes seconds. The work drains him both mentally and emotionally, but he basks in the knowledge of a job well done. Eugene is pleased with himself, and he's confident that his client, Marshall, Carter, and Dark, will be too.
The year is 1989, and this is what Chicago spirit looks like.

Rukmini throws herself behind the summoning table and topples it over, scattering the chalk pentagram outline to the wind as bullets whistle overhead. The demon isn't going to be happy but that's the least of her worries - her gun is in the next room and there's a pair of masked assassins between her and the only entrance. All she has on her is the ritual knife.
She listens intently as the shooting winds down and the sound of footsteps becomes audible, barely increasing in volume as their owner approaches, then takes a deep breath and pops up, grabbing the approaching assassin and slamming him face-first into the ritual knife. With her free hand, she grabs his pistol and empties the magazine into his partner. Then she extricates the would-be assailant's head from the knife.
Their bodies hit the floor and the sound of trampling footsteps in the next room becomes audible. Rukmini vaults over the table and stabs the second assassin in the heart to open his veins for summoning, then scoops up his gun and kicks the living room door open hard enough to make it break through the frame and smack into another thug on the other side. Rukmini flings the ritual knife across the living room into the chest of a fourth thug and slides across the floor, kneecapping the fifth with two shots and evacuating the contents of his skull with two more.
She takes a breath and scans the living room. One body on the couch with a knife in their chest. One body on the floor with four bullet holes. And one body -
And one body is still alive. The third thug sweeps Rukmini's legs out from under her and she faceplants, kicking her feet back to put some distance between them. Half-remembered jiu-jitsu lessons come back to her as she rolls over and scoots across the floor towards her dropped pistol. Thug Three scrabbles to her feet and sprints towards the pistol - but kicks it away and yanks the ritual knife out of her fallen comrade instead. Her eyes, barely visible through the mask, betray her intention to gut Rukmini like a fish.
Rukmini manages to rise in time to dodge the first swipe and then a stab. She punches Three in the face and makes a grab for the knife, but Three pulls the knife back as she recoils and knees Rukmini in the gut. Rukmini stumbles and barely manages to shove Three's arm away before she can stab her, grabbing Three by the collarbone and tossing her towards the couch. The couch topples over while Three rolls to her feet and comes up swinging, forcing Rukmini back towards the ritual room.
Three swings the knife upwards with enough force to cut Rukmini in half. Instead of dodging, Rukmini steps inwards, bats Three's arm upwards, and smacks the knife from her hand. She headbutts Three, snatches the knife from the air, and stabs her in the neck. Three has time to look surprised before Rukmini yanks the knife out and buries it into her heart.
As Three topples over, Rukmini realizes two things: one, there are more footsteps coming from outside, and two, there's more than enough blood in the room to summon her demon. On cue, two things happen: the door to the apartment bursts open as five more assassins pour in, and the ritual room lights up purple as a rakshasa bursts forth - an ugly grey ogre with fangs and a thirst for blood. The rakshasa immediately sets upon the assassins, tearing through their flesh with its tiger-like claws and razor-sharp teeth while their bullets bounce off its iron-hard skin. Once it's finished them, it looks for Rukmini.
Unfortunately for the creature, Rukmini has found her gun: a silver Colt M1911 pistol with the name John engraved on the barrel. In one smooth motion, she disengages the safety, centers the sight, and pulls the trigger, sending a silver-tipped .45 bullet through the demon's face. The demon collapses forward, disintegrating into a thick, grey ash.
Rukmini examines the ash carefully - most of it is contaminated by being outside the ritual circle, but she's fed it enough blood to ensure that even the contaminated ash is highly potent. While she scrapes the ash into a bottle for cutting later, she calls up her Inside Man, tells him what happened, and asks him to find out who did it. Even from a dozen kilometers away, the Man is able to trace the emotions of the assassins to their boss: Farhan, head of the biggest black-market enhancile ring in Eurtec. The Man has been looking to muscle in on the business, and it would appear that Farhan decided to teach him a lesson.
Rukmini decides that it's time to teach Farhan a lesson. Just before she steps out the door, she realizes that she ought to put some clothes on. Nudity is much better suited to ritual summoning than assassinations.
This is what Chicago spirit looks like.

« Terminal Velocity | Zeitgeist | The Chosen Few »


There is a void, and there is a speck. A shimmering dot surrounded by infinite blackness. Zoom in on it. Zoom further, until the speck fills your vision, and outclasses the void behind you by many orders of magnitude. Feel the press of the not-quite-metal against your skin, and hear the hum of engines, beating in tandem like innumerable hearts. Spin and rotate around its nephroid bulk, and search for the single aperture on its otherwise perfect surface. Click. Move inward, scouring the dark passages, and find, among ten million acres of silence, movement.
Zoom further, enhance, and watch.

The robot skids down the brightly lit corridor, feeling an approximation of excitement in its facsimile of a mind. It is vaguely conical, and shiny, like a chrome-plated traffic cone, balanced on three large wheels that spin wildly as it careers from door to door. It's plating proclaims it to be General Purpose Droid M-002 — as fine a name as any machine could hope for.
With a barely-audible beep, the robot senses a notification arrive; duties have been shirked and quotas have been missed. Metastable habitation is a finicky business, and the 43rd Generation Maintenance Droid knows better than anyone the consequences of ignoring deadlines. "Deadlines are important." "Deadlines are crucial to the survival of the species" Deadlines, today, can go fuck themselves. With a pang of rebellious joy, M-002 discards the warnings. "There are more important things to do," it thinks. For a counter, always at the forefront of its mind, clicking up and down as dependently as the tides, has finally reached its lull. The basket in which the proverbial eggs are placed has finally split. [00000002/33554432 remaining].
If the robot had a mouth it would grin. It's nearly time to wake up the cargo.

Subroutine-8205:

[REDACTED].
Perform repeated checks on all redundancy systems for no fewer than three-hundred (300) cycles. If positive, abort process.
Activate failsafe to ensure equipment is processed correctly. If negative, activate Subroutine-8206a.
Deploy Sub-units 200-299. If unable, return to [2].
[REDACTED].
[REDACTED].
Perform necessary procedures for Observers-Vitae. If unable, standard procedures will suffice. [REDACTED]. If Observers-Vitae remain functional, report malfunction and return to [1].
[REDACTED]

and [92] more…

~ Extract from Paracode Guidelines at Factored Regression Peak, Vol. IX

A city lies silent beneath a dull grey sky. The black smoke billowing from the Northern corner wafts over the carefully cultivated landscape, tendrils snaking and weaving their way down the deserted cobble streets. Birds fly overhead, swooping through the clouds with barely-concealed disdain for gravity and its associated limitations. As they fly their voices echo out across the valley, disturbing piles of ash and dust. Bones glint white among the thick black blanket, stained with blood and polished by wind. Something that may be a raincloud and may be a sprinkler, fixed to a cable a hundred miles above, thunders briefly before depositing a cool mist that steams as it lands.
The birds swoop onward, riding delicate air currents that rise like death throes from the city's still-warm husk. The cool autumn air whips at their feathers and stings the eyes of the single man who watches. He squints and smiles. How he has waited for this moment. Oh, how he has waited.
Since the man was but a boy, he was told legends of this time, passed down since the city's creation. Folk tales, ghost stories, songs to sing around the campfire. Tales of the end time, the time of timelessness, of repetition, of peace. The time of endings, and new beginnings. But most importantly, the time of second chances. He breathes deep, scarred hands buried deep within his white coat, gripping the handles of a bag — a small gift, for whatever spirits may be watching. The birds strike an invisible barrier, and fizzle out with little more than a blur. On the other side of the chamber, the hologram repeats.
The man, whose name is unimportant, settles down to wait — it is not long before his ears, honed by years of working with delicate machines, hear a creak behind him. He stiffens, turning and bowing solemnly towards the raised cylinder of earth that sticks from the field. A scarecrow lies dislodged to one side, comical face splattered with mud. The protrusion bifurcates, sending cascades of soil in all directions, and a small metallic shape peers out from within its depths. The man raises an eyebrow, and speaks.
"˩AmbI˦ I'j Vntˤ-t?"
The robot moves slowly out of the cylinder, brandishing its single appendage in front of it like a weapon. "What is this creature? What is it doing here? What am I supposed to be doing here?" Several memory banks that have not been used in centuries begin to warm up, as its almost-mind fills with unfamiliar queries.
"bI˦˫ I'j!", repeats the man, emptying a plastic bag in front of him. Meat, small gemstones, and thin metal discs spill out onto the ground. "V˫ntˤ-t 'LtE˨t, OtˤOLi˨˫˫ WriS Ta'Ac˦m". He bends further, supine in front of the strange, conical creature that confronts him. Server banks a lifetime and a half away begin to process information that hasn't been accessed in oh-so-long. Whatever action M-002 is supposed to take at this juncture, it is almost certainly incredibly important. It reaches out, and places an approximation of a hand on the man's shoulder. Behind them, photorealistic mountains de-render themselves as new data floods back.
Query: Human
Result:
1: of, relating to, or characteristic of humans (see [2] human)
2: consisting of humans
3: a) having human form or attributes
b) representative of or susceptible to the sympathies and frailties of human nature.
See also: Humanoid, Primate, Humanity, [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and [30098] more…
The robot looks down at the man, and the man looks back at the robot. The robot looks to the sky, and sees a charred, jagged hole, the right size and shape for a rudimentary spacecraft. A trickle of smoke drifts from the edges, mixing with the already pungent smog. The man sees the hole too, and grins. Their scientists have breached the sphere of the heavens. A tiny red light flickers on M-002's chassis, and the robot raises its arm. A jerk, and it lowers it back towards the man's forehead. A look of realisation flashes across his face, replaced moments later by one of anger, and finally one of peace. The red light flickers off.
The cylinder descends into the bowels of the ship, taking M-002 with it. Artificial clouds are replaced by static, the Outlast's primary Societal Re-creation Chamber is deactivated, and the charred remains of humanity are extinguished.
[00000001/33554432 remaining].

Project Outlast was an ill-advised project to begin with. A group of researchers with few restrictions and even less funding, tasked with ensuring the survival of the human race. They were a laughing stock, the butt of countless jokes. Even those who founded the Project expected it to fail, treating it as a thought experiment and a way of removing troublesome researchers from other, more important tasks. Certainly nobody expected them to make some of the greatest technological breakthroughs the supra-finite plane had ever seen.
They were crackpots and visionaries in equal measure, bursting to the seams with ideas that seemed better placed in a cheap sci-fi novel. Reverse entropy engines, planet-sized pocket dimensions, stasis chambers that existed only in the minds of those inside them — they were given nothing to work with, and they used it to devise everything. These men and women who were laughed at throughout their careers are the reason we exist at all. We, and anyone else who survived the Collapse, owe them a debt of thanks.
And more than that, we owe them our lives.

~ Extract from the memoirs of SCPF Researcher Remes, Digital Library of SCPS-Outlast-XXI ("Well Enough Alone")

M-002, complete with a shiny new 44th Generation chassis, rolls up to a small, wood-panelled door. It's taken him years to get there, but it doesn't matter. All non-essential systems shut down as soon as the counter dipped below 600. It could have taken millennia to reach the door, and some variation of the original robot would still be trundling along, accompanied by numerous disc-shaped objects clearing a path through the metre-high coating of dust. The fact of the matter is that if nobody will ever be around to hear it, the tree can take as long as it likes to fall. Falling is, at least in the short term, essentially optional.
M-002 attaches itself to a socket in the wall, powers down its conscious subsystem, and waits.

There is no way in hell I'm going to be put in that machine. Fuck you. No. Listen, what part of "fuck you" don't you understand? No, absolutely not. I'm not becoming another goddamn cog in your deathtrap of a spaceship. No, I don't care that it's a 'metastable omni-habitation module, designed to traverse the infinite'. I'll die before you put me in a computer. Fuck you.

~ Observer-Vitae 09, prior to instatement.

It would be nice to say it was the gunshot that woke the robot up. Unfortunately, the suite behind the door was separated by several metres of soundproof nanofoam, and it was a number of minutes before the cessation of life signs was detected. Having loaded the necessary instructions in advance, M-002 rolls over the threshold.
It's a grand room. Sumptuous, decadent, with all the luxuries a human could ask for. It is spacious enough to comfortably house a small village, and contains something seen nowhere else on the ship's colossal hull. It contains, plastered across the furthest wall, a window. It consists of 3 metre thick transparent para-fibre mesh, and it looks out on blackness so dark it might as well not be there, but it is a window nonetheless. A huge security risk, the weakest point on the hull; a window looking out on nothing. And this is why, M-002 knows, the man who lives lived within this room is was quite possibly the most dangerous man alive.
Because the man who lived here, according to records, was indeed powerful. Powerful beyond measure, but not in the way you'd expect. He certainly carried enough weight to disrupt the integrity of the entire craft, and enough to be preserved here, with his own set of self-restoring subsystems. M-002 isn't entirely sure what a self-restoring subsystem is, but his five-million page on-board encyclopedia convinces him it's probably not worth the effort to find out. Perhaps 'influential' would be a better word to describe him. He certainly doesn't look powerful now, as his limp body is lifted from its chair. He looks weak, and sad. A bloodied, broken shell of a man, with a neat hole through his forehead. Very, very neat. Precise, practiced, like a surgeon's incision — ironic, really, given his carefree attitude to the human body in general.
There's the clink of jewellery, the thud of flesh, and the body is away, flying down a chute towards the fire in the bowels of the ship. The door glides shut with a barely-audible hiss, and the counter reaches zero. No fuss, no drama, no bells or accompanying whistles. Nothing but [0], solemn and silent against the tides of the apocalypse. Because of course that's what the counter means.
There are no more passengers left on the Outlast.
Which means that, after millennia of waiting, it's time for the second-to-last maintenance droid to perform their primary function. To maintain.
"It's time", M-002 thinks. "It's finally time".

10 years. That's how long it took M-002 to reach the cargo hold. A decade of silent, repetitive movement through a latticework of corridors, lined with identical doorways. After about 6 months the artificial gravity failed, which provided a brief amusement, but pretty soon it was back to rolling, rolling, rolling onward. Through the cryonic preservation bay, where samples of creatures extended for miles in every direction. Through the cultural reversion matrix, where bickering machines told jokes and skits and punned their way through eternity. Past vents and ducts, strange boxes of impossible artifacts, lost and lonely creatures bound in cages. Past incinerators, generators, cultivators, and huge whirring discs that spun power from nothing. A left turn, a right, straight on for a month or two then double back. Quietly roll into a room where a man in a vat has an amulet placed around his neck by cold metallic hands, then roll out again to avoid his screaming.
A network of tubing, more convoluted and warped than the rest, hung in a room of its own. It lashed out, sparks flying as the ends are severed and collected, ready to be melted down. Spewing honey and glass, the pipe nightmare wept. At the centre, forever burning in a maelstrom of wax and blood and gin, other things cried out louder. M-002 awoke at the other end of the conveyor with a brand new silver coat, and thought nothing of it. Why should a maintenance droid worry about such things? It was Genesis Construct A-015 doing its job as always. Hopping off the production line with a clank, the droid charged off once more. Onward. Ever onward.
That was a long time ago now. The cargo has long since been awoken, and the Outlast has resumed its job. Outlasting. M-002 sleeps soundly in the knowledge of a job well done, and Observer-Vitae 09 cries himself to sleep, staring out of his oh-so-precious window. The boxes tick away, and the ship spins off into the dark.
Cradling humanity within its shell like a mother with her child.
Securing, containing, and protecting.
Forever.


It's time to let him go. The way he kissed, smiled, and smelled. You have to let it go. The way his hands felt on your waist, the way he said your name, you have to let it go.

Because that's who he was, not who he is.

Kit had never been the same after the first amnestic.
It was fair to say Gabriel has felt as lousy as shit doing it, too – inviting the cute, dark-haired man on another date and slipping it into his ‘purple rain' cocktail with practised ease.
But, then again, he didn't expect to fall in love.
He considered it part of his mission – make the man who saw too much, forget.

Make him forget. Make him forget with your wit and charm. Make him forget with your tongue in his mouth. Make him forget with a spiked drink. Leave… in the morning.

His interaction with Kit should have ended there. He shouldn't have been around to see the amnestic trigger off sudden mood swings and confused, overwhelming emotions. The Amnestic Orientation manual hadn't covered this. Maybe this happened to everyone they drugged and dumped. Maybe they all became broken and clinging to the sides of sanity.
But he had fallen for Kit hard and fast. He had fallen for the way he self-consciously adjusted his hair when he was flustered, fallen for the way he breathed Gabriel's name in what eventually became their bed, even fallen for the fact that Kit was never quite normal.
He wanted so much to bring it up as a matter of ethics. Disclose exactly how fucked up Kit had become since that evening. But that would mean disclosing their relationship, and that would only have cause for trouble. Gabriel had worked hard to get where he was, and he wasn't sure he was ready to give up the position for something as unimportant as the truth.
More often than not, Kit was already in his house when he got home. He had asked how, the first time, startled and on-edge, and Kit had just flashed a lockpick set at him and whispered the word ‘Easily'. Gabriel had gently swapped the kit for a key, and Kit would claim the window ledge overlooking the garden as his spot. It was as easy as taking in a stray.
He came home once, already calling out a greeting, to find dismal graffiti sprayed across the living room wall.

Live now. Tomorrow, we die.

It struck a nerve with him, considering his line of work, and considering how cheaply Kit had been treating life. He found Kit spaced out on his spot, a folding knife resting limply in his lap. Kit wouldn't show him what he had done. Simply, he threw the knife across the room, and it embedded itself in the wall next to the nihilistic words.
Gabriel frowned at him. He'd been brought up to believe that there were certain things one didn't do in a house, and target practice was one of them.
Kit just smiled and Gabriel's heart skipped a beat. Kit moved close to him, next to his ear, breath soft and warm.
"I won," He purred, and kissed him fiercely.

Live now. Tomorrow we die.

There was that fierce side that Gabriel loved. The side that would greet him with excitement, enthusiasm, and it translated into the bedroom, although Gabriel knew it had extended beyond a good fuck when he found himself in the pale moonlight, staring down at Kit as he slept, making sure he kept breathing, because it was the only time he could be confident the young man was alive and safe. It was becoming a fight, day after day, to know that Kit would be in his home when he got back, that he wouldn't be arrested for a scuffle or sectioned for his madness, or dead on a slab somewhere.
So when he came home to a hole in one of the drywalls and blood staining the paint, he couldn't help just to be glad that this had happened here. Kit was overwhelmed in the centre of the living room, holding out his knife towards Gabriel like he was a stranger. It took time to coax it from him and ease it from his grip, and even then Kit stayed on edge like the terrified stray he was.
When Kit finally let him get close, Gabriel held his hands until the bleeding stopped; his fingers grazed the sore knuckles until Kit whined and pulled away. Then he got out the first aid kit and methodically cleaned each one, kissing the top joints of each finger after every sting that caused Kit to squirm on the kitchen chair.
“We'll be okay, baby,” he confided into Kit's hair when they found themselves embracing, Kit trembling from fatigue and pure emotion. “I promise. I'll be here for you. I'll suffer with you. Cry when you cry. Laugh when you laugh, just please… try to laugh more. Please try to…”

Be with me. Don't go to the place I can't go, when your eyes glaze and you won't even talk. I would do anything to fix you. Fix this.

Maybe it's not about trying to fix something broken.

Maybe it's about starting over and creating something better.

« Loskon in the Making | Hub | Twenty Minutes »


Hello, 911? I - I think I've been kidnapped. I'm in a concrete room. I don't know where I am. Please-
Communication terminated. I'm sorry, old friend, but I need you to be ready for what comes next.
You will find your phone is no longer operational. I have remotely disabled all cell phone signals coming in and out of this building. The only door to the room you are in cannot be opened by hand; only I can open it from the control room. There is nowhere for you to go.
I'd like to begin by saying that my associates and I are most grateful for your assistance in some rather…delicate matters. Given your occupation and moral pretenses, we were unsure if you would pull through for us in the end, but you did. You have advanced our project in a way that not even I thought was possible; in a way, you have been integral to this entire undertaking from its very inception.
Unfortunately, your employment has come to an end.
You were sloppy. Too many eyewitnesses that you let escape because you couldn't bring yourself to do what you knew was necessary. Too many department figureheads scrambling to find out who the corrupt mole is before somebody more powerful than them gets involved. All of this, of course, could be forgiven if it were not for a new development - they know who you are, they know what you have done, and they are coming for you.
I have taken swift and decisive action to ensure you do not fall into the Foundation's custody, but that comes with a price. That price, my friend, is tying up a loose end. You are a liability; you have drawn more attention than we ever wanted, and have jeopardized both my business and the safety of my colleagues. This is something that I cannot and will not tolerate from anyone, no matter what they have done. While I certainly hope this issue could be resolved in a less…unfortunate way, my hands have been tied and I have been left with one remaining option.
I have taken the liberty of informing your wife and children that you were involved in a random gas explosion during an investigation gone wrong. They will grieve for you and, in time, remember you as a loving, caring father. The department has been delivered a similar story, and you have been cleared from their records as of this morning. As of right now, you are entirely off the grid. Not even the highest echelons of the United States government will be able to dig through the lies I have planted. The only people who know about your past are me and you.
This is the last time I will ever speak to you. The door will remotely open in roughly 30 seconds. You are to exit the room, leave the building, and never speak of anything involving me or my associates. Sitting in a black vehicle outside of the front entrance is one of my drivers. He will take you to the airport, where you will board a flight to Moscow. Should you try to ever return to the United States, you will find the consequences to be particularly…unpleasant.
This ends our discussion. I suggest you hurry, as the building will begin burning down in three minutes.
Goodbye, Jason.

ABANDONED FACTORY BURNS TO THE GROUND
A local factory complex, once owned by the KGT Timber Corporation, was destroyed by fire early Sunday morning, threatening to spread to a nearby forest before firefighters were able to contain the blaze. The structure, abandoned since 1982, was a frequent destination for the homeless and urban explorers, often at the peril of local authorities. Police say that an investigation is ongoing, but foul play is not currently suspected.


BZZZZT.
"Come on, you tossers! Get to the wall!"
A curious slapping-clapping noise: twenty pairs of running shoes smacking into a gym floor, over and over.
BZZZZT.
Twenty hands touching a wall, briefly.
Sprinting back to The Line.
BZZZZT. "Get it together, Zhengie! We ain't even started yet!"
Muffled curses. Particularly from Specialist Zheng.
BZZZZT.

Later, at breakfast, it occurred again to Jane Weiss how unprepared she'd been for Mobile Task Force physical training.
Obviously, MTFs trained a lot. Everyone knew that, right? They had to. Weiss just hadn't realized, at first, that so much of it would involve working out.
She said as much to Alex Petrosyan, who had joined Theta-90 from Site Security and was sent on almost every single Task Force deployment. They grinned, and asked what sort of PT Weiss had done in her old role.
"Uh… none, really. Nothing official." Weiss shrugged.
"But weren't you in Containment before you came here?"
"Yeah. So?"
Petrosyan's grin widened. "Then how'd you train to run away from all them skips you let out?"
"Oh, you know, uh…" Weiss assumed an expression of exaggerated thought. "Like this."
Two middle fingers appeared before Petrosyan's face.
They laughed uproariously. "That's some good trainin', right there! That shit work on Keters, or just Safes?"
"That depends," said Weiss, picking up her cold toast, "on the skip."

Contrary to what she'd been told when she joined, it seemed to Weiss that Mobile Task Force Theta-90 was sent on a lot of deployments. A lot of deployments, more pointedly, that she didn't get to go on. She'd been a member of Theta-90 for almost two years, and hadn't been deployed once.
"This is starting to piss me off, Smithie," she'd said during the next morning's run, straining slightly to catch her breath. "Are - sorry - are they ever gonna send me out, or…?"
Jason Smithson smiled slightly and shook his head, easily keeping pace with Weiss as he talked. "No sense worryin' about it, mate. All them lot" - Smithson waved a hand vaguely upwards as he ran - "decide who goes out and who stays in. We just do what we're told. Besides." His smile vanished. "You're probably best off back here at the minute. Given what the last few run-outs have been like, an' that."
Silence fell between the runners. Weiss knew what she wanted to say, but didn't. She knew it was childish. She knew it'd make her sound like a stupid rookie. So, as they crested the next in a seemingly endless series of hills, she very pointedly didn't say it.
"But I'm not a reeeal Angle Grinder if I've not been sent oooouut! Boo-hoo-hoooo!"
Weiss jerked her head sharply around, almost losing her balance on the rocky slope. Smithson was right behind her, pulling a face.
"I know that's what you're thinkin', girl, so stop pretendin'. Fact is, you need to get all that shite out of your head. And I mean proper out of it. You're not more of a Grinder just 'cause you've been sent out loads of times. Fuckin' hell, look at me! I'm still stuck on Trooper and I've been out a few too many times for my liking, I'll tell you!"
"It's not about promotion, though, Smithie. You know it's not."
Smithson's expression softened slightly. "I know, mate. But it's like we said back in the old lot. You can only take on what they put in front of ya. You ain't any less of a Grinder just 'cause we ain't had to use your skill set yet. Bang!" Leaping over an old river bed, Smithson easily landed where Weiss had stumbled a moment before. "There's just not been that much this last year that was gonna be difficult to contain. It's either been dead easy to deal with, or… the other."
Smithson lapsed into silence, his mind somewhere else, running on autopilot. Weiss knew better than to ask more questions.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"
Paul Dimaccio looked up from his paperwork. "Come in, Weiss. Close the door." He gestured at an empty seat. "Do you know why you're here?"
Weiss sat. "Uh… no, sir. I don't. Is there a problem?"
"No, Weiss, there's not. At least, not with you." Dimaccio looked down, briefly, then back to Weiss. "You're buddies with Alex Petrosyan, right?"
"Uh… yes, sir. I mean, we… we talk some." Weiss swallowed. "You know," she finished lamely.
"Yeah." Dimaccio frowned. "I know a lot of things, Specialist. Like how we ain't supposed to… fraternize, with members of our own Task Force."
"…Yes, sir." Weiss flushed slightly, but didn't look away.
Dimaccio held Weiss' gaze for a few more seconds. Abruptly, he sighed, looked down and rubbed his brows.
"That ain't why you're here. I wish it was." A pause. "Weiss, I've gotta tell you that Trooper Petrosyan was found dead in their room at 0800 this morning. Evidence suggests nobody else was involved."
Weiss opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
Dimaccio looked back up at her, something indefinable in his eyes. "I'm sorry."
Weiss swallowed. "They… how did…"
"I'm not gonna tell you that, Weiss. It's not gonna make you feel any better and it's not gonna help anything. And before you ask, we didn't see it comin'." Theta-90's commander shook his head. "Medical staff, chain of command, not even their own team-mates… not one single person saw this comin'. We shoulda, though." Dimaccio's jaw set. "I shoulda. Petrosyan went out more times than almost anyone, and some of the shit they'd seen in the last year…"
Dimaccio fell silent for a few seconds. "I'm sorry, Weiss."
Weiss felt strangely faint, now, like Dimaccio's words were coming to her from far, far away. Somehow, she heard herself asking if Alex had left a note.
Wordlessly, Dimaccio passed her a piece of paper. She unfolded it. It contained three words.
Tired of running.

« Friday, 2200, Paul Dimaccio's Personal Quarters | Hub | FOUR YEARS LATER


A cold wind blew softly across the white expanse below. The few trees standing held their solemn oath of silence against the desolation. The calm snow drifted from dune to dune, undisturbed. Then a flash of red, a spurt of blood, and the body of the man it belonged to, clad in many furs. Ahead of him ran a woman. She turned the moment he fell and called back to him, crying. But she did not stop, as she knew that this was how it was supposed to be. The man grabbed a compass from one of his pockets and threw it to her. Catching it in one hand, she reached into her pocket and threw him an identical one. Not wanting to waste any more time, she raised her hand above her head. It began to glow a soft, faint blue as she held it there, the intensity of the blue light increasing with every moment. Shouts from their pursuers reached their ears. As she looked up, four figures fired their guns at her. She glanced at the man bleeding in the snow, closed her eyes, and slammed her hand to the ground.
A flash of blue and she was gone.
The man smiled and let darkness consume him.
His compass was enveloped by the white.

He was sweat. He was the soft brush across the blanket, the whirring fan.
Then he was awake.
White.
White clothes. White walls. White bed.
But not his skin. It was a dark brown, smooth, not unlike his dog named…something. He couldn't remember.
He realized he couldn't remember much. What was his name? Where was he? Why was he here?
He closed his eyes and thought. His mind was white too; there was nothing there except echos. Flashes of random scenes, put together without any order. Sometimes screaming. Sometimes laughing. But never still.
When he opened them, the room wasn't completely white. Across the room was a lady. She was speaking to him, but the words didn't parse; they were all eaten up by peppermint and battery acid. All he could focus on was her hair.
He had to have known someone like her.
She stopped talking and he was left alone. He sat down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. A speck of snow hit his cheek and the white consumed him once again.

His name was Richard.
This detail came to him while eating at the cafeteria. The white of his mind was melting and drip by drip details were escaping from his frozen mind. Faces, names, places.
Someone special. Someone dear. And they were missing.
As he ate, between his eyes, he saw a single speck of snow drift from nothing and land on the bridge of his nose. Startled, he looked around. Snow. Everywhere. White, stinging specks, piling within the room. No one seemed to notice, not as the drifts began to crawl up the steel and up their faces. "It isn't real, it isn't real, it isn't real," he told himself.
"Hey man, you OK?"
He heard the words but their meaning remained just out of reach. Turning to face the source of the sound, his shoulder knocked the white reaching towards him, detaching the powdery arm and sending it to the floor, where it joined the rest of snow below. The man's face turned to agony for a second before it too was consumed by white. Richard clutched his temples and closed his eyes. "Just a dream, just a dream, that's all it is. That's all it can be." The snow was cold, leeching away the heat from Richard's body. Soon he was wet, cold, and shivering. Opening his eyes, all thoughts of fear or cold were blown away by the wind. The purity of the white in the room began to rip away at the white of his mind.
He had been here before.
The steel no more held him, as they too gave way to the white, the stars and moon no longer held back by the unnatural light, the wind no longer hindered by the walls of that prison. Trees dotted the landscape and dunes of snow stretched far across the expanse. This is where it happened. He saw the compass in the snow. He saw someone pick it up. His heart tightened and he screamed, telling them to leave it alone, to keep on walking. He watched them look up and pause.
The snow melted away into three people walking in, one of them carrying a syringe. There was red on the ground but no source. As the last bit of snow melted, his name came back to him. They were speaking to him, to Richard. To calm down. To calm down and let them come forward. The words once again were eaten away. What the white had given it had just taken away. The first man took a step forward.
Maybe, just maybe, if Richard was fast enough, he could reach the compass in time.
Then another step.
The man in the snow didn't know, didn't realize its importance.
The last step turned into a lunge and a yell.
Richard yelled, closed his eyes, and ran forward. White once again descended upon the walls. When he opened them, he once again saw the man in the snow. The man's eyes continued to stare at Richard's, sizing him up. They picked him apart, weighing his heart against the feather. Richard stumbled towards the man, blood dripping down his head. "Please… it's all I need, all I've ever needed… just please, give it to me… you have to…." The man smiled and held up the compass. He had been judged as pure. Richard reached out towards the compass, towards his heart. Soon, they would be reunited. The white began to eat at his arm, at the compass. Before his eyes, the white ate all.
Richard's head hit the window, meeting it head on, breaking his nose and his vision. As he looked outside, he saw the man. Saw him pocket the compass and walk onward. He tried to reach out to him, to yell, but his arms didn't listen. The white had given enough. Now it was taking away. He saw the streaks across the window. The dried blood of previous attempts. The man which had stood there, offering him salvation, disappearing into the snow. Walls of peppermint and battery acid failed before the encompassing white. And a single, soft blue light was finally consumed.

Outside the window, a man pocketed a compass. His grandfather would love it, even if it didn't work.
A cold wind blew softly across the white expanse.

Item Description: An ornate compass. Regardless of magnetic interference or any other variables, the object's needle will always point towards the location of a woman named ████████ █████.
Date of Recovery: ██-██-2014
Location of Recovery: Perugia, Italy
Current Status: In storage.


portrait of your father:

ATTENTION
THE FOLLOWING PAGE HAS BEEN LOCKED PENDING INVESTIGATION
ACTIVITIES ON THIS PAGE ARE BEING TRACKED AND RECORDED

Name: Dr. ████████ Kondraki
Security Clearance: Level 4, Special Permissions
Occupation: Administrator, Director
Site of Operations: Site 17
SCP Files Authored:
SCP-396 (Current Project Head: Dr. Roget)
SCP-408 Pending forced reassignment
SCP-250 (Current Project Head: Researcher Voct)
SCP-295 Pending forced reassignment
SCP-330 Pending forced reassignment
SCP-336 (Current Project Head: Dr. Vang),
SCP-515-ARC Pending declassification per Acting Director Escobar
SCP-252-ARC Pending forced reassignment
SCP-122 (Current Project Head: Dr. Roget)
SCP-208 Pending forced reassignment
SCP-266 Pending forced reassignment
SCP-276 Pending forced reassignment
SCP-570 (Current Project Head: Dr. Roget)
SCP-460 Pending forced reassignment
SCP-375 (Current Project Head: Dr. Roget)
SCP-625 (Current Project Head: Dr. Vang)
SCP-705 Pending forced reassignment
SCP-577 Pending forced reassignment
Log Files: FILE LISTING LOCKED. SEEK ASSISTANCE TO CONTINUE.
Dr. Kondraki's Work Log FILE LISTING LOCKED. SEEK ASSISTANCE TO CONTINUE.
Profile: FILE LISTING LOCKED. SEEK ASSISTANCE TO CONTINUE.
History: FILE LISTING LOCKED. SEEK ASSISTANCE TO CONTINUE.

THE FOLLOWING WRITTEN TO BE RELEASED ON ACCOUNT OF DEATH
DATED SEPTEMBER 28TH, 2006
RELEASED DECEMBER 8TH, 2017
To my staff:

If you're reading this, it means I'm dead, either by my own hand or some inexplicable luck of the draw. Shit sucks. You win some, you loose some, I guess.
I know a few directors who left everything written out for everyone. Like Ghost, you know, when he died, he left just binders of shit detailing everything to be carried out on-site in a single 24 hour period for us to look through. It freaked me the fuck out when they appointed me to this position and I saw it, maybe 18 binders that he neatly laid out on his desk when I walked in. That's what he did before he offed himself. He left stacks upon stacks of data and paperwork and meticulous instructions behind.
I know a lot of the older people on site will remember that night well, and I'm sorry as fuck you had to go through two directors in one lifetime if you're living to see my night come, too. It's a rough job. You know how it is, but anyway, it turns out that the binder thing is a pretty common thing that Directors and Senior Staff do before they die if they know they're gonna go out. Like, they get ready and shit, leave all the crucial information the site needs to run behind, and before you guys get excited I want to let you know that no, I didn't compile death binders, because I've never heard of anything more morbidly capitalistic and depressing then higher staff at an organization preparing for their deaths by doing unnecessary paperwork. You should be out doing shit! If someone told me I had three days to live, I sure as hell wouldn't spend it writing down every single thing I do everyday for my staff to find! If I ever decide to kill myself, I'm not gonna spend extra time telling you how to run my site the way I ran it. If I'm dead it's not mine anymore. It doesn't need to be run like I'm still there.
You guys are your own people. All of you. You'll figure out a better way, I know you will, and it'll be better than anything I could have done.
Also, I never read those binders anyway. There comes a point in a man's life when you just have to bullshit until you make it, and that's what they did when they handed me the keys and told me to get shit together for tomorrow morning because our director killed himself. My colleague, like literally, my friend and mentor, who I'd worked under for years, who treated me with the most compassion I'd ever seen out of anyone. They told me he died and that I had to get the site's shit together. How fucked up is that? Are you kidding me? Like, don't get me wrong, I did it and it somehow all came together right by the next morning, but the worst part about the idea of dying to me is that someone else is gonna get handed my keys at 1am1 and told that they have until 8am to figure it out. Whoever that ends up being, I'm sorry I put that on you, but I'm not sorry enough that I'm gonna make you a sad death scrapbook of how to carry on my legacy in B45 files. I have faith in you, you young, unexperienced Level 4 that just got handed my shit and became a Director. You're probably terrified. Your friends are suddenly looking up to you. You meet with 05 for the first time on video chat and they probably tell you something along the lines of 'good luck, buddy'2. You have over a thousand personnel and around 500 anomalous entities shoved into a facility the size of a small city and have to break it to them that the person that they looked to for direction for decades just offed himself and you're the new bitch in charge. People will hate you. The transition will be rough. You poor, poor bastard you, you thought that your life was hard before and it's about to get a whole lot harder. I've had a cot installed for you in my office. Use it well.
Speaking of poor bastards, my Senior Staff. You guys are amazing, completely incredible. Not only do we work together in a somewhat coherent manner, but it's been how many years now and the site is still standing and you make it seem like I know what I'm doing usually when I really don't. I give to you the gratitude of one million death binders for putting up with my shit.
One of you will be chosen over the course of the next couple of weeks to take my place. It's like The Bachelor but with the worst job you will ever experience in your life. The 05 council makes the final decision after reviewing all of you carefully, so no, I don't really have a say in this case3. They will learn everything about you. A background check is an understatement, because they'll give you a frontground and a sideground and an assground check, too. This isn't a Director position at a tiny backwoods site in the middle of nowhere; this is a Director position at one of the largest backwoods sites in the middle of nowhere in the world, damnit! You are all vying to become dictator of what is legally nothing, but physically everything. If you do your job well, then it will remain that way. In the meantime this job will push you past your limits every day of the week. It ruined my marriage, my health, my faith, my sense of self preservation, and my ability to give a fuck, but I lived, bitch, I lived. What would I do if I didn't do this? Who would I be? Where would I be? It's a weird question to think about. Any job in the Foundation changes you, though, but you all know that already.
Let me back up for a second: I'm writing this in the September of 2006. I realized that I didn't really have anything in the case that I died inexplicably, and with this job how it is it's just one of those things that needs attending to. Maybe I'll live to be 87 and still working this same job, and maybe by then I'll decide to take the death binder route, but for the time being something I wrote while eating Hot Pockets at 3am perfectly embodies the raw essence of my human experience. My son is sleeping in the other room. He's 14 years old. He's probably reading this right now sometime in the future, so for him: I know I've picked up some habits in the past few years that you don't like to see in me, and I don't like you seeing in me. I'll get better, okay? I promise.
My son's pretty damn amazing, honestly. He loves reading, and The X Files, and music that I'm not completely into but I'm not about to tell him that. Pretty sure he's gay, too, or at least not straight. I think he knows and is nervous to tell me. I think it might be a while before he's ready to tell me that, and that's fine. Whenever you're ready, Draven, it's okay. If you're reading this, I love you. I always have and I always will.4
It's occurred to me that you guys might be sad about this. I'm bad at comforting people experiencing emotions, so I'm not gonna try and do it here. Some of you might have had me as a mentor, or worked closely with me, or maybe even had more of a life with me (Senior Staffers and Draven5, I'm looking at you). Some of you might have only seen me around or met me in passing. I'm grateful for all of you. Grief can be a bitch, but that's out of my hands.

Anyway. The reason we're here.
The fact that this site stumbles through even one day of operation is a fucking miracle. You have no idea how many moving parts make up a Foundation Site, forget about a large humanoid research and containment site. There's a line in Jurassic Park that's always really stuck with me: "We have all the problems of a major theme park and a major zoo and the computers aren't even on their feet yet,"6 and I think that's a pretty solid representation of what we're up against here. See, at Site-17 we have all the problems of a zoo, a prison, a university-scale research facility, a military base, multiple apartment complexes, a local government, a corporation7, a small city, a secure facility, an intelligence operation and a theme park8 and we have our computers up and running and causing problems all of their own! Who the fuck decided this was a good idea? This was a terrible idea, but here we are. There are hundreds of other sites on Earth doing the same thing right now. Hell, Site-19 is bigger than us and does the same thing in Siberia at 40 below! It takes a special collection of people to run this big of a shitshow, so thanks to all of you. You guys are the best.
The Foundation has been running at some capacity 24/7, 365 days a year since the beginning of the 20th century, and it's 2006 and we're still going, despite the danger, despite the millions of stupid problems that happen on a daily basis, and despite me dying, it's gonna be okay. You don't need me to tell you that. There's 1,000 of you people; the way I see it, even if every single thing on site was to breach, that's still a 2 to 1 ratio. Find a breach buddy! Get a blunt object! You'll be fine.
Oh, and have fun with it.
Yours9,
Director Kondraki

Footnotes
1. There's always been a thing in the Foundation with people dying at night. There's probably something poetic about that, but superficially it seems so weird. Why can't people die in the day? Why can't it wait until morning, so I don't have to have that awkward midnight brood around my apartment to force myself through the five stages of grief before work? Like, maybe they need to get in the mood or something. I'll let you guys know if I find out.
2. You will find over the course of your career that 05 presents many nuggets of wisdom not unlike this one. I would say that out of the 13, about 4 of them on average have had experience as a Site Director. Yes, it's important to listen to them, but as you will promise when they swear you in to this position, your first priority is your site; not to the Foundation and certainly not to them. Be smart about it. If you feel like you could make a better decision but it's not what they want you to do, do it your way. They might have to actually step foot on your site to know things as well as you do, and god forbid that happen.
3. If you're having trouble picking up on a pattern here, 05 has many similarities in knowledge and expertise to those on the boards of large companies and capitalist governments. Take this information how you will.
4. It would be awkward if I die and you're not actually gay. That would be really awkward. I love you and shit anyway though, like, that's the same.
5. Honorary Senior Staffer through proxy, paid with pizza and fatherly knowledge (including such gems as 'don't put metal in the microwave unless you want to see something cool' and 'vodka goes bad if you don't drink it all at once')
6. I have no idea who says that and don't care enough to look. Suck it and fuck it, nerds.
7. Side note, you may wonder how much money I make doing this shit. Ironically not much, but I'm a simple guy. I live in a two bedroom apartment. It's the same one I've been living in for twenty years. I have enough for coffee at the end of the day. The real upside to my job is that I get my utilities paid for, which isn't half bad; the downside is that my son needs to order pizza for me to keep our address off the public record. It's a life.
8. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it.
9. See you all in Jewish hell


BULLETIN FROM THE OFFICE OF INFORMATIONAL SECURITY
The following archive is a collection of records, logs, and intercepted communications. Selections of this document have been retrieved or created through esoteric means, the nature of which has rendered the archive difficult to control.
Information retrieval specialists have attempted in this archive to provide the clearest possible history of POI-1844. Certain events described in this document may be presented out of order, or in contradictory ways. This does not mean they did not happen.

Date: March 25th, 1912
Location: Essonne, France
7:00 AM: Moments before dawn, a luxury De Dion Bouton motor-car speeds through the forest, still snow-capped in the early spring, travelling to the Mediterranean coast.
7:03 AM: The driver, a chauffeur of Marquis de Dion, notices an obstruction on the road ahead. He notifies his companion in the passenger seat, who suggests the road may be damaged or closed.
The limousine comes to a stop in front of two horse-carts, blocking the road. Before they can react, two men, each armed with a Browning semi-automatic, emerge from the flanks.
7:04 AM: One of the assailants introduces himself, and informs the driver that the car is no longer his. The driver draws his weapon, but is shot. The passenger is shot four times.
Both bodies are removed from the car, and left by the side of the road.

Dossier: POI-1844

Name: Octave Garnier
DoB: December 25th, 1889
Biography: Born in Seine-et-Marne, Garnier's unremarkable childhood quickly evolved into a radical communist adolescence. Garnier engaged in a steep procession from petty theft, to assault, and eventually to violations of orders both judicial and natural.
Garnier's anarchist "gang", whether the papers call them "The Auto Bandits" or "The Bonnot Gang", poses a threat to the rule of law in civilized society. Their utilization of automobiles and state-of-the-art weapons has led them to largely outclass French police, as they plunder banks without resistance and inspire otherwise loyal workers into strike and rebellion.
Foundation interference in Garnier's operations invariably results in failure, through the intervention of natural, thaumic, or logistic obstacles that are not ostensibly under Garnier's control.
It is not known when Garnier became anomalous, or when the anomalous began to suit him.

Monsieur Garnier,
I hope my letter finds you well. I would like you to know that I hold the greatest respect for your actions. Your mere existence, the way you live, the way you act, is a subversion. A sabotage of the structures that divide and destroy us.
I know how it feels to be against the grain of normalcy from the outset. That is why I am writing you.
I possess many associates from all walks of life who exist in a superliminal state. They are invisible, they do not age, and there are many in society who do not tolerate their existence, and tolerate knowledge of their existence even less.
I live in a place where all knowledge is held. Our security is sacred. Your actions offer us a path to secure our place in this world, once and for all. I hope you will give me the chance to explain. This world is not what the oppressors would like us to think.
Tonight, fall asleep with this letter beneath your head.
Tomorrow, you will understand what I ask of you.
Sincerely,
　Le Sagittaire

Date: March 25th, 1912
Location: Chantilly, France
9:00 AM: POI-1844 and his associates, André Soudy, Raymond Callemin, Étienne Monier, and René Valet approach the Société Générale Bank in Chantilly, driving the stolen limousine through the suburban landscape.
9:11 AM: A Foundation task force stationed within the bank's back room, positioned to intercept the Bonnot Gang should they choose this place to strike, are informed of the incoming vehicle and prepare to intervene.
The limousine stops at the main square in front of the bank. POI-1844 and three associates proceed into the bank, while one provides cover from the sidewalk.
The gang order the civilians inside to make way.
The Foundation task force attempts to leave the back room, but find the door locked from the outside.
9:12 AM: Several bank tellers resist the gang's instructions. POI-1844 orders his men to open fire. Three people are shot. They proceed to the bank's safe, and begin collecting the money.
The Foundation task force attempts to batter the door down, but begin hallucinating the appearance of a woman in the room with them, who interrupts them.
The woman told the task force something that they were later unable or unwilling to recall. When she finished, the task force began to vomit live, non-venomous snakes.
9:22 AM: The gang retreat back to the limousine, where their associate had been covering by firing warning shots at passers by.
The limousine takes off in the direction of Paris. Two policemen attempt to pursue by horseback and bicycle, but are easily outrun by the vehicle.
9:27 AM: The Foundation task force ceases vomiting snakes. All snakes in the room disappear, and the door is unlocked.
11:40 AM: The automobile is found, abandoned, on boulevard Pereire in Paris.
Inside, police find clothes, bloodstained cloth, and a rifle used in the robbery.
Foundation investigators find traces of intense residual thaumic energy imprinted in the limousine's trunk, but no source is found. A thaumic artifact is presumed missing, in POI-1844's possession.
POI-1844 is upgraded from a potential instigator to an active, major threat to normalcy.

Octave,
It is not by accident that I offered my home to shelter your comrades on that night.
As anarchists, it is our tendency, and perhaps our necessity, to let needs and requirements go unsaid, merely wordlessly fulfilled. It need not be said that my home is open to those who need to hide from the eyes of the police. That much is expected.
I don't wish to bore you, nor waste time stating the obvious. What I mean to say is that there are things that go unseen, because the light of society would not bear to shine on them. They force us into the darkness, thinking us rats, and we learn to flourish in that night.
They ask that we care for their banks, their belongings, their gold while the masses starve and freeze. You cannot reconcile this. So you hurt them.
When I think on what I have done, and what I have yet to do, I wonder if it suits me. The obscurity forced upon us, the restraint of our minds and bodies. The withering of an ego that does not fit what those "above" wish for us. Have I become complacent, moderating my resistance from behind a typewriter?
Already I have regrets. I do not wish to languish in the dark further. Our words cannot simply go unsaid anymore. When I see your actions, I see steps into the light, and I know that this darkness cannot persist.
With you in inevitability,
　　　　　Victor Kibalchich

Monsieur Garnier,
Your performance in Chantilly was exemplary.
It was heartening to see not only how well you defied the odds, but also the implicit acceptance of what I had offered you that night, which feels like so long ago.
In my home, we have novels of all kinds. Anyone there could tell you that all fiction, from epic poems to sultry romance stories, share common attributes.
Form, and structure. Paths that are followed thousands, millions of times, anchoring their followers in common knowledge, understood structures, ideas that are innate to ourselves.
The world is not so different from fiction. There is a narrative in our world. It is a story that some try to tell, louder than anyone else's. Their version of the world, of fiction, must be particular. They can restrict the quanta of stories, bar the world from exploring the innate ideas they possess from birth.
They turn our world into a shadow of what it could be, make it a shallow puddle reflecting a vast, unending sky.
I have seen the possibilities that await when we transcend these limiting elements. My family, my comrades, all wanderers long to live in that open air.
You reject the basis of the Foundation's monomyth. You will see the world restructured into one unlimited realm, free of conflict, strife, and class.
I understand that what I have asked of you is difficult, the most difficult thing a man can do.
I regret that you were not able to visit our collection in person.
Sincerely,
　Le Sagittaire

On March 30, André Soudy was arrested. He was later executed.
On April 7, Raymond Callemin was arrested. He was later executed.
On April 24, Étienne Monier was arrested. He was later executed.

Date: May 14th, 1912
Location: Nogent-sur-Marne, Paris, France
6:30 PM: French police surround a building in the commune of Nogent-sur-Marne in Paris. They believe POI-1844, along with René Valet, is holed up inside.
The police announce their presence, and are answered by potshots from the windows.
8:30 PM: POI-1844, Valet, and the police continue to trade covering fire for an extended period of time. The crowd outside the building grows, police reinforcements burgeoning into the hundreds, not including civilian spectators.
Foundation forces arrive to provide additional cover. Fearing the fallout of an immense thaumic attack should a cornered POI-1844 utilize the purported artifact from Chantilly to its fullest extent, Foundation counter-thaumic specialists from multiple Sites across Europe have been diverted to contain whatever results from this standoff.
10:30 PM: POI-1844 and Valet gather their stolen money and set it alight, destroying ten thousand francs. As the police lay down machine gun fire from outside the building, the two men retreat to the cellar.
At approximately this time in the four largest Foundation sites in Europe, anomalous distortion is registered inside archival departments.
Many volumes of documents and classified logs vanish. Others burst into flames, consuming whole wings of data before the fires can be contained.
Meta-analysis of the surviving documents later reveals that the greatest gaps in knowledge are related to what might be an anomalous organization or place related to an intense concentration of literature.
It is believed that this specific data has been anomalously obscured to the fullest extent, preventing the Foundation from comprehending or intercepting the organization or place in any part.
12:30 AM: Police lead a squad towards the building, planting explosive melanite charges. They retreat, and detonate the charges, shattering windows down the street and collapsing the building entirely.
As the authorities charge into the remains of the building, they discover both POI-1844 and René Valet semi-conscious in the wreckage. Both are shot in the head.
They are later buried in unmarked graves.

On March 24th, 1912, the day before the robbery in Chantilly, a document was received by La Sûreté Nationale, addressed to the Chief of Police Xavier Guichard. Below is an excerpt.

I declare Dieudonne to be innocent of the crime that you know full well I committed. I refute Rodriguez' allegations; I alone am guilty. And don't think I'm going to run away from your police; on my word, I believe they're the ones who are afraid.
I know there will be an end to this struggle which has begun between me and the formidable arsenal at Society's disposal. I know that I will be beaten; I am the weakest. But I sincerely hope to make you pay dearly for your victory.
Awaiting the pleasure of meeting you,
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Garnier