“I am the Golem, created by the Maharal to defend the weak, punish the wicked, and oppose injustice wherever I find it. You should not be surprised that I am a moral absolutist.”

Florence speaks with Josef, the Golem of Prague, in the Site-246 submarine bay.

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From
Julian Corwin (Director, Site-246)

Subject
Re: The Greenland Incident (WAS: Failure of Operation CLAM CHOWDER)

To
O5-03 (Overseer, O5 Council)

Overseer,
I understand the Council's displeasure with the outcome of Operation CLAM CHOWDER, but I remain adamant in my position that no disciplinary action be taken against Agent Elsinger. Not only is such a course likely to damage the operational effectiveness of Delta-3, but it is also a transparently obvious attempt to shift blame. I will remind you that I objected to the deployment of Delta-3 for this operation, only to be overruled by Director Sands. Agent Elsinger still lacks fine control of her abilities, which were never well-suited for containment operations to begin with. In this light, the loss of SCP-████, while unfortunate, was completely predictable. If you'll forgive my impertinence, when you wield a hammer, you should not be surprised when you break something.
Tell the Operations Director that if he wants a surgical approach, he should find a scalpel.

Julian Corwin
Director, Site-246

December 1, 1986
Site-246
Florence was waiting beside the hospital bed when Westbrook awoke. He stared at the ceiling, eyes unfocused.
"My shoulder hurts." His voice was rough from lack of liquid. "That's good."
She looked at him with concern. "I can't tell if you need more morphine or less."
His gaze flicked over to focus on her. "I'm fine. Pain is for the living, is all." He coughed, then licked his lips. "Water?"
She picked up a glass of water off the nearby table and offered it to him. His left arm was immobilized in a sling, so she helped him hold the glass in his free hand as he drank.
"Thanks." He sipped the water slowly. "How long was I out?"
"It's Monday. You were in and out through the weekend, but this is the first time you've been lucid."
He nodded slowly, doing the mental subtraction, then winced when the action disturbed his shoulder. "How bad?"
"Not very. Hairline fracture on your collarbone, some muscle bruising. They think maybe you might have a concussion, but I'd be amazed if anything managed to get through your thick head."
"Your bedside manner leaves something to be desired," he said.
She rolled her eyes. "Sorry, I'm not that Florence." She took the now empty glass from him and set it back on the table. "You got lucky — it only caught the edge of your jumpsuit. Half-an-inch lower and we wouldn't be having this conversation."
Now that was a sobering thought. He tried to shrug, then immediately regretted it. "That's the risk of the job."
She shook her head. "No it wasn't. You jumped in front of it."
"It was going to hit you."
"Was it? I was already getting out of the way. Maybe it wouldn't have hit either of us."
"You don't know that."
"Neither do you!" She placed her hand on his and sighed. "It was a stupid risk."
"It wasn't calculated, I'll give you that." He squeezed her hand gently. "But I couldn't risk you. I had a split second to act, and I decided that of the two of us, I was replaceable."
Without warning, she leaned over and kissed him, square on the lips. It caught him by surprise, but a moment later he was returning it.
After a few seconds, Florence pulled away. "You aren't replaceable. Not to me."
"Maybe I should get hurt more often."
"Don't go getting any ideas. I won't be able to give you your Christmas present if you're bedridden."
He raised an eyebrow. "Oh my."
She blushed. "I—" She looked away, then shook her head. "I didn't know just how much I needed you until I thought you were gone. The skip hit you, and I saw you go down, and… I lost it."
He stared at her. "Flo, what did you do?"
Her expression hardened. "You remember what the skip file said about how tough it was?"
"I remember the part about it shrugging off anti-material rounds."
"I don't really remember what I did — just the anger, and the pain. But I killed it. Put a hole through it about a foot wide. All the way through it."
"Jesus." He whistled appreciatively. "Bet the boffins aren't too pleased with you."
She looked down. "Corwin hasn't been telling me much, but I think I'm in trouble. Devlin was saying there might be a disciplinary hearing."
"Devlin doesn't know a goddamn thing," he said. "Corwin didn't want us on the mission in the first place for exactly this reason, but they sent us in anyways. They can't pin this on you — if they try to push anything, there'll be a full inquiry, and then people will start asking why a mobile task force was deployed over the objections of the managing site director."
She frowned. "So why did they do it then?"
"Overwatch politics." He waved his free hand in a gesture of contempt. "Delta-3 isn't exactly winning any popularity contests over there. Someone was trying to set us up for failure. Get the task force dissolved, maybe have the whole special asset program canned."
"Will they?"
"No. They overplayed their hand. Corwin's smart, and he's old, which means he has allies. They'll make sure heads roll for this, but it won't be ours."
She bit her lip nervously. "God, I hate this. The secret agendas, the power plays. It's like being back with the Ghosts."
"The Ghosts probably did it with less paperwork," he said. "Try not to worry about it too much. Corwin will make sure that it doesn't spillover onto you. This is all Director-level shit anyways, and most of them don't even care about you personally. We're just pawns to them."
She sighed. "I've always been a pawn. I'm sick of it."
"Florence, at the end of the day, we're all just pawns in someone else's game. At least we're fortunate enough to know whose game we're playing." He gave a sly grin. "And you know what happens to a pawn that makes it across the board, don't you?"
She shook her head. "What?"
"You get to be a queen."

March 2, 1987
Site-246
The Golem of Prague was waiting for her in the submarine bay. He bowed respectfully as she approached.
"Agent Elsinger." His voice was gravelly, in a very literal sense, but not unpleasant to hear.
"Operative Josef," she said, returning the bow. "Director Corwin said you wished to speak with me?"
"Indeed. I came here to thank you for your part in defeating Maximilian Bauer some fifteen months hence. And to congratulate you on your victory over him. He was a most formidable foe."

"I was just doing my job," she said.
"No," he said, eyes twinkling. "You were doing my job."
"Someone had to do it."
"And that someone was you."
She nodded, conceding the point. "If you don't mind me asking, where were you? The Gorgon said you were unavailable, but she would never say why."
"I was…" He paused. "Traveling."
She studied his clay features. "Did you find what you were looking for?"
The fires of his eyes flickered in an approximation of a blink. "You have more perception than most."
"And?" It probably wasn't wise to press a half-ton man of clay for answers, but her curiosity had been eating away at her for over a year, and it had only gotten worse the more she had learned about the Golem.
"Yes," he said. "Eventually. But it was not easy to find." He stared at her, and she had the unshakable feeling that he could see right through her down to her soul. "If I may offer you some advice?"
"Please."
"The spirits of the dead cling to you. Do not let them consume you."
She looked away. "I've heard that before."
"You seek responsibility for the deeds of evil men and thoughtless monsters. Their crimes are not yours to answer for."
She clenched her fists. "I have power. I can stop them. Doesn't that make me responsible if I don't?"
"Only if you don't use it," he said. "You are familiar with the expression that an evil man needs only for good men to do nothing in order to triumph?"
She nodded. "Churchill, right?"
"John Stuart Mill, although I suspect Sir Churchill would have readily echoed it. It is a good expression. Do you understand what it means?"
She chewed her lip, thinking. "Maybe you should enlighten me."
"You have power. Do you use it to oppose those who would seek to do harm?"
"I try."
"Then that is sufficient. Not all battles can be won. That does not mean that fighting is useless. If your path is righteous, and your course resolute, then you will do no wrong."
"That's a very… rigid worldview."
He made a deep, booming sound that she realized was a laugh. "I am the Golem, created by the Maharal to defend the weak, punish the wicked, and oppose injustice wherever I find it. You should not be surprised that I am a moral absolutist."
"I suppose not."
"May I offer you some more practical advice?"
She motioned for him to continue.
"Your power is immense. That can be a great benefit, but it can also be a hindrance. I suspect that you have already realized this."
She nodded. "I have trouble with workings. With anything precise. I don't have enough control."
"As you say. Mortal magic is often imprecise. Wild. Confused. It is a consequence of your nature."
She frowned at him. "And yours isn't?"
"No. I am a golem. Everything I am, everything I believe, comes from without — from the emet, the holy truth carved into my clay. It animates me, guides me, binds me. Gives me absolute clarity of purpose. That clarity lends precision to my actions. Rigidity, as you call it."
Her frown deepened. "You're saying I lack conviction. That my lack of control comes from a lack of confidence."
He tilted his head. "Humans are not like golems. You do not have an emet. You carry your truths on the inside. In a way, this makes them more solid, more secure, but it also leaves them less rigid, less exact. As a result, you are confused. Conflicted. Is it no wonder then that when you use magic, the ultimate expression of will, that you find it riddled with conflict?"
She heaved a frustrated sigh. "You said this would be practical advice. What can I do about it?"
"You must find a way to externalize your truth," he said. It was hard to tell whether this statement was meant to be followed by an implied, Obviously. "Give yourself a symbol to hold onto, a way to ground yourself and visualize your will."
She stared at him, comprehension dawning on her face. "Focusing geometry. I can use a focus for evocation."
He nodded. "You understand."
"Thank you."
He bowed again. "You are most welcome. Unfortunately, our time together draws short. I wish I could remain, but I have been away for far too long already. While you may have dealt a devastating blow to the forces of OBSKURA, I fear what they might do if they are allowed to continue scheming unmolested. I shall remind them why they hide in shadows."
She smiled lightly. "Of course. Good hunting. And good luck."
"Fortune favors the righteous, Agent Elsinger. Farewell. I hope our paths may cross again some day."
With that, he turned and strode back into the airlock. The door closed behind him, and the chamber filled with water. A moment later, Florence heard the external hatch open. And then the sound of the Golem, striding away across the lake bed.
She almost felt sorry for OBSKURA.
Almost.

"What did the Golem want?" Westbrook asked. They were in his bed.
"Hmm?" Florence yawned. She had been on the verge of falling asleep.
"The Golem. Why did he want to see you earlier?"
She rolled over to face him. "Jealous?"
"Should I be?"
She frowned. "I… I don't think he's anatomically accurate." She shook her head to dispel that train of thought. "Anyways, he was here about Bauer."
"Was he mad that you stole his kill? He's been hunting down OBSKURA members since the end of the war. Probably wanted to get Bauer himself."
She shook her head. "No, he wanted to thank me. Said I had done his job for him."
"You kind of did."
"Mhm." She ran a finger across the tattoo on his chest. "He gave me some advice too."
"What about?"
"Oh, you know, magic stuff." She didn't think she could fully explain that particular conversation to Westbrook. She wasn't certain she fully understood it herself.
"Wizards secrets. Very sexy."
She giggled. "You only say that because you don't know what they are."
He grinned. "Hence the mystique."
She flipped her finger over and started tracing the outline of his tattoo with her nail. It was a stylized scroll, although she couldn't make out what was inked on it. "Maybe we should talk about some of your secrets instead."
She felt him tense up at the touch of her nails on his skin. "Oh?"
"Mmm. Like maybe this tattoo. What is it?"
He relaxed a little bit. "You've had plenty of chances to see it."
"I was, uh, distracted." She coughed.
"I'll take that as a compliment."
She prodded him with her finger. "Talk."
"Yes, ma'am." He grabbed her hand and pulled it away from the tattoo. "It's unit affiliations. See?" He placed her finger back on the tattoo, near the top. "Omega-17 — That was the Florida Men, down in Miami. You would not believe the kind of crap that lives in the Everglades." He started moving her finger down the list. "Sigma-23 — Wily Coyotes. Don't let them assign you to a site in Arizona, it's a literal hellscape." Down the list again. "Kappa-1 — Sherman's March didn't last too long, did it? And of course, Delta-3."
"That's a lot of history to keep on your chest."
He shrugged. "It reminds me of who I am."
She blinked. Something clicked inside her head. "That's it," she hissed.
"What?"
"Where'd you go to get this done? There's not a tattoo artist on-site that I haven't heard about, is there?"
He shook his head. "Nah. I went to a guy in Thunder Bay to get it updated. He's sort of clued-in, a lot of para folks go there. He's got a low-grade basilisk that he uses in defensive tattoos, apparently. Cog-haz on your palms, that kind of thing. None of it is strong enough to warrant action though."
"So he's used to doing weird stuff."
"Yeah, probably."
"Hmm." She thought about that for a bit. "I might pay him a visit next time I have surface leave."
She couldn't see it, but she knew he was raising an eyebrow. "What are you planning?"
She placed her head against his chest. "That's a wizard secret."

April 6, 1987
Site-246
The thaumaturgy gym was once again filled with candles. As before, Florence sat in the middle of the pattern, lost in meditation. She had ditched her usual jumpsuit for jeans and a tank top, which revealed the tattoo that now covered her left arm. The intricate fractal design had an almost organic appearance, although in reality she had spent hours on the math underlying its arcane geometry. Rather than ink, the pattern had been scribed with colloidal silver, giving the whole thing a grey-blue hue.
Her entire arm itched and ached, so she focused her meditation on ignoring it. She had made significant improvements in her mental discipline over the last year, so that the process only took a few minutes rather than an hour.
She took a breath and opened her eyes. She saw the world as it was, and how she wanted it to be. She raised her hand and focused her will.
Familiar flames appeared above her palm. She felt the universe push back against the spell, and tried to direct the backlash. The lines of her tattoo glowed softly.
The candles continued to burn steadily, undisturbed by backlash.
She didn't allow herself to smile. Instead, she poured more power into the spell. The tattoo on her arm glowed brighter as the fire grew into a pillar of flame. It soon reached ten feet into the air, and her arm shone as intensely as the sun.
Still, the candles remained undisturbed.
She relaxed her will and released the spell.
Only then did she smile.

December 18, 1987
Scriba, New York
Nine Mile Point Nuclear Generating Station
"Firestarter!" Even with the low fidelity of the radio channel, the urgency in Westbrook's tone was apparent. "What's the status on those wards?"
"Working on it," she said. She clicked off the radio and turned to shout at one of the agents. "Strand, drop that anchor already!"
Markus Strand immediately released the large metal cylinder he had been carrying. It fell to the ground with a solid thud. He waved at Florence, then pointed at the cylinder, as if to say, Like that?
There was a distant explosion, then the sound of something roaring.
Florence keyed on her radio. "Solomon One, disengage. I'm about to pop the bubble."
"Copy that, Firestarter. Target is already en route, ETA… two minutes."
Florence knelt down and focused on the five metal cubes in her right hand. Each one had been excised from one of the cylinders that had been placed around the perimeter of the power plant. She reached out with her will, feeling for the contagion links between them. She found the anchors in her mind, and flooded them with power.
Even with the focusing tattoo, she still had difficulty with subtle workings. Wards, however, were far from subtle. They were all about building up raw power, and she had power in spades.
Nothing visibly changed, but she could feel the fence of invisible force that had sprung up around the building. Anything that tried to bypass the anchors would find itself in for a world of hurt.
"Well? Where's the ward?" Devlin asked. Florence had tried to get him assigned to the secondary team, with no success.
"Why don't you go kick one of the anchors and find out?" Jackass.
He didn't say anything. That was fine with Florence. It made it easier to hear the approach of the rad worm as it slithered closer.
It burst from the darkness perhaps a minute later, eyeless, slimy, and 40 meters long. It cleared the outer fence in a single lurch, on a direct course for the reactor in the closest thing to a beeline its legless body could manage.
Florence clenched her first, willing one last burst of power into the wards.
Then the worm hit. There was a burst of light from the point of contact, and Florence's tattoo flared up as it absorbed the backlash. The worm screeched and recoiled as it was zapped by several thousand volts of electricity, then started trying to pound through the barrier with its head.
Florence gritted her teeth and dropped into a three-point stance as she held the ward up through force of will. In a protracted contest of strength between her will and the worm's mass, she would eventually lose. But she only had to hold for a few seconds.
As the worm reared back again, she collapsed the other sections of the ward and redirected the energy into the portion the worm was attacking. When the worm smashed against it again, instead of a jolt of a thousand volts of electricity, it got a million.
The rad worm didn't scream this time. It simply convulsed, then collapsed to the ground. The ward finally gave way beneath its limp body, and Florence hissed as the resulting backlash overloaded her tattoo. Before it could start to burn her, she released her grip on the spell, praying that the backlash would dissipate quickly.
She panted, exhausted. "Hey Devlin, ask me about the wards again."
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http://www.dogfactz.biz.int/training-help/4/4/5/
Quick Tips for Raising Red Hounds
1. Provide a safe living environment without any meaningless distractions!

Elizabeth Cooper-Hughes stared out the window of a creaking minibus as it lumbered through an old-growth forest. Trees loomed high over the heads of her tiny cohort, just as unaware of the intruders as the deer lingering in their path. She stared out that window for the better part of two hours they stopped, and started, and turned, and stopped again. Nothing but trees out every window. Nothing but trees until there was suddenly more.
The bus passed through a wrought iron gate. Elizabeth winced. Looking at it felt like thumbs pressed hard against her temples. Beyond it, an edifice of concrete and glass loomed just above the treeline. Looking at it hurt too. A new prison no matter the angle she chose. The bus disgorged them all onto the pavement like a bird feeding its young.
The St. Eustace Academy of Public and Private Service. Its name was repeated again and again as she stood in a solemn row of students at the induction ceremony. Public and private service. Public and private service. As though service was the only thing expected of her. Maybe it was. Her parents hadn't said anything before the bus arrived. They were like that lately. Elizabeth hadn't said goodbye to them in return. She had always been that way. The principal spoke solemnly about the blessedness of work for the good of mankind, droning on for what felt like hours. Classes began later that day.
The school wasn't much different in the end. Math. Science. Languages. Most of the teachers had vicious scars and missing limbs. Desks were bolted to the floor. Doors locked from the outside. Things quickly settled into a normal routine though. Running laps around the building became a pleasant diversion. Hitting classmates' padded bodies offered a welcome distraction. If the school intended to wear students down so much that they couldn't possibly cause trouble, it succeeded thoroughly. If only it could wear out her roommate even more.
Elizabeth lay on the lower bunk of her room's bed and listened to the pitiful whimpers coming from above. She covered her head with a pillow. She stuck her fingers in her ears. She did both and hummed loudly. The wracking sobs still broke through her defenses.
"I didn't kick you that hard," she said quietly.
More sobs.
"Just say if it's too much on the mat."
And more.
"It's not like I'm trying to hurt you."
"Mom…" whimpered Tess. What reply could she give to that?

2. Create interesting challenges relevant to future work!

Elizabeth ended up in the nurse's office again and again with hours missing from her mind. Days, sometimes. Weeks, occasionally. Other things quickly filled the gaps left behind. She lost a day and remembered a handful of French adverbs like they were seared into her brain. She lost a week and the series of motions to perform a shoulder throw became a new gospel. Others had the same experience. Rumors about the collective forgetting festered in the student body, and the ones with the biggest mouths always forgot the most. Karma, or something like it. Elizabeth always kept to herself, but not so much that she failed to notice other students vanishing.
Just two or three of the cohort went missing at first, then ten or eleven. Her roommate vanished, then one of her few friends. When asked, the instructors all said the answers would appear when she was ready. They shouldn't have phrased it as a challenge. Picking the lock on the teacher's lounge was no different than breaking into a convenience store. Breaking into filing cabinets posed no more challenge than a cash register. The rewards were somewhat less satisfying.
A security guard caught her carrying a stack of manila folders. Elizabeth bristled at the way he shouted, just like she bristled at all the cops who had ever done the same. He grabbed at her uniform. She bit his arm. He pushed her head away. She kicked up into his crotch. He sprayed a violently yellow can at her face. Unconsciousness came crashing down.
The familiar ceiling on the nurse's office hung low. Sleep came as the lights flared brighter. A woman stared right into her eyes. Sleep swept back over her right after. Elizabeth eventually woke in the councilor's office, slouched in a comfortable chair across. Mr. Parsons stared at her and stroked the long scar that wrapped from one missing ear to the other shoulder.
"It's been years since anyone was so direct." He hid his disappointment better than teachers past. A wasted effort. Why should any of them hide it, when she made such little effort to sound remorseful? Why should she make an effort, when their disappointment came regardless?
"Don't bother calling my parents."
"You're Elizabeth, right? Or are you the Lizzy?"
"Elizabeth."
"I wouldn't dream of calling them, Elizabeth. We still need to talk though. Tell me, why the break-in?"
"No one would tell me what's going on."
"I didn't mean it like that. Didn't you notice any of the other clues? On the grounds? On the intranet? In any gossip? You were awfully straightforward about it."
"That stuff's complicated." She wiggled her hand ambivalently. "I'm only good at simple stuff."
"No, no. You're saying simple, but I know you're thinking stupid. School makes it feel that way sometimes, but it's wrong. You're not stupid, you just like doing other things. Being more energetic. Using your hands. It's a teacher's job to help you find the best ways to learn. So, Elizabeth, would you like to take more interesting classes?"
She nodded and expected them to try calling her parents anyway.

3. Encourage success by rewarding it with appropriate prizes!

Elizabeth got a new room in a new building and new classes with new classmates. The instructors told her to hurt them on the mats, and she beamed when they submitted first. The instructors gave her a pile of metal parts and demonstrated how to assemble a gun, and her chest puffed up after swiftly finishing. The instructors opened the cleaning closet and said to make something dangerous. She accidentally blew the windows out of the classroom, but she held herself high all the same. Things came naturally for the first time in her short life. That they were violent, scary things was of no consequence. She had realized long before that adults were terrible hypocrites when it came to that sort of thing. At least they were being honest about what would prove useful in the future.
The sum of her injuries over those two years: seven broken bones and countless fractures, thirteen burns of varying degrees, three serious puncture wounds, one electrocution, and one severe case of poisoning. Hints of strange things floated at the edges of her awareness throughout the rolling days of excitement, but investigating proved fruitless. Just a few messages to instructors from the nameless foundation that paid their wages, and that fact was hardly surprising. The whole student body had heard it being spoken of in hushed tones.
Elizabeth did well enough to get moved into the advanced placement program, and then well enough there to be selected for a special studies track. Men and women in gray uniforms sat in on classes and watched their practicals intently. Other students theorized that they worked for this military, that spy service, or even some mysterious business. One classmate insisted that the Illuminati was involved, and everyone laughed at him. Elizabeth knew the truth would be more interesting by far. So long as she didn't forget it, at least. That experience persisted, but she learned not to worry over leaking memories.

4. Break up monotony with unexpected situations!

A rainy day in the middle of October proved her prediction right. After several hours in a cramped and windowless van, the class of twelve emerged into an underground parking lot. The spots were filled with unremarkable sedans and boxy trucks. Nothing that would stand out to anyone. She watched a single smoking cigarette in an overfull ashtray while waiting for the elevator. Giant fans whirred overhead. Another elevator disgorged a group of tired men and women in beige jumpsuits. Classmates chattered about the last test. When their elevator finally arrived, everyone rushed in at once. Standing without someone's elbow being jammed into someone else's appendix proved difficult.
"You've all done well," said Mr. Green. His version of glowing praise. "Not a fuckup left in the bunch. So now you get to know what the big secret is. Anyone who doesn't want to see the big secret?"
"Do you have to kill us after you tell us?" asked another student. A boy who smiled too much for his own good.
"Tanner doesn't want to know. Anyone else?"
Everyone within reach punched Tanner.
The elevator opened, and the group was whisked through a maze of white corridors. Loudspeakers made impenetrable announcements, requesting that Security Director Gutiérrez report to SHC Block 3, announcing a VAC-5 medical warning, available staff report to stations, and most dramatically that they should shelter in place. 7799 phase shift in effect. Shelter in place. 7799 phase shift in effect. Shelter in–
The corridor twisted by 90 degrees. Elizabeth saw herself seeing herself from behind. She took a step forward along the new wall. Every color died in that instant. Bones and blood and shadow all looked the same as shoes and shirts and teeth. A cricket sitting atop her teacher's heart chirped loudly. Someone barfed. It smelled like wildflowers.
Reality shuddered back to normalcy after a minute that lasted centuries. Her fellow students looked as shaken as she felt. Someone barfed again. It didn't smell floral this time, and a second student followed suit. She felt the same. Worse, maybe. Shaken in a way she didn't have the words to describe. Undermined. No one else showed a sign of it after cleaning up though, so she couldn't either.
"Get it out of your system," grunted Mr. Green. "Nothing to be ashamed of. You'll have to get used to it though. Plenty of stuff in the world like that. Let's take a little tour."
Elizabeth's group followed him through those blinding corridors like a train of ducklings trailing their mother. The sight drew a few curious looks from white-coated researchers and camouflage-uniformed guards, but they were hardly the strangest sight in the place. Her world expanded by even increments while watching through reinforced windows and security cameras. Hand-sized spiders were imprisoned in small aquariums, struggling sluggishly in liquid suspension. A single bathysphere hung above an endless well, window opening occasionally to disgorge tiny bones from a fleshy interior. Shadowy ivy grew in a single planter fenced by brilliant light. Tendrils dissolved every time they reached out, but it tried its luck against those glowing restraints all the same.
More sights came after that. More and more, stranger and stranger. The world felt awfully frayed by the end of the tour, the edges rougher, the borders jagged. Everyone sat on the floor in an empty auditorium as Mr. Green paced. Left to right, as he spoke about the things they witnessed. Right to left, as he told them about the things they didn't see. Back and forth, as he made the offer of forgetfulness and a normal life. Back and forth again, as he spoke of the people fighting to save the world from these nightmares, and about how each of the collective students could save it too. By the time he finished speaking, Elizabeth was vibrating in her seat. Stirring up teenagers never took much effort.

5. Curate a balanced diet and provide plenty of toys for dental health!

Her days changed after that. Not dramatically, but noticeably. Gone were the already-scant lessons about world history. She learned the Foundation's history instead. Gone were the baseline classes on math, and English, and civics. She was fed a diet of stories about the genius, bravery, and integrity of the brave overseers who led it. No names, of course, but the instructors were happy to bunch them all together. The Overseer Council solved problems. It provided direction. It knew everything, saw everything, and would eventually succeed in protecting everything. The overseers were visionaries, prophets, and guardian deities, all shrouded from the eyes of the unworthy. The attentive students were promised that they would one day enter the knowing ranks of the worthy, but only after proving themselves.
Elizabeth fumed at the intransigence of the Foundation's adversaries during those lessons. She seethed at their atrocities. Disaster gnawed at the world only because so many were utterly committed to the wrong ideas. The Serpent's Hand, too wedded to absolute freedom at absolute risk. The Chaos Insurgency, driven by imagined grudges and contagious delusions. The endless stream of fools wringing money from the strange and dangerous, as if it was a simple investment opportunity. Instructors showed her photos, and videos, and after-action reports, and Elizabeth wrapped her heart in them. After all, what reason did she have to doubt the hand that offered so much kibble? They weren't like past teachers at past schools, who could only offer praise or scorn, and whose only reward was continued attendance. The Foundation offered her something bigger. Something greater.
So Elizabeth worked, and studied, and trained. She fought, and fought, and fought. First in carefully ordered drills, then in ones with real risk. She did all that, and then suddenly graduated from the St. Eustace Academy of Public and Private Service. A sudden event with little fanfare. They sat under a few streamers, ate a few cakes, and said no tearful goodbyes. Each and every member of her class assumed they would go right to work for the Foundation, doing whatever needed doing. A reasonable mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.
After the festivities, she was led into a quiet room and given simple instructions on where her education would continue. Her friends' paths led through the governments of one nation or another. Her own efforts earned a trip to USSOCOM with a new name, a fabricated record, and a memetic trigger that would assuredly send her into a coma at the first mention of the Foundation or its secrets. None of that was very concerning. If they wanted her to learn, she would learn. If they wanted work, she would work. If they wanted tricks, she would perform.

6. Once they kill on command, you can be sure they'll do so again!

Elizabeth did a stint in the Occupied Korean Administrative Zone, then a few more up and down eastern Eastern Europe. Demolitions mostly, flavored with the occasional abduction. Soon she was shunted to the unassumingly named Special Task Force for Efficiency Optimization. Assassinations, largely. By a different name, but assassinations nonetheless. Her first killing left a sour taste at the back of her mouth, but it vanished by the second. She never justified that absence. Better to ignore it. Better to forget it entirely. Elizabeth excelled at that.
She stuck bombs under cars, and put bullets through windows, and pressed drugged rags against mouths, and dragged detainees across borders, and planted incriminating evidence, and crashed drones, and poisoned drinks, and blew up bridges, and buildings, and people, and shot, and killed, and killed, and killed. A war started all around her. That was fine. One side won swiftly. That was fine too. All she cared about was earning a return to the Foundation's nest. All she wanted was a place with the heroic overseers in their quest to save the world.
And for so long, it felt like she had failed.
She served, and served, and served, and did every trick her training covered. No secret messages for her arrived. She excelled, and excelled, and excelled, and no transfer back occurred. How many medals would she have earned if they could be given? How many times did she have to perfectly accomplish her assignments? Elizabeth kept up her faith as best she could, but there was always that festering doubt when she crawled into bed. That lingering sensation of being cast aside. She had failed yet again, but unintentionally this time. Not like how she gave wrong answers to spite teachers, but against her best efforts.
It hurt in a way nothing had before.
When Elizabeth received word through secure communication channels that she had finally attracted too much attention, it hardly felt monumental. Just the final sign that she had failed to prove herself worthy. The flight back across the ocean was numb. The drive down to Florida was worse. Any debriefing she got wouldn't be in MacDill, not with how far afield she ended up. She posed a lingering embarrassment at best, or a dangerous liability at worst. Instead, they would meet in a dark parking lot somewhere. The edge of a swamp, maybe. Her contact would probably try to kill her. She would kill them instead. Life was like that.
She waited at a picnic table right outside the Lower Hillsborough Wilderness Preserve. Heavy waves of heat and humidity rolled through the air along with a hundred shrill bird calls. Sweat soaked through her shirt, which advertised a band she'd never heard play. 'Eat the Government' felt appropriate for her new life of running from one.
A stranger approached after nearly half an hour. He wasn't terribly imposing. Not with his messy hair, tourist clothes, and scratched sunglasses. That only meant a basic sort of competence. Elizabeth couldn't feel any sort of threat in how he held himself either. That posed far more danger. She tensed as he sat on the other side of the table. Too unassuming. Too confident. She had already been outplayed. As good a reason as any for ending up like this.
"Who do you work for?" she asked, expecting a kinetic answer.
"The Foundation. We've missed you."
She would have sobbed if she was someone else. She would have cried joyful tears, and relieved ones, and a hundred others. Because Elizabeth was herself, she only allowed a smile. The man recoiled at its sight.

7. Don't forget to occasionally reinforce past lessons!

Hours later, she sat at a different table. A white table in a white room. A narrow one with a single other guest, an individual with a black bag over their head and restraints on their limbs. Not an entirely unusual situation.
Mr. Green entered through the room's sole door. A surprise, but not enough of one for her face to show it. The severe man gently placed a handgun on the table. Grip toward her. Barrel toward the faceless prisoner.
"This man betrayed the Overseer Council," he said simply. Flatly. It was obvious what he expected. What he wanted.
Elizabeth shot the prisoner twice.
Weren't tests supposed to be challenging? True, in recent years she usually had an idea of how her victims had earned their fates. They were terrorists, and criminals, and particularly fearsome opponents of one agenda or another. Sometimes they got a chance to fight back. Sometimes they even made a good show of it. All the same, this felt no different from the rest. No, not exactly. It felt better. She did a good thing. She disposed of her heroes' enemy. She finally proved herself.
"Good job." Mr. Green put a hand on her shoulder. The warmest gesture he'd ever made. "Welcome to Alpha-1, Elizabeth. Let's go get you a new name."

« Side Story | Maim the Sky, Slay the Sun | Side Story »


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Title: Dogs of War
Images: N/A
Music: The Wolf (SIAMÉS)

More by The Great Hippo:

SCPs

– hide block

SCPs

[SCP-3034]
The Counting Station

DO NOT LET HER FINISH

[SCP-3035]
Science Bugs

case_of_the_mondays.png, case_of_the_mondays (1).png

[SCP-3054]
Cragstaff Sanitarium

You are sick. You are broken. We will fix you.

[SCP-3045]
bzzip.exe

HAMLET: I am no longer moody.

[SCP-3043]
Murphy Law in… Type 3043 — FOR MURDER!

Forget it, Fred. It's Chinatown.

[SCP-3057]
Fossil Fuels

…witnesses provided confirmation that instances of SCP-3057-4 did, in fact, have feathers.

[SCP-2639]
Video Game Violence

i need to know how many people i've killed

[SCP-437]
Summer of '91

That was a pretty crazy summer, y'know? Sometimes I really miss that place.

[SCP-3079]
300 Tricks: Stage Magic Made Easy

NOTE: No method for accomplishing this trick is provided.

[SCP-2753]
Let's Play Jenga!

High art carries high risk!

[SCP-2679]
The Many Graves of Jeannette Parslov

Whatever it takes, do what you must; whatever the cost, come back to us.

[SCP-3074]
Kafka's Parking Garage

Thank you for choosing Izatova Parking Center. Have a pleasant day.

[SCP-2571]
Cragglewood Park

Mr. Blair, have you always been an only child?

[SCP-2419]
The Laughing Men

Throw them back into the incinerator where you found them.

[SCP-3143]
Murphy Law in… The Foundation Always Rings Twice!

When it comes right down to it, me — them — hell, even you — we're all just characters in that trashy dime-store novel called life.

[SCP-3089]
That Old Time Religion

Remember how we explained that successful people don't actually need any of their toes to walk? Well, that's going to come in handy for Secret Number Six.

[SCP-3117]
A Monster-Shaped Hole

I'm not talking to you.

[SCP-3128]
Let's Play Monopoly!

Hey, guys? I'm, uh. I'm using this.

[SCP-3138]
A Sepulcher by the Sea

Should it prove feasible, all non-canonical corpses are to be extracted, examined, and catalogued.

[SCP-3241]
The SS Sommerfeld

It makes me wonder what an old monster like myself is even doing here, anymore. And then? Someone special comes along and reminds me.

[SCP-3219]
This Sour Earth

Notably, no reports describe any attempt to examine the residence's storm cellar.

[SCP-4028]
La Historia de Don Quixote de la Mancha

Justine eventually re-unites with her sister, Juliette. Alonso strikes down a lightning bolt intended for them both, then challenges the narrator to a duel.

[SCP-3546]
Doggone it, I Fold!

Specifically, fan-art of Sonic the Hedgehog, a video-game character produced by Sega in 1991.

[SCP-3561]
An Unfinished Work

Despite multiple reports from neighbors who claimed to have witnessed members of his family standing at the windows, no trace of Theodore Holdstock's wife and children could be found.

[SCP-4054]
The Seventh Door

SCP-4054 is The Seventh Door, an unlicensed platform adventure game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988.

Previous: Project Hellhound

A two foot long mechanical centipede made of carbon-steel alloy squirms its way up into the dead man's back.
From there, it rapidly extricates the spinal column by way of chemical debridement, using an acid synthesized from the bouquet of organic compounds found in rotting tissue. Aerosolized bone is expelled from an ejection port at the base of the centipede's head. Its 'pincer' bites into the bottom of the corpse's skull, taking the place of its brain stem.
Its several dozen legs puncture skin and drill through bone, stapling itself in position — acting as the corpse's exterior spine. Needles inject a high-pressure saline solution into surrounding flesh. There, it reactivates cells, revitalizes necrotic tissue, and plasticizes muscle. The solution's reactivity to electric signals will allow the 'bug' to pilot the corpse like a rubbery meat-puppet.
After ten seconds, the corpse twitches. After thirty, it rises. And after a full minute, it's walking around the room.
"Building on top of Dr. Madison Cragg's research, we were able to create a portable, re-usable cybernetic augmentation. One that can even effectively 'repair' and control the bodies of the recently deceased."
This is Bernard LaPierre. He is a bright, effusive man who got his start in the Foundation's Disinformation Bureau. There's a certain boyish charm to him; an infectious excitement that spreads with every idea he sells. The charm tends to diminish once it becomes clear that all these ideas involve creative new ways to maim and kill people. "It integrates with the body's central nervous system, effectively hijacking it and using it to transmit its own signals."
The remote-operated corpse retrieves an assault rifle from the weapon rack. It takes aim at a target located twenty yards down-range. After emptying the magazine, the target is displayed on a monitor. All twenty holes are tightly clustered around a single point.
"Remarkable. How is it controlled?" The question comes from one of the Foundation administrators. They, along with Bernard, observe the corpse from behind a plate of bullet-proof glass.
"Ah, that would be —" Bernard briefly feels a patter of anxiety in his chest. His associate is not accustom to diplomacy. He had hoped to keep him out of the demonstration. "Toby, if you would?"
If Bernard is the face of Project Romero, Tobias Whyte is its architect. On the best of days, the pale, slender young man resembles a disgruntled scare-crow. His scowl might as well have been carved into the bone. Bernard heard him laugh, once — it was horrible. It sounded like something he caught from a man who died of it.
"We use specialized neural nets," Tobias explains. "Missions are divided by goals, then subdivided by environment. A custom neural net is trained for each, controlling the drones as a swarm. A human operator monitors their activity and makes manual adjustments as necessary."
Bernard exhales a sigh of relief. That went better than he expected — Tobias hates explaining things. Now, if they can just get through the rest of the demonstration without —
"They aren't autonomous, then."
This is Commander Robert Malthus. The other administrators keep their distance from him, and with good reason. The one-eyed Foundation veteran is known for being polite, soft-spoken, and utterly ruthless. Malthus once described violence as "the Foundation's most valuable resource"; one that "must not be wasted, but applied with precision and without remorse".
He has a tattoo on his left arm: DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR. It is not intended to be ironic.
Bernard tries to intercede before disaster has a chance to bloom: "Well, they require human operators, so technically no, but —"
"I'm not discussing the need for human operators," Malthus interrupts. "Multiple drones are remote operated by a single intelligence. Is this accurate?"
Bernard is about to reply, but Tobias interrupts: "Correct."
Malthus turns. One eye meets two. "And would it be accurate to say that these 'neural nets' are not trained to cooperate with soldiers, but rather, supplant them entirely?"
Tobias smiles oh-so-thinly. "Also correct."
"This is not what we requested, Dr. Whyte. The proposal wasn't to replace soldiers. It was to provide an expendable, secondary force to support them."
"I'm aware of what the proposal was." Tobias steps forward. He is a half-foot shorter than Malthus, and less than half his age. This does not appear to daunt him.
Bernard swiftly steps forward to try and de-escalate things. "What Toby means is that —"
"I can speak for myself, you dullard." Tobias shoves Bernard aside. He takes another step toward Malthus, folding his arms over his chest.
"Commander, this proposal was malformed from the start. The very notion that a single unit's decisions matter is as antiquated today as plate-mail was in 1849. You don't need to supplement your troops. You need to automate them."
Malthus is quiet. Bernard is squirming.
Tobias continues:
"Do you know why the Foundation has been losing ground for three decades? It's not because the world is changing. We are. D-Class are treated like employees. Anomalies help draft their own containment procedures. We have an Ethics Committee — a fucking Ethics Committee! Everyone's opinion matters, now. Everyone gets a say. And do you know what it sounds like when everyone is speaking?"
Malthus waits.
"Noise," Tobias says. "It sounds like meaningless, dull, deafening noise."
One of the administrators behind Malthus clears his throat. "Well, sometimes, a soldier's agency can make a difference in regards to —"
Tobias rolls his eyes. "You want agency? Autonomy? You want soldiers with opinions? Fine." He turns to the control panel and taps in a command. "Here you go, buddy. Knock yourself out."
Even through 2 inches of plated glass, they still hear the screaming.
The corpse convulses. Its body violently arches back as it claws at its own face, gouging deep into eyes and skin. Layer by layer, it tears strips of flesh away.
"Jesus fuck!" Several administrators stumble back from the glass. Malthus is not among them. "What the hell did you —"
"I de-activated the slave module. It's now free from my control."
It falls to its knees. There's a muffled THWUNK as it slams its head into the concrete floor. Then again: THWUNK. And again: THWUNK. The screaming dwindles, replaced by a wet sucking sound.
THWUNK.
Its right eye pops out, hanging from the socket by a delicate pink thread.
THWUNK.
Fragments of teeth cleave through its cheeks.
THWUNK.
Bernard mops his face and begs whatever God is listening to grant both the corpse and him a swift, merciful death.
"Terminate it. Now." Malthus's tone is cold and flat. He has no intention of repeating himself.
Tobias hits a key. The charged explosive in the bug's mandible detonates; the head ruptures in a splatter of skull fragments, viscera, and rotting brain tissue. The glass is plastered with streaks of black and pink slime.
One administrator vomits. The others aren't fairing much better. Tobias turns to face them, smugly triumphant.
"Now, aren't you all glad we stopped to ask its opinion?"

"Ready?"
Charlie steps into the testing chamber and nods.
He's trimmed the burn-suit down. The heavy foam exterior is gone; in its place is a flexible quilted fabric with strategically positioned ceramic plating. It includes a neck brace, a half-face filtration system, and safety goggles. The cooling system and oxygen tank have both been removed, but it's still that same awful shade of dark teal green.
Seven dummies are mounted on spikes about fifteen yards down the hall. All but the last are dressed in fake tactical gear — the final one has a lab-coat and glasses (graciously donated by Dr. Allen Sendek). That's the researcher. One of the good guys. All the rest? Bad guys.
Dr. Samuel Valerio's voice crackles over the intercom: "Go."
"Rook. Sic 'em." Charlie points to Insurgent #1.
Something crackles behind him, then FWOOSHes past his left cheek. A line of burning light zigzags down the hall and spears through #1's chest. The dummy is swallowed in a bloom of fire. There's a sharp popping noise; the fire retracts.
The insurgent is now an unidentifiable heap of molten, smoldering slag.
"Knight. Sic 'em." Another crackle, another pop. Insurgent #2 is a bubbling puddle on the floor.
"Bishop. Sic 'em." Pop. Insurgent #3 vanishes. The air smells of burnt ozone and plastic.
"King, Pawnie. Sic 'em." Pah-pop! No more #4 or #5. Meanwhile, Researcher #7 hasn't even been singed.
Charlie closes his eyes, takes a long breath, and steadies himself. He then opens his eyes and points.
"Queen. Sic 'em."
Nothing.
"Queen. Sic 'em."
Still nothing.
"Queen! Sic —"
KA-FWOOM.
The lance of fire bolts down the hall and spears its target. The sheer force of impact produces a blast-wave that physically pushes Charlie backwards. He lifts his arm to shield himself, turning away from the bright swirling ball of flame.
It takes about five seconds for the smoke to clear. Once it does, he lowers his arm and surveys the damage.
Rook, Knight, Bishop, King, and Pawnie are curled up at the end of the hall, lounging in a heap of writhing fire. Queen sits in front of them, watching Charlie. Insurgent #6 stands, triumphant and untouched. There is a half-meter crater where Researcher #7 used to be.
Charlie scowls. "Queen —"
She charges and head-butts him in the chest. There's a physical weight to her; a presence that pushes him back. Tongues of fire lash out and lick at his arms and torso, as if looking for weak points. The tendrils do not approach his head or face.
He exhales and steps back, but doesn't turn away. He maintains eye contact — well, he looks where he imagines her eyes would be if she had them.
"Heel."
Queen sucks in a gulp of air and flashes. Instead of sinking down, she's rising up — looming over him as a giant column of flame. Charlie folds his arms over his chest and stands his ground.
"Queen, heel."
With one last angry snarl, she obeys. The column contracts; the heat pulls back. She becomes an sulking little blaze fluttering across the floor.
"Good. But no treat, Queen," he chastises her. "Not until you demonstrate some discipline."
Queen splutters. She burns so low she looks like she's on the verge of going out.
"We fed you twenty minutes ago. You're not starving."
She surges back up, but constrains herself to the size of a campfire.
"Good. Now." He points at Insurgent #6. "Sic 'em."
A thin ribbon of fire lashes out and strikes #6 in the face, cleaving right through it. There is now a grapefruit sized hole where the dummy's nose ought to be. Queen crackles and growls, impatient for her treat.
Charlie rubs at his own nose, hidden beneath the mask. "Close enough."

"To the gentleman who has literally tamed fire." Dr. Sendek holds up a can of diet soda.
Charlie rolls his eyes and swallows a mouthful of water from his bottle. "Tame means safe, and these things ain't safe. They're just trained." He still can't hide a little smile, though.
"Please. You've got them eating out of your hands." Despite his initial cynicism, Dr. Sendek came around in the second week. He was sold the instant Charlie started directing them to detonate remote targets. "At this rate, we'll be ready for a live demonstration in just a week."
"I don't know." Dr. Valerio frowns. "What if Queen pulls a stunt like that during the demonstration?"
"Oh, come off it. She was just being a little snot."
Both Charlie and Samuel raise their eyebrows. It's Charlie who says it first: "She?"
Dr. Sendek frowns and sips his drink. "Slip of the tongue. I meant 'it'."
"Good God," Dr. Valerio says, his face lighting up with a grin. "Are you starting to actually feel sentimental, Doctor?"
Allen Sendek mutters into his can. "So what if I am? Fine, yes. I had a dog too, once. It's hard not to feel a certain kinship with them."
"Well, who knows? They're so much better behaved, now. With time, I imagine we'll be able to get them to a point where you can even keep one as a pet."
Dr. Sendek laughs, shaking his head. "Can you imagine? Just a little flame curled up at the foot of your bed —"
"Are you both out of your fucking minds?"
The doctors stop speaking. Charlie has set his water bottle down; his eyebrows are crumpled together into a tight, focused knot. "There's nothing wrong with a little fondness, but don't forget what you're dealing with here."
Dr. Sendek frowns. "Oh, come on. They're just like dogs —"
"They are not fucking dogs!" The words come so fast and hard that both doctors pull back. Charlie sighs, then leans back in his chair.
"Look, sorry. But listen to me, alright? This is important. Really important. You both need to get this in your skulls, because if you don't? We're done. I'm not helping you, because you're just gonna get people killed. Got me?"
Sam frowns, but nods. Dr. Sendek looks like he wants to say something, but thinks better of it.
"These things are not your dog. They are not your pet. They are not your friend. They are wild animals. Yeah, I've gotten cozy with them. Yeah, I've trained them to do cute tricks. But when I walk in there, I'm still in the burn-suit. You know why?" Charlie points to Insurgent #6, propped up in the corner. The head is still hot to the touch. "Because one day, Queen might decide to put a hole through me instead of a dummy."
"But with extensive training, we can get them to a point where —"
"No, we can't!" Charlie cuts Sam off. "You can spend years training a panther, spend years working with her, bonding with her. And then, one day? You'll drop your guard and she'll bite through your throat. Because no matter how much you train her, she's still a panther." Charlie shakes his head.
"No matter how much we train her, Queen is still fire. She might like us, even play with us — but when push comes to shove? To her, we're all just soggy kindling."

"Hello, Doctor Whyte."
This is his personal secure line — not even the Foundation has it. He also doesn't recognize the voice. "Who is this?"
"A little birdie told me that they're shutting your project down."
"Suspended," Tobias responds automatically. "To be opened after a re-evaluation and re-assignment."
"Come, now. You're not that foolish, are you? We both know what 're-evaluation' really means."
"Is there a point to this?"
"The point is that you're not alone. Others have recognized the Foundation for what it has become: a safe-house for the weak and effete — a monument to mediocrity and moralizing sycophants. A rotting shell of its former glory, shambling after a fading star."
Tobias rolls his eyes. "So send me a brochure. I'm very busy."
"We'd like to offer you the chance to take your work to the next level. An opportunity to demonstrate just how brilliant you really are. To pursue your research free from interference by these dullards fixated upon the past. In short, we'd like to offer you a job."
"I'm not interes —"
"The very same job we offered Doctor Craggs, in fact."
There is a long stretch of silence.
Then:
"…I'm listening."
"Good. But before we invest in your brand, I'd like to request… let's call it a 'product demonstration'."

Next: Through the Fire and Flames


“It's only a tiny spell. I've done it a thousand times, and I only burned down a building the one time.”

Florence and Westbrook stand on the Duluth pier and look out at Lake Superior as they talk.

« Thunder's Fist, Solomon's Hand || HUB || Finding A Scalpel »

From
Julian Corwin (Commander, MTF Delta-3 "Solomon's Hand")

Subject
AAR Analysis, Operation MINNESOTA NICE

To
Gabriel Sands (Operations Director, Overwatch Command)

CC
O5-03 (Overseer, O5 Council); Simon Pietrykau (Director, Department of Analytics)

Directors & Overseer,
As requested, I am writing to notify you that my full after action report on Delta-3's first combat deployment has been completed and is now on file. I understand the reason for your interest in this matter, and so I have taken the liberty of including excerpts of what I believe are the most germane portions of my analysis.

11. Commander's Analysis
…
Agent Westbrook showed commendable initiative in his role as Acting Commander, rapidly organizing a defense against OBSKURA's surprise attack that allowed Solomon's Hand to launch a counter-assault. While there remains some question about his effectiveness as Agent Elsinger's handler, I have full confidence in his ability to perform this assignment. Based on his performance as Acting Commander of Kappa-1 and Delta-3, I strongly recommend his promotion to permanently replace me as Commander of Delta-3.
…
Agent Elsinger's abilities far exceed expectations; if Operative Gorgon is to be believed, she nearly triumphed over Maximilian Bauer in an individual occult duel, with minimal prior preparation. While her talents are still largely unrefined, the sheer amount of thaumaturgical power she possesses leaves me tempted to recommend SCP classification. Although she cannot singly bridge our capability gap with the Coalition, her recruitment as a special asset agent has done more to bring parity to our parastrike capabilities than any other individual effort. I am recommending a commendation to Agent McKenna for his role in identifying and recruiting her.
However, I remain concerned about her long-term fitness as a field agent. She displays a resistance to command authority that could make her a liability to the rest of Solomon's Hand, and potentially for the Foundation at large. Her abilities, while significant, are dangerously unstable — the site of her duel with Bauer is still experiencing significant backlash effects at the time of this writing, and will likely remain unsafe for higher lifeforms for several weeks. Moreover, the civilian casualties incurred during Operation MINNESOTA NICE have caused her noticeable distress; if this becomes a recurring problem, it will hamper her operational effectiveness, possibly to an unacceptable degree.
…

While the individual efficacy of Agent Elsinger remains in doubt, the success of Operation MINNESOTA NICE can be taken as proof of the utility of Delta-3, and the value of the Special Asset Task Force Program as a whole. If the Foundation is to remain a significant force for the preservation of normalcy, expansion of the SATF Program would seem to be a necessity.
Respectfully,

Julian Corwin
Commander (Administrative), MTF Delta-3 "Solomon's Hand"

December 25, 1985
Site-246
Tap tap tap.
Florence looked over to see Westbrook standing in the doorway to her room. He was holding a wrapped package under one arm.
"Hey, Firestarter," he said. "Mind if I come in?"
She shrugged, not a simple maneuver while lying in bed.
He came over and sat down at the end of the bed. "How are you doing?"
"Tired," she said.
"You did jump off a building," he pointed out. "Most people would be a bit more than tired after that."
She barked out a single, sharp laugh, which quickly became a sigh. "I keep thinking about what I could have done differently."
"What else could you have done? The Gorgon said Bauer had you on the ropes when she took the shot."
She shook her head. "No, I had him. Right before the end, I had him beat. His shield was failing. All I had to do was push."
"But you didn't."
"I didn't. He threatened to kill them, and I hesitated. Gave him an opening. It was a mistake."
"Perhaps." He hummed softly as he chose his next words. "Or maybe you could have pressed the attack and he still would have had time to give the order. You don't know. You can't know."
"I could have beaten him clean. I know I could. If I'd just been a little bit stronger, a little bit smarter. A little bit better."
"You did your best."
"It wasn't enough."
"Because a couple dozen people died through no real fault of your own? If you hadn't been there, the Coalition would have leveled the entire city and then bombed the ashes just to be safe. Your best saved the lives of forty-five thousand people."
"But if I'd been rested, more prepared, I might—"
"Florence." His voice was soft but his tone was firm. "You can't save everyone."
"You think I don't know that?"
"I think you're not used to playing the part of the hero. You've never had to face collateral damage as a consequence rather than a bonus. I don't know, I'm not a shrink. What I do know is that it's not healthy to dwell on what-ifs and might-have-beens."
She snorted. "Eyes on the future?"
"Eyes on the now. Let Analytics worry about the future."
She frowned. "You still haven't told me what their deal is."
"Let you know when I find out." That got another laugh out of her. "Here," he said, holding out the package. "I got you something."
She sat up to take it from him. "What for?"
He blinked. "Florence… it's Christmas."
She stared at him for a moment, then laughed. "God, I lost track… living at the bottom of a lake — you can't see the sun."
"I get it," he said. "Unfortunately, you never really get used to that."
She unwrapped the package to reveal a stack of books. "Fundamentals of Thaumaturgy by R. Holcomb," she read. "Aura Typology by N. Belmonte. And Postmodern Parahistory by L. Rowe."
"I know our thaumatology primers are crap, so I leaned on the Gorgon to get you some of ICSUT's reading list. Same books they use to teach Coalition battlemages."
"Whoa." She picked up the last book, then looked at him quizzically. "Does that include The Once And Future King?"
"Nah, that one's just for leisure. Thought you might enjoy it."
She smiled at him. "This is the nicest Christmas present anyone has ever given me."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Okay, it's the only Christmas present anyone has ever given me," she admitted. "But it still counts."
"Let me see if I can beat it then," he said. "I've got some surface leave coming up soon, what do you say we go over to Duluth to get some sun?" He paused. "Well, clouds."
"I'd like that," she said, then frowned. "God, now I feel terrible that I didn't get you anything."
"You can make it up to me next year," he said.
She hesitated, then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you, Cody."
He grinned. "Merry Christmas, Flo."

January 6, 1986
Duluth, Minnesota
"I've been thinking about the Timmins op." Westbrook took a sip from his coffee, hands clutched tightly around the cup for warmth.
They were standing at the end of the south pier, looking out at the iced-over lake and the lighthouse on the north pier. No one else was there to bother them — it was too cold. That was the point — no one could overhear their conversation.
Florence leaned against the concrete sidewall of the pier as she half-turned to look at him. She studied his expression silently, trying to gauge his mood.

"Didn't you tell me not to dwell on what-ifs?"
"This isn't a what-if so much as it's a how-did. As in, how did OBSKURA know?"
"It wouldn't take a genius to guess that we'd come after them. Depending on how fast they made the rendezvous with Bauer, setting up that ambush would have been trivial. I did similar stuff plenty of times for the Ghosts." She winced slightly at the memory.
He shook his head. "The ambush is only part of it. You heard the Gorgon, OBSKURA shouldn't have even known that Key existed."
Comprehension dawned on her face. "There's a mole."
"It would explain why the Coalition really came to us. They couldn't trust their own people."
"So what do we do?"
"Us? Nothing." He shrugged. "Let the gawkers clean their own house."
"But what about OBSKURA? Won't they make another move on the Keys?"
"Doubt it. They lost one of their last heavyweights, plus five combat cells. And all evidence suggests that this was a desperation move."
She tilted her head slightly. "How do you figure?"
"Sacrificing four units as a distraction is the kind of thing you only do when your back's against a wall. Plus there's the choice of target. The Sixth Key would be really useful for filling manpower shortages."
"I don't know, seems like there'd never be a bad time to brainwash an army of fanatics." She paused, then quickly added, "If that were the kind of thing you were going to do, at least."
"Oh, sure, but why now? They've been content to play terrorists for the last forty years. Why not make a move for the Key in the 50s?"
"Maybe they know something we don't. You know, since they have a mole."
"I'm thinking they know something even the Coalition doesn't." He let her mull over that in silence as he took a long sip of coffee. "Something like, say, where the Golem actually is."
"You think they took him out?"
"Are you kidding?" He chuckled and shook his head. "The Golem is God's perfect Nazi fighting machine, they'd be crazy to even try it. No, I think they know he's AWOL and saw an opportunity to grab the Key without his interference. I think they let the Coalition crack their comms to lure the Rat Catchers into a trap. And I think the only reason they didn't succeed is because you were there."
"You're just saying that to make me feel better about letting Bauer kill those civilians."
"Maybe." He glanced at her conspiratorially. "Is it working?"
She punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Just a little bit."
"Good." He shivered underneath his coat. "Christ, it's colder than Stalin's grave out here."
"Really? I hadn't noticed." She had a cup of coffee cradled in one hand, its contents untouched so far, and her jacket was unzipped. She should have been freezing.
"You're cheating."
She smiled. "Just a little."
He frowned. "Is that wise?"
"It's fine." She waved her free hand dismissively. "It's only a tiny spell. I've done it a thousand times, and I only burned down a building the one time."
The ice beside the pier gave off a sharp crack, drawing their attention. As they watched, a small circle, maybe a foot in diameter, began to melt. The water beneath it was boiling.
Westbrook narrowed his eyes and glanced at Florence.
"That normally doesn't happen, I swear."
"Uh huh."
She sighed, then released the trickle of power she had been holding onto, ending the spell. The backlash that had been driving the water to a boil dissipated, leaving it to freeze over again.
Florence shuddered violently as she suddenly felt the relentless grasp of winter that the spell had been holding back. She quickly zipped up her jacket and took a long sip of coffee.
She shivered again, then felt Westbrook put an arm around her. Acting on subconscious reflex, she leaned into him for warmth.
"Come on," he said. "Let's get inside before you freeze to death."

February 11, 1986
Site-246
She sat cross-legged on the floor of the thaumaturgy gym, surrounded by a complex array of candles. She had been like that for almost an hour now, occasionally glancing down at the copy of Fundamentals of Thaumaturgy which lay open on her lap.

The flame of a tallow candle is naturally sensitive to turbulence in the background aura, and can thus serve as a basic indicator for backlash. In this role, several such candles can be used in a simple exercise for the novice evocator seeking finer control of the forces at his disposal, which I will now outline below…

Florence had followed the instructions the book had provided, laying out the candles in the prescribed pattern. Then, she had meditated.
Once she felt confident that she had cleared her mind of all distractions, she slowly raised her left hand before her and willed forth a flame. As she did so, she tried to focus on the candle directly in front of her.
Fire sprang forth from the air above her fingers and gently licked at her palm. She ignored it, staring intently at her chosen candle. If she had done everything right, it would flare up briefly. More to the point, it would be the only one to do so.
Instead, every candle in the room flickered wildly. Some of them began to burn in different colors. A few others were extinguished.
She closed her eyes and released her hold on the spell.
"Dammit."

June 15, 1986
Minot, North Dakota
"Well?"
Florence gritted her teeth in frustration. "Yes, there's a Way here. I think."
She hadn't ever seen a Way before — not that she knew at least — but the hole it formed in the fabric of reality was unmistakable now that she knew what to look for. If she focused on Observing, she could actually see it leeching EVE from the area; it looked rather like the color fading from a photograph. Curious, she drew up a bit of her power and focused it towards the hole. The Way sucked it up greedily, swallowing the raw magic like water down a drain.
So. That was what ontic bleed looked like.
Of course, no one else could see it, which made her assertion rather hard to judge.
"You think?" Nathan Devlin repeated, a mocking note in his voice. She ignored him — reacting would just let him know that he had found something that aggravated her, and then he would keep returning to the topic.
"Shut up, Devlin," Westbrook said. "Let her work."
Devlin fell silent, stepping back to rejoin the rest of the task force. Florence nodded appreciatively towards Westbrook.
"Think you can open it?" He asked.
She licked her lips nervously. "Let's find out."
She thrust her hands forward, willing power into her fingertips, and grabbed the edges of the metaphysical hole in the universe. It sucked hungrily at her aura, trying to use her to fuel the world beyond. It felt like diving into a freezing lake, and it was all she could do not to scream at the shock.
"Open," she snarled. She willed more power down her arms, trying to force the Way, even as it greedily stole her energy.
A rift appeared in the air before them, a portal between worlds. Florence could feel it pushing back, resisting her will and her command. Her muscles burned with phantom exhaustion, and the ontic bleed had stolen the color from her sight. She pushed harder.
For a brief moment, she could see the world beyond the Way, the place their target had fled to. She let out a cry of triumph.
Then she lost her grip. She had pushed too hard, put too much power into the working. The Way slammed shut with a thundercrack, releasing a wave of backlash that manifested as a burst of physical force. Everyone in the room was knocked backwards off their feet.
"What happened?" Westbrook asked.
"I lost it." Florence picked herself up and scanned the air where the Way had been. "It's gone. Collapsed."
"Dammit," he muttered.
"Nice work, Firestarter," Devlin said. Westbrook glared at him.
"Not your fault, Flo," he said. "He's gotta pop back down to baseline eventually, we'll get him then."
She panted, too tired to argue. But in her heart, she knew Devlin was right.

July 5, 1986
Site-246
She was sitting in the thaumaturgy gym again, a row of small glass marbles placed before her. Shards of crystal were scattered across the floor all around the room.
She focused on the nearest marble, trying not to let the anger she felt bleed into her thoughts. Over the past few days, she had grown to hate the little crystal spheres.
She pointed at the marble, almost accusingly. "Up."
It wobbled for a moment, then flew across the floor of the gym as if shot from a cannon.
She sighed, gathered her will again, and pointed at the next one. "Up."
It did. At terminal velocity. It smashed into the ceiling and showered back down in pieces.
She gritted her teeth, took a breath, and tried not to smash the remaining marbles with her will. If she ever wanted to be able to open Ways, or do any other kind of subtle magic, she needed to be able to master the precise application of her power. Hence, the marbles.
She pointed at the next one in the line. "Up!"
It rose slowly into the air, wobbling like a drunkard, but it didn't go hurtling away. Florence smiled triumphantly.
That was a mistake. Her focus slipped, and the marble exploded into a thousand tiny shards.
With a frustrated shout, she summoned a blast of concussive force that crushed the surviving marbles into dust and dented the floor beneath. The wave of violent backlash reverberated through the water above her, with unfortunate consequences for any nearby fish.
"Sounds like you could use a break."
Florence glanced behind her to see Westbrook leaning against the door to the gym. She looked back at the pile of glass in front of her. Then back at Westbrook.
"What did you have in mind?"

November 28, 1986
Site 460
"Greenland kind of sucks," Florence said, ducking under a piece of burning debris. The containment breach alarm trilled uselessly in the background, blithefully informing everyone on-site of something they very well knew.
"Yeah, not how I wanted to spend my Thanksgiving weekend either," Westbrook replied. Something skittered past in the shadows, and he shot it reflexively. There was a pained squeak, then silence.
"What the hell are these things anyways? There's nothing about them in the skip file." Another one tried to scuttle beneath a nearby door, only to meet its end from the lance of fire she sent after it.
He stopped at the end of the hallway and craned his neck around the corner, checking the next corridor. "I think these are babies."
"So where's mom?"
He turned back to reply and his eyes widened in surprise. "Get down!"
He shoved Florence out of the way as a long, chitinous limb speared down the hallway. The tip of it caught the shoulder of his jumpsuit and threw him backwards. He hit the far wall and slumped to the ground.
Well, that answered that question.
Florence spun around to face the escaped skip. It was indescribably hideous, covered in black chitin and milky white eyes, with far too many legs and mouth-parts. And it was pissed.
It screeched when Florence made eye contact and started clawing its way towards her. It was too big to fit through the hallway, but it wasn't about to let little things like architecture stand in its way.
That was fine. It wasn't the only one who was pissed.
She should have tried to contain it, somehow. After all, that was what they had been deployed to do — perform recontainment. A hundred ways to do just that flashed through her mind — corral it with a cage of fire, blind it with a burst of light, stun it senseless with a single giant shock. She ignored them all.
Westbrook was hers, and this thing had hurt him. All she wanted now was to hurt it back.
"Big mistake, crabface," Florence said. She reached down into her well of power, gathered up her will, and then flicked her hand contemptuously at the creature.
A pillar of fire, twelve inches thick and solid as a steel beam, burst from her palm and barreled down the corridor. It hit the monster, and then kept going. It kept going as the thing screamed and thrashed in agony. It kept going after the thing had fallen into dead silence. It kept going until it had bored through the entirety of the thing and erupted out the other side of its disgusting corpse.
The breach alarm chirped once more, then sputtered out with a static shriek as a wave of backlash finally silenced it. Booms and pops echoed throughout the site as more backlash manifested, although the damage it could cause was marginal compared to what the skip had already inflicted. The noise — and the backlash — continued for almost a full minute. The universe was objecting strenuously to her violent assault on reality.
Florence let her hand drop to her side. It was quiet now, save for the occasional dripping of water and the crackle of fire from the skip's charred body.
So much for recontainment.
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Title: Project Hellhound
Images: N/A
Music: POKÉMON THEME (Jonathan Young & Jason Paige)

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SCPs

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[SCP-3034]
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A compact plum-purple Toyota Scion navigates the hidden back-roads of the Appalachians. Gravel pops under the tire treads as it settles into a parking spot at the foot of a hill.
Two men abandon the car's pleasant air-conditioned climate, stepping out into North Carolina's humid summer heat. They make their way along the winding path up to the single-story home hidden in the trees.
"This is a waste of our time." This is the driver, Allen Sendek. He retrieves his handkerchief as he walks, dabbing at his pale and balding head. He's an older man, paunchy and perpetually displeased; the sort of person who is forever vexxed by a universe that adamantly refuses to arrange its particles in a manner more convenient to him. "We ought to be working on the portable containment module."
Samuel Valerio is younger and leaner, with amber-gold skin and a head full of dark sable-black hair. Ever the optimist, he is undeterred by his fellow researcher's cynicism. "Behave, Allen."
Once they reach the patio, a dozen or more dogs start barking from inside. Sam reaches for the door. It opens before he can even knock.
A large and muscular black man in loose slacks and a blue-collar shirt pokes his head out. He has an angry burn scar that covers the left side of his face, narrowly missing his eye and snarling its way across where his left ear should be. Though still functional, the exterior ear itself has been melted down to a nub.
"You here for a dog?" he asks.
"Not exactly," Sam replies. "We've been told you have a knack for training dangerous animals."
The man looks them both over — from their expensive shoes to their clean, well-ironed clothes. He rolls his eyes. "Lemme guess. You bought a tiger and you just figured out it's not a pet, it's a fuckin' tiger."
Both researchers exchange looks, then focus on the man at the door. "Not, ah, precisely," Sam says. "We work for the Foundation. You came highly recommended by Mr. Wilson — said you're the man to talk about regarding, ah…"
"Anomalous predators," Allen says. "The kind that hunt humans."
The man's brows grind together like gears in a calculation engine chewing over a particularly difficult equation. Finally, Charlie Smoots steps out of the door, folds his arms over his chest, and nods.
"You fellas got a monster that needs house-breaking?"

Charlie never set out to be a 'Monster-Hunter' — it just kind of happened. After an IED took away most of his hearing, he left the Army to do rescue work with feral and traumatized dogs. When one of the dogs turned out to have tentacles, well… it wasn't like tentacles changed the fundamental principles of rehabilitation.
From there, things just got wilder and wilder. It wasn't long before he was looking into reports of a feuding 'dwayyo' and 'snallygaster' in Maryland while teaching a baby chupacabra to stop sucking its owner's cats dry. Eventually, the Foundation noticed his work. They picked him up as a tracker and handler for anomalous predators.
Now, a lot of anomalous predators can't be trained. Some are too smart; others aren't smart enough. Some aren't capable of bonding with humans — they can't perceive them as anything but food or a threat. But if it responds to conditioning, adheres to some form of socialization, and is capable of trust? Smoots can work with that.
Of course, training an anomalous predator doesn't make it tame — or even domesticated. Domestication takes hundreds (if not thousands) of years of selective breeding, and taming requires that on top of human interference during the formative stages of development. Smoots is the first to point out that a well-trained panther is still a goddamn panther, and a well-trained monster is still a goddamn monster.
But an anomalous predator that successfully bonds with its keeper is healthier, happier, and easier to contain. It's a win-win for everyone.
"What can you do with this?"
Dr. Samuel Valerio's voice is tense. It doesn't sound like the researcher is expecting much — and Charlie can see why. On the other side of the blast-proof glass is a twenty-foot wide room with thick calcium silicate panels. Water sprinklers along the ceiling run constantly, filling all but a small corner with a heavy mist.
In that one dry corner, six columns of human-sized flame 'sit'. They flutter and smolder, poised at the edge of the water-cloud.
"It's fire," Charlie says. "You want me to train… fire?"
"It's a sentient form of oxygenation and combustion." Dr. Allen Sendek corrects him. "And we want to know if it's even possible to train."
"Our goal is to see if they can provide tactical support for task forces."
"You want to make these things into weapons?" Charlie frowns.
"Not weapons, Mr. Smoots. Support," Dr. Valerio insists. "These things can move through a battlefield effortlessly. Provide surveillance, snuff out fires, create cover, and yes — even act as mobile artillery if the need arises. Think of them as… a combat K-9 unit."
"Are they intelligent? Do they form social bonds? Have some sort of hierarchy?"
"Kind of," Dr. Valerio says. "The bigger they burn, the more intelligent they get. Also, if they 'eat' enough material, they reproduce. Initially, these 'progeny' would attack their parents, but we discovered that —"
"We've been breeding them," Dr. Sendek says. There's a hint of pride in his voice. "Iteration after iteration, selecting them for more passive, less aggressive characteristics."
"Previous generations used to talk. But as they got calmer and calmer, well…"
"Are they still hostile to humans?"
"Extremely." Dr. Valerio frowns. "We've tried interacting with them in the burn-suit, but they attack anyone who gets even remotely close."
"Burn suit?"
"Over there." Dr. Valerio gestures to a bulky, insulated cover-all. It resembles a canine bite-suit, but with a full-head helmet and mask. It has its own internal cooling system and an air-supply. The fabric is a dark, dull seaweed green.
Charlie looks the suit over, pondering it. He then looks back to the six pillars of flame.
After about half a minute of reflection, he turns to Dr. Valerio: "Okay. What do they eat?"

The suit is heavy but flexible. Charlie can feel the coolant pumping through a complex lattice of arteries beneath the dark green padding. The internal O2 tank keeps the interior operating at a positive air-pressure, with a bell that rings if the supply drops below half.
All in all, this thing is a lot more comfortable than he expected. Though he's still pretty sure he won't be running a marathon in it.
The chamber's entrance is enclosed in a prefabricated modular containment chamber that incorporates a pneumatic air-lock. As he steps in, he hears the door behind him hiss shut. There's three loud beeps. He gives Dr. Valerio a thumbs up. The interior door then slides open, permitting little waves of water to roll in.
The six pillars of fire instantly respond. Although they're shapeless, Charlie gets the sense that they're facing him. The biggest one nudges up against the cloud of water. There's a sharp flash of steam accompanied with an explosive ssss; then, there's a high-pitched squeal. It resembles super-heated air escaping a narrow nozzle.
Charlie does his best to shield the bundle of papers he's holding from the mist, then taps his side of the glass. "Give me a path."
Three water sprinklers shut off. The flames are still boxed in, but Charlie now has an 'dry' path to the center of the room. Slowly, he strides forward.
The biggest flame leaps at him. Again, there's a flash of steam followed by a high-pitched squeal. The five smaller flames mimic the motion, producing smaller squeals.
Charlie waits for them to calm down. He then continues to the center of the room, bending forward to set the bundle of papers down.
When he stands up, the largest pillar lunges. An appendage as thick as Charlie's thigh whips out to slam into his chest. Steam and smoke issue forth from where the fireball hits, pushing him back. He feels the heat seeping through to his sternum.
Charlie recovers quickly, jogging backward. The pillar of flame that attacked him is smaller, now — but the others still huddle around it. Charlie grimaces in pain as he makes his way to the modular chamber, never turning his back to the flame.
The chamber door closes in front of him.

Now out of the suit, Charlie gulps down a bottle of water while watching through the glass. Dr. Sendek shuts down several more sprinklers, giving the flames a path to the massive stack of redacted documents in the center of the chamber.
The pillar that attacked him creeps forward. Once it's reached the stack, it extends tiny tongues of fire to lick at the stack's corners. The other five pillars then follow, joining it at the center. Together, they descend on it like a horde of hungry piranhas devouring a blood-soaked slab of beef.
"Well, that went well," Dr. Sendek says, scowling.
Charlie finishes the bottle of water and wipes the glistening perspiration from his forehead. "Better than I expected, anyway."
Dr. Sendek's scowl deepens. "How is this in any way good? They attacked you."
"One did. Others just followed." Charlie gestures with the empty bottle at the flame that attacked him. "Big one's the Bitch-in-Charge. Their Queenie."
"You think they can be trained?" Dr. Valerio asks.
"Maybe. Still not sure. But all in all? This looks good. They've got a clear social structure going on, here. See how she went out first? To make sure it was safe. Like the oldest sister checking both ways before leading her brothers and sisters across the road."
"Or maybe it was just hungry," Dr. Sendek counters.
Charlie shakes his head. "If that was it, she would have gobbled that stack up in one gulp. You saw how hard she hit me — she's got the juice for it. But all she did was nibble. Like she was showing the others that it's safe."
"They're not just submitting to her authority. She's looking out for them, protecting them. They're like a family. And if they're a family, that means they can form bonds with each other. And if they can form bonds with each other?" Charlie tosses the plastic bottle into the trash.
"That means there's a chance they can form one with a human."

The undertaking is not easy. Training any wild animal — particularly one that's long past its window of developmental socialization — is a herculean undertaking. It requires patience, compromise, and humility. Sometimes, you just gotta accept that a feral cat might never let you pet her, a wild dog might never let you leash him, and a living fireball might never stop trying to set you ablaze.
Fortunately, Charles Smoots is a persistent man. There are seven days in every week, and he spends six of them working to acclimate a family of sentient fire to the presence of human beings. It is a process measured in only the smallest of increments — but a measurable process, nevertheless.
After just a week, he's gotten them to stop attacking the glass when the sprinklers are off. After two, the smaller flames stop joining in on the attacks. After three, Queen won't attack when he first walks in. But even after a month of counter-conditioning, she still refuses to let him leave without taking her parting shot.
It's like she's fulfilling an obligation: he opens the door, walks in, sets down some delicious fuel, and she thwacks him with flames. Thanks for lunch; now here's that fireball I'm contractually required to hit you with. By week four, he's starting to wonder if it's performative.
At the end of week five, things get interesting:
Charlie's managed to teach them to self-regulate their consumption of oxygen through incremental changes in the sprinkler system. By now, the sprinklers are always off; the flames are permitted to grow so long as they don't pass any of the clear boundaries Charlie has set (if they do, the sprinklers come right back on). But when they feel threatened, they always return to the same familiar corner.
When Charlie enters the room with today's snack (a stack of kerosene-soaked logs — their favorite), all six are in the corner. They're still there when he sets the stack down. And when he stands back up —
Queen is missing.
Charlie turns — it's too late. She's already behind him, surging up in a wave of liquid fire. She crashes over his back, enveloping him in a sleeve of hungry, snarling flame.
He feels heat seep through the joints of the burn-suit. He feels — smells — the coolant boiling inside the lattice of internal arteries. The skin on his back blisters; the interior of his helmet fills up with scalding smoke. He sucks in a gulp of scorching air, burning his tongue and the back of his throat.
The O2 supply alarm shrieks a warning. Something roughly pushes Charlie back to into the vacuum chamber. He fumbles for the switch, just in time to see Queen standing at the center of the room.
She's holding the oxygen tank she tore out of his burn-suit with two burning tendrils. It's almost like she's just patiently waiting for him to go.
The pneumatic door slams down. There's a brief whoomf, then the chamber is engulfed in brilliant, scintillating light. By the time Charlie stumbles out, all six flames are happily gorging themselves on the stack he left — their bodies burning bright in the oxygen-enriched environment.

"I think we can safely call the past month a wash," Dr. Allen Sendek announces.
Charles Smoots sits in front of the glass, stripped down to just his slacks. He's holding an oxygen mask to his face while Dr. Valerio presses an ear against his chest, listening for signs of abnormal breathing. Inside the chamber, all six figures have returned to their corner. They've already burned through the extra oxygen.
"We need to start considering our alternative option," Dr. Sendek presses. "The containment module —"
Charlie lowers the mask. "What 'containment module'?"
Sam nudges Charlie's hand back up, returning the mask to its previous position. "Alternative approach. If we can't train them to behave —"
"— we don't. The anomalies can be sealed inside a super-heated gas-chamber which permits them to continue burning safely within a small, pressurized environment. Isolated from each other and the outside world. We've discovered that prolonged isolation puts them in a violent state — when released, they blindly attack everything in sight. After approximately a minute, they burn themselves out — become non-anomalous fire."
Charlie lowers the mask again. He brushes Sam's insistent hand away. "You're talking about turning them into bombs."
"And grenades. But, yes."
"You're taking the wrong lesson away from this."
Dr. Sendek lifts one eyebrow. "Precisely what lesson should I take?"
"She didn't kill me. She just took the oxygen tank."
"Well, yes, it didn't look like killing you was a priority. Neither was keeping you alive."
"That's the thing. Why did she just want the tank? Why not me?" Charlie shakes his head. "You saw the footage yourself. She pushed me into the chamber. She waited until the door closed before tearing the tank open."
"Mr. Smoots — far be it from me to tell you how to do your job," Dr. Valerio says. "But doesn't assigning sentiment to the actions of a wild animal strike you as dangerous?"
"Look, I'm not saying she gives a fuck about me. But she just had a choice between me or an oxygen tank. She went with the tank."
Dr. Sendek shrugs. "The human body is sixty percent water. Maybe it just wasn't interested in soggy meat."
"The human body is over a hundred thousand calories of stored energy. The pound of logs I brought in are, what — twenty five thousand? And I don't think being made of water has ever stopped these things from going after us before, has it?"
The two doctors exchange a look.
"That's what I thought," Charlie says. "And this is all besides the point. This whole time, we've been presuming that fuel is the only reward they recognize. But what if there's something even stronger than that? Fuel and extra oxygen, provided together?"
Again, the two doctors exchange a look.
"Let's take one more shot at this. Clean slate. Two weeks," he tells them. "Two weeks with oxygen-enhanced rewards. If we don't start seeing results, then we'll do it your way."
"Two weeks. And the results need to be drastic," Dr. Sendek agrees. "We aren't the only Foundation team developing an anomalous weapon system, Mr. Smoots."

Next: Dogs of War