"Line up!" Commander Enrique barked at the small band of men before him. They scattered to form two straight lines near the exit of the camp, mud from last night's rainfall staining their boots.
Huxley's skin bristled from the cold. Emma's grip on the handlebars of his wheelchair tightened to the point where even slight movements would cause the entire thing to shake. Commander Enrique pushed the gray patches of his hair beneath his old hat. It had a faded SCP Foundation patch on it that had been scratched off over the years. It fit the rest of his appearance: his barrel-shaped body, his old camouflaged uniform, and his combat boots that had holes around the edges.
"Do you all know why you're here?" he stepped forward, hands behind his back, chin held high. He still had that confidence that came with being a high-ranking member of the SCP Foundation.
None of the soldiers spoke.
"Great! That means that your captains did what I told them to. I would like to introduce you all to your new 'guests'. Don't ask me what they do, don't ask me why they're here because that should all be obvious to you. You will escort them through the encampment and make sure that they remain unharmed. Do you understand?" Nobody responded. "Great. Now, let's get going."
The soldiers were all dressed in wide-brimmed boonie hats that cast shadows over their eyes. When combined with their stoic glances, it made them look like robots. If Huxley paid attention though, he could see the cracks in their faces. There was fear there — a great, paralyzing fear. Nobody shifted their gaze even a centimeter. At Commander Enrique's words, the soldiers moved.
"Yes, sir!" they all chanted in unison. They began to march.
Huxley looked over his shoulder at the settlement, which was set firmly inside of the woods. Deep in the trees, in-between the branches, were walls and walls made of bone and ligaments that wove through the earth like roots and spawned fleshy houses that seemed to lean and sway the way that people do. Temples made from blackened wood peeked over the top of the walls. Dirt pathways connected the settlement to an outcrop of farmland near a small river. Bright pink and red crops grew there.
There were things in the farm: a boy and a woman. They were collecting various odd-shaped plants in handbaskets. The boy was sitting down, and Huxley noticed that a large pair of furred antler horns were protruding out of its head. Every time he so much as tilted his head, his horns would cause him to fall over. He would turn and his neck would buckle from the weight. Huxley watched him cry from the pain.
The woman only payed attention to the boy when she pried his hands off of his face to leave. She picked him up in one arm, hugging him close. As she saw the soldiers in the camp, she whispered something into his ear. Something in the wind must have carried Huxley's presence to her, because she almost instantly locked eyes with him.
She narrowed her gaze until her eyes were two white slits. She smothered the boy into her breast, preventing him from looking towards the soldiers. It only took her a few seconds to walk back to the settlement. When she encountered a wall, it sank into the ground like water, almost like it recognized her face. The wall reappeared once they were inside.
"Let's go!"
Commander Enrique's harsh voice broke Huxley out of his daydream. He quickly pushed himself to follow the soldiers. He didn't feel Emma's grip behind him, and looked behind him to see her inside of her own trance. It wouldn't be long before she too broke out and joined him.
The pounding of the soldiers' boots against the mud sounded like a rotten war drum.

"The leaders won't let you inside."
"Well, can you ask them again?"
"That would be disrespectful."
Emma put her hand on her mouth to hide her groan. She had insisted on being the one that spoke to the subtheriums. There was a thought in the back of Huxley's mind that told him to fight her on that point, but it didn't have time to fully develop before they had reached the walls.
It was too cold to feel anything. Huxley could barely raise his head to look at the boy that was blocking their entry. He looked as tall and thin as the trees. His face was covered by strands of long black hair that had leaves and rocks caught in it. He looked like a teenager, but with Sarkics one could never tell. The only thing covering him was a white linen robe that was adorned with flowing golden lines and golden spiral symbols on the shoulders and chest.
Emma looked up, a new idea in her head. "How do you know what the leaders want if you can't speak to them?"
"There are some things we just know around here." The boy sat down and wrapped his arms around his legs.
Emma started to pace back and forth as she slowly lost her leverage in the conversation. Huxley had grown colder to the point where he could barely turn his head, and whenever he did, he could only look at the fleshy walls. There was an aura of danger about them, like they were staring back at him. He wondered about the other interviewers that had tried and failed to convince the Sarkics to leave.
Where were their bodies?
"How many of us would your leaders accept?" Huxley asked. Emma looked at him with a suspicious gaze.
The boy threw his head around to Huxley, but his attention was elsewhere. He was looking at the leaves and the sticks and the roots that were visible above the ground. He kept that sight in his gaze for too long. For some reason, he had gotten the idea that if he stayed in that position long enough, everybody would forget that he had spoken.
"Only those that truly wish to speak to us," the boy said. "You and the woman."
There was a tiny, almost imperceptible connection that Huxley had with the boy in that moment. He knew that that thing did not want to talk with him. Still, he replied, "Okay."
"Woah, woah, woah," Emma interrupted. "We can't go in there alone with you. We need some kind of protection."
The boy looked at her. "The leaders will protect you."
"How will they do that?"
"Our minds are connected to the flesh and the earth." The boy pointed a finger to his head. "They shield us from corrupting influences. If one wishes you harm, the leaders can erase that thought or compel them to stop. The leaders have spoken to me, and they wish for your safety."
Huxley turned to the soldiers. "That sounds fine. You all can leave."
The group was silent for a good dozen seconds. Eventually, an older man — one who had faced too many clashes with death to care about reputation — spoke. "We can't," he said. "Big changes to the plan have to be cleared by Commander Enrique."
"I'm not going to wait for your decision," the boy said. "Decide now or leave."
"Wait." Huxley wheeled himself to Emma, and lowered his voice to a whine. "Commander Enrique isn't here. They'll listen to you. This is our only way to speak to them peacefully."
The older man stepped forward. "It's a perfect opportunity for you two to get kidnapped, that's what it is."
"I wasn't talking to you," Huxley said. He whipped his head back to Emma. "Okay, worst case scenario: we both get captured and killed. That's just two people. But if we try to raid the base, more people are going to die. More of our people are going to die. We're here to help people, Emma."
Emma looked at Huxley, then the old man. Goosebumps ran down Huxley's neck and back as he felt another pang of psychic connection. He could see through her skin and knew what she wanted to say. Huxley knew almost every word that came out of her mouth.
"We'll leave at sundown," she said. "1700 hours. If we don't leave by then, I give you permission to come after us."
Emma waved at the soldiers and, a few seconds later, they turned and left. There wasn't a rhythm to their steps anymore. They just trudged away, disappointed. A few of them started whispering to each other, unsure of what had even happened and why. When they were far enough away that all Huxley could see was the green of their uniforms, the wall opened. Bones snapped and veins the size of his wrists tumbled to the ground like vines.
Huxley let Emma push him forward, too scared to refuse. The two pushed through the shallow red puddles and into the settlement. Once he had entered, Huxley has an instinctual urge to turn around and leave. Every house and every wall was buried beneath waves of red tendrils. They spilled through open holes and windows. The place was infested, to the point where the tendrils were the only thing keeping some of the buildings stable.
The air seemed to sense Huxley hesitance, and grew more hostile as a result. The settlement looked completely barren. They must be afraid, Huxley thought as Emma slowly wheeled him forward, they had to be. The only thing the tendrils seemed to be afraid of was the sun. Huxley watched one of the bloody pythons creep its way off of the roof of a small cottage and into a nearby shadow, where a pile of other slightly shriveled tendrils rested.
But despite the heat, none hid in the shadow of the temples.
There were three. They were placed in a triangle formation, equidistant from one another and all facing the center of the settlement. They were made of black wood that gave off a thick charcoal smell that was mixed with something that made Huxley's stomach uneasy.
There was a low groan as the doors to the temple furthest away swung open. Huxley's eyes couldn't detect any movement, but he knew something was there. Emma's grip tightened. As Huxley peered closer, he saw something looking back at him. Eyes. A pair of golden orbs appeared, then dark purple stalks that connected them to the body of a monstrous, inhuman thing.
Its body was a stitched-together mess of human shapes. Its torso was tough and rippled like an ancient Greek stature, its head a bundle of tendrils that writhed like it was constantly in pain, its thick legs a girthy pair of cow hooves. A regal robe that had the same pattern as the boy's was wrapped tightly around its frame. The thing had to crouch to make it through the temple's massive doorway, and once it was able to expand to its full size, it towered over the two interviewers.
The thing spoke and Huxley could hear it inside of his mind. He dug his nails into his palm to keep from groaning in pain. Its words were like a bloody tongue wriggling down his ears.
It asked, "What is your purpose here?"
Huxley stared down the beast, even though every thought in his head was telling him not to look at it. Before he could respond, however, Emma stepped forward. "We want to help you, and all of the people here. We… To be completely honest, we think of you as diseased. We know there are people here that know about the Pulse and don't want to be anomalous anymore. We are here to take those that wish to be treated."
Huxley started to sweat. Brutal honesty? It wasn't a terrible first choice, but for a group of people that was so unworldly, so sick of looking at white lab coats, it was risky. Risk was the last thing that Huxley wanted right now.
The thing put up a hand. The thoughts in Huxley's head froze. It said, "I respect your… openness, but we do not and have not asked for openness. We have asked for respect. You treat us like we don't know how to think for ourselves. You two are so hateful, I can see it in your hearts. Leave us. Nobody here is low enough to subject themselves to your 'treatment'."
Fuck. Huxley wanted to try a new approach, but it was too late. They had to commit to their attack now. "Does nobody suffer here?" Huxley blurted out. The entity took a half-step backward, a promising sign. "Do you not have those in pain? Those that resent you? Those that want to leave?"
"You heard that in one of your manuals, didn't you? We are nothing like that. You know nothing about how we really live."
"I know you all treat each other like family." Huxley pushed himself forward. "And families help each other, even if they don't agree with them, don't they? You speak like you have all of these people under your control."
The thing put up a hand. "Your words disgust me. I forfeited my individuality long ago, not so I could control my family, but so I could love them. I know about the SCP Foundation. You only want to murder them. Who told you that we had to be cured? Who told you that that was right?"
"That's not what I'm saying—"
"Don't dodge my question. I know you can answer them." Now the thing took a step forward, its head tendrils wrenched up, making it look even larger. "Unless you're not here to ask questions?"
Huxley's chest was heaving. He looked down and noticed that he was breathing heavily. No, he was gasping for air. His heart was drumming in his chest. The thing crossed its arms, waiting for a response. Huxley had to speak now. He had to say something, anything. The world began to tilt. Deep breaths, he repeated, deep breaths.
Huxley raised his head high as he grasped for the right words. "I want to help you. All that I've learned during my career has told me that it's… it's better for subtheriums to become human. I've spoken to them before and after the process and it's like a miracle the way their lives change. I remember this man, he hadn't smiled for years, and when he was finished with the treatment I saw the look on his face and it was so… magical. Regardless of what's in the manuals, I know there are people here that are in pain. Is it wrong for me to try and help them?"
The thing's tendrils rose and fell as it thought. Huxley kept his eyes trained on them, never letting up on the pressure, never giving it an inch to try and formulate a comeback. His body ached the whole time as it resisted its natural urge to turn away. Finally, after what felt like an hour of waiting, the thing responded.
"What do you plan to do with them? To those that are in pain?"
Huxley's response was calm, pre-rehearsed. "Nothing right now. We're just here to talk."
The thing nodded. There was a crack in its armor, one that it clearly didn't want. "Your meetings shall last one half-hour unless the family wishes to speak to you for longer. After that, you shall leave without another word." Then it turned and disappeared into the darkness of the temple.
Huxley didn't call out after it.

Emma's back was hunched uncomfortably as she sat on a wooden pew, her arms crossed, as a teenage girl looked her up and down.
She and Huxley had been led into separate temples by a pair of headless teenagers. Huxley almost seemed happy to go with them. This place had thrown so much dust into his head that she wasn't sure if he could even think for himself. Emma rubbed her own forehead. She shouldn't be blaming him. She was the one that had gotten them into this situation. Was it? Huxley was the one that had proposed the idea, she had simply given the order. Still, if they got out of here, she would be the one getting slapped on the wrist.
Circular patterns covered every wall of the church. Red roots were growing through the ceiling and floor. She rubbed her arms, the ashy black pews sapping away her heat. They were all facing a large altar at the far end of the room. It was frighteningly different from the rest of the room, like it wasn't meant to be there. It was made out of thick stone that formed a table similar in shape to a coffin. There was a latch on one side where it could be opened, although from Emma's position she wouldn't be able to see what was inside. The whole thing was drenched in black stains.
Her imagination started to work out what could be inside. She soon found herself picturing her own broken mangled body, trapped as she slowly suffocated. Something told her that that wasn't an uncommon thing to happen. Emma considered. The previous interviewers had never left the settlement.
The teenager made an odd annoyed noise from its throat. Emma realized that the subtherium she was talking to still acted exactly like a human being, and it eased her mind. They don't sacrifice people here, not in this sect. She remembered reading that in the manuals she was given.
"What's your name?" The teenager asked.
Something clicked inside Emma and she knew what to say. "I am Emma Sandaran. I'm an interviewer from—"
"The Sandaran?" It hissed. That fully confirmed that it was human. Young people were animals: they had to be the first ones to talk, they had to be the ones to lead the conversation. Anything else was an attempt at manipulation.
"No. I'm not that Sandaran. That Sandaran died a long time ago."
"Oh." The slight grin on the teenager's face faded away. One landmine was defused.
"Do you know about Rachael Sandaran?"
"I know enough." It pulled away and groaned. That was the one thing Emma liked about young people: they always conceded too early. "She killed a lot of people. People that looked like me. But we're not really considered people, are we?"
Emma waited a moment. "Some people may think that way."
"A lot of people think that way. You probably think that way, don't you?"
"I'm not…" Emma was quiet as her brain switched to another line of questioning. "I'm not entirely sure, to be honest with you. I am a part of the SCP Foundation, but I am also my own person. I'm just here to talk with you, so my opinion doesn't really matter, heh."
The teenager didn't reply. Seconds, then minutes passed. It didn't move, didn't shift her gaze, but it refused to speak. Why wasn't it saying anything? Why wasn't Emma taking this opportunity to ask the teenager her name? Her chances were slipping away by the second.
The teenager groaned. "Can you ask me something already? That's how conversations work. I thought you people were good at that."
"Interviewing is more complicated than that." Emma let her hands drift to her knees. "I'm from Site-53. That's in New York, although I moved around a lot as a kid."
"I was thinking more about this treatment thing. No offense, but I don't really care about the rest of that stuff. You're just another labcoat. There'll be more after you." The teenager's voice lowered to a morose tone. "I was born here. I was born on that altar over there, that's why it's covered in all of that… yucky stuff. Everybody is born there."
"Oh." Emma laughed. It was a nervous laugh, but years of reflex training transformed it into an innocent one.
"Is your laugh always like that?" the teenager said.
"Always like what?"
"It's annoying and fake." The teenager crossed its arms, but its eyes weren't confrontational. It wasn't an accusation, just a question. Emma didn't know what expression to wear on her face.
"Not a lot of people tell me that." Emma tried to urge the teenager to move to a different topic.
Instead, the teenager hopped over the pew into Emma's row. "Why don't people tell you that? It's really, really obvious." They were still just questions. There were hints of something underneath, however. Emma knew that she had to be missing something.
"Hey, can I ask you a question?" Emma slid closer, keeping eye contact.
"That's your job, isn't it?" That was better. Sarcasm meant anger, and Emma could handle anger. "I don't want to leave, in case that was what you were going to ask. I just wanted to see what you people were like."
Emma kept her eyes kind. "That's my job, yes. You're pretty smart. That subtherium that I spoke to earlier, the one that had tentacles for a head, they said something about a family. Is that your family?"
"No." The teenager looked away, then turned to give more emphasis. "Well, everyone here is technically part of one family. We're a part of the same bloodline. I'm too young to see thoughts right now, but I know my little brother's a lot better at it. I don't know, I'm probably just too stupid to do it."
"Hey." Emma leaned forward, but kept herself from putting an arm on the teenager's shoulder. "Don't call yourself that. I'm sure you'll get good at… seeing thoughts? Can you do that?"
"Yeah. I already told you, we're a family. We share blood, thoughts, feelings, normal stuff like that. I'm not good at it, though." The teenager's face lightened. "Oh! I think there's someone by the river. I can see him, kind of. He's talking to my brother. Is he the one in the wheelchair with the messed up face?"
"Him? His name's Huxley. He's my partner."
"Oh. I didn't know you were allowed to, uh, date people where you're from."
"What? No, no, we don't do that. That would be extremely unprofessional."
"Then who is he?"
There was a comfortable silence.
"Nobody important."

"She's my partner."
Cool air washed over Huxley's face. It did little overpower the heat, but it at least made an attempt. That was all that Huxley wanted right now. Where Huxley lived, the sun was almost always the only thing in the sky. The clouds, the wind, all of it was too scared to appear. There was never a day where, at least for a few hours, the sun wouldn't sit there right above him and drain the sky clean of all of its blues, replacing them with pure white.
"What's a partner?"
Huxley looked down to his side at the small boy with two large hooves sticking out of his head. He was playing with a few blades of grass, pinching each one tight so that the wind wouldn't snatch it from his fingers. The longer that Huxley looked at him, the more that he became sure that the boy was too small for his horns. It wasn't meant to be. The only way that he could move without falling over was by swiveling his head, and even then he had a good chance of turning too far and his head and neck out awkwardly while letting out a loud grunt of pain.
"It's someone that you work with," Huxley said. "Like a teacher. You have some of those, right?"
"Yeah." The boy spoke like he didn't want to agree. It created a guilty weight in Huxley's throat that was difficult to swallow. "So they tell you what to do and things like that? That's what the teachers here do."
"Sometimes. It's like a friend." Huxley returned his gaze to the inept river in front of him. He had positioned his wheelchair right on the edge so that the water droplets would jump up and stain his shoes.
"What's the difference?"
"Well, with friends, you can do things with them. You find some common interests to latch on to and then you talk and you find some more. Eventually, you don't have to do things with them to have fun. That's the magic of it all, they make anything fun. You can even have fun doing boring things with them. I've been doing a lot of paperwork recently, that's a boring thing."
"But if you're doing it with friends, shouldn't it be a fun thing?"
Huxley looked away. He looked to the trees, the ones that hadn't been infected by the Sarkics yet. "Yeah. It's fun." The trees were all short and malnourished like standing corpses.
The boy let the blades of grass go and they floated off into the stream.
He said, "Are we friends? You say that you have fun doings things with your friends. Is talking to me one of those things?"
Huxley didn't return the boy's glance. "I guess we would." He wanted a smile on his face, but none came.
The boy sneered. "That's dumb. You're dumb."
"What?" Huxley said in an over dramatic tone, hoping that the boy was lying. He was proven correct with one look at his face. "Oh, how could you say such a thing? I thought we were getting somewhere here! Now what am I going to tell my boss now?"
The boy laughed so loud he had to hold onto his horns. "Shut up!"
"He'll be so shocked! He'll say 'Huxley, how could you have been outsmarted by a nine-year-old?' then he'll keel over and die from a heart attack."
"What's a heart attack?" The boy's laughter died, being replaced by pure curiosity.
"It's nothing you have to worry about," Huxley replied.
"Oh. Okay." The boy began to pick at another patch of grass. "I'll have to leave soon."
"Do you have something else going on?"
"No. My dad's just thinking about deer. He thinks that when he wants me to come home."
No, not yet. Huxley propped his arm on his armrest, trying to force any kind of eye contact. "What is that like, seeing other peoples' thoughts?"
"Um… Do you see the river? Imagine very tiny rivers like that in the air. My father calls them ghost branches because they look like trees branches that move through everything, but they're not clear enough to be ghosts. I can tell. They're more like glass rivers. If I sit down and concentrate for a while, I can see things floating to me, and if they get close enough, I can reach up and grab them." The boy budged his horns to allow himself a more comfortable position.
Huxley finally rounded up the courage to look the boy in the eyes. They were cold and distant, like they were always looking around him towards something more interesting in the distance. Sometimes, the boy would actually shift his gaze towards a large tree or a mountain or just to somewhere other than the scarring and stretched skin on Huxley's forehead. He let the boy do it one more time, and studied the way that his face almost detached as he became lost in the world around him.
He soon realized, though, that he had a job to do.
"Do you enjoy doing that? Do you like seeing how other people think all the time?" he asked.
"Yeah." The boy looked down for a moment. "Well… sometimes, yes. I like seeing people when they're thinking about good things. But on bad days, I see a lot of bad things in the rivers. When I try to grab on to one of them, they always cut me, even when they're not all that sharp. Then for a little bit, all I can see is this really weird color. I think it's blood."
Huxley let the boy consider for a little longer. "But overall, do you enjoy it?" The boy nodded. "Hmm. Could I ask you something?"
"Yes?"
"If you enjoy it so much, then why do you want to leave?"

"That's a dumb question."
"What do you mean?" Emma asked. "You said you wanted to leave the settlement, didn't you? If you didn't want to leave, then why did you—"
"Can you, like, shut up for a second. Sorry, just please be quiet." The teenager wiped her eyes and forehead. "I need to… say this in the right way."
"Alright," Emma said.
Over the course of their brief conversation, Emma had slowly moved across the church. Whenever the teenager stood, she stood; whenever the teenager changed pews, she followed. No matter what topic the teenager jumped to, Emma was ready to guide her to whatever conclusion she wanted. Dozens of potential questions were prepared in advance. The machine in her mind never stopped and never made a mistake.
Emma propped her legs up on the pew in front of her. She watched the spirals on the ceiling as the teenager tried to work up the courage to speak. More questions entered her mind. Who carved those spirals? Who maintained them? They couldn't have shown up out of nowhere, so it was intentional. They must have had a specific meaning. The circle of life? The inevitability of death? Emma gained an overwhelming desire to know, but she knew that she most likely wouldn't have the chance to ask.
She could almost see the words in her mind: 'REAFFIRM THE GOAL'. It was a mission statement, one that was always written at the top of every briefing she had been given since the day she became an interviewer. Those words, those big blotchy letters, dismantled the questions in her head. They weren't important anymore. What was important was the questions that she was supposed to be asked.
"Hey?" the teenager murmured.
"Yes?" Emma replied.
"What does your organization call me?"
"What?" The teenager was sitting two pews ahead now, but Emma hadn't noticed her move.
"I asked what your organization calls me. What do they call people like me?"
Emma's first reaction was to stand and sit by the teenager, but her body hesitated. She wasn't sure whether to immediately respond or wait for something better to come to mind. The machine in her head waited for orders that she knew would never come. No, no, she was losing the conversation now. She had to say something to get it back on track.
"Subtheriums. We call you subtheriums." No, not that upfront. "Although, that's a bit too clinical, y'know? I don't call your people that when I talk to them. I just call them people. You can ask me to call you something else if you want, because I know not everyone likes to be called that." Emma nervously giggled into her hand. The teenager didn't reciprocate.
"What does that word mean?" It turned. Emma could now truly see how dark its eyes were. They were the deepest, darkest shade of brown like dried blood. They swallowed the light instead of reflecting it.
"It means people like you." Emma wanted to pull back, but she forced herself still. She could never admit that she was losing. No, she wasn't losing at all. She couldn't be.
"People like me? What, anomalies? SCPs?"
"You know nobody calls you that any—"
"So what? Is 'entities' any better? Threat entities? They all mean the same thing. Stop trying to sugarcoat how you see us."
"Subtherium is different." Emma found her hand clutching at her chest. Even though she had never remembered doing that before, it happened instantly like she had been practicing it for days.
"How? How is it any different? You use it the same way, you say it the same way. I know you people, it doesn't matter what name you give us, you all treat us the same. You're such a… what? Why are you smiling?"
"I'm not—"
Emma felt her face. Her lips had formed into a wide arched that curled inhumanly at the ends. She felt white stones in her mouth. In the reflection in the teenager's eyes, Emma could see every detail of her face: her spiraling brown hair, her jet black eyes, her flushed cheeks and almost-too-pale skin. It was like looking at a doll's face; a doll she had no control over, a doll that wasn't hers.
She came back to herself, her hand flying to her mouth. "I'm not smiling."
The teenager just stood and walked away, a disaffected look in its eyes. Emma tried to call out to it, but her lips refused to let go of her smile.
"You were. You absolutely were…" The teenager stomped its way to the end of the pews. "Why are you hiding things? I know what you're saying, you know what you're saying. What's the point in trying to do any of this? It's stupid. You're stupid."
"We're getting off-topics." Emma wrenched the edges of her mouth back down. "I thought we were talking about, uh, whether you wanted treatment—"
"Treatment? The hell do you mean 'treatment'? This isn't a fucking disease. This is who I am, who we are," the teenager jabbed at Emma.
The interviewer reared back and, for the first time in a million years, felt scared. She felt herself leaning over a ledge, in that small space between standing on solid ground and plummeting to her death. She didn't know how this could have happened. How could she have let everything fall apart? She replayed the scene in her head, and tried to piece together what had went wrong.
Everything, she soon discovered. Everything had gone wrong.
From the moment she and Huxley had entered the settlement, they had lost the conversation. They had lost the entire mission. These people didn't want her help, they just wanted to talk forever. As long as it seemed liked they were negotiating, the SCP Foundation couldn't do anything. The teenager had seen through Emma's lies. She wasn't there just to talk, she was there to convince. For some strange reason, that terrified her more than the monster that was standing right in front of her.
Her mind retreated. Her heart said that her conclusion was right, but she still fought it. It couldn't be true. She tried to slot more explanations into places, hundreds of them, but none fit. There were so many other interviewers that would have been better suited for this mission. Why would they pick some rude disfigured man to interview one of the last remaining remnants of the subtherium race? Why would they pick the daughter of the woman that tried to kill them all?
This wasn't an interview. It wasn't even a conversation. It was a game to see how far each participant would go to make it seem like they were willing to change their minds. Emma didn't lose because she offended the teenager, she lost because she got so caught up in the illusion that she thought that anything she was doing had an impact. She was the idiot. She was the one that didn't get the joke.
"I'm… I don't…" she stuttered. She could hear the teenager laughing under her breath.
Emma bit her lip to stop herself from crying at the realization. The four walls of her vision grew smaller. She heard wind rushing past her ears and drums banging in her head. She tightened her fists to try and regain some amount of control over the world, but things kept falling apart. Color faded, ground dissolved into air, and she felt sand falling onto her shoulders.
She must answer, but she didn't. Instead, Emma fell. She fell and fell and her vision kept getting smaller and smaller until it was just a speck in the sky. Wind was now furiously scrambling past her. When she looked down, she saw a void of black. Tiny specks of white sand floated in the air. In the distance, she heard the sound of chains. Was this what her mind was?
Emma tried to swim away, but her arms were too weak to move. Her brain decided that she must sink, so that was what she was going to do until she couldn't anymore. The blackness embraced her as she descended. Soon, the wind stopped and everything else but the black left.
It was cold. Emma couldn't feel herself moving, she couldn't see herself. Her thoughts were trapped behind a thick wall that didn't allow her inside. There was nothing here, and yet it was suffocating. This was what it was like to be dead, she decided. This was her dying. That was the only possible explanation.
There was a disturbance. Something was wrong. There was someone else in the darkness.
It was a figure. It didn't possess any recognizable shapes, it gave off no heat, it barely even existed — but it was there. Emma crawled on her hands into the black, slowly, painfully dragging herself over to it. She couldn't tell how long it took, but eventually she came face-to-face with the thing.
It looked something like a faceless mannequin now. The figure had whittled itself into something that Emma could understand. Its limbs formed joints and its face deepened, becoming more detailed by the second. Emma was watching it become human. Soon, it would grow hands and eyes and a mind. Soon it would be able to touch her.
The urge to scream rattled through her. Her face contorted into a primal expression as she reached out and tried to wrap her fingers around the thing's neck. It wasn't human. It wasn't a living thing. It was a parasite that was trying to create its own perverted sense of humanity. She wanted to wretched it back and forth, to break it into pieces and crush it into white sand.
Tears clouded her eyes as she realized that she couldn't, though. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't kill that disgusting monster in her head. She could do nothing but watch as a robe sprouted out of its neck and tumbled down to cover its naked body. That robe then turned bleach white and morphed into a lab coat that looked exactly like Emma's. As she examined the figure, she saw that it had every one of her wrinkles, every one of her small imperfections that made her Emma. It stole everything from her.
She reared back. The figure was looking at her now. No, it was staring at her the same way that one would stare at an intruder. Was that what Emma was, an intruder? She owned her own mind, she could do whatever she wanted with it. Even if it acted on its own every once in a while, it was still hers. Yes, she reassured herself, it was hers. This thing, this monster had the goddamn audacity to try and pry into her space and claim that Emma was the intruder.
She reached out again, hoping that by some miracle her muscles had regained their strength. Again she failed to kill it. It was alive now. It was wearing her coat, her flesh, her makeup. She couldn't tell a difference between her and the thing anymore. That meant that nobody else could either, and she felt fear ripping through her stomach. Was there even a difference?
Emma realized that it didn't matter. This thing wouldn't be alive long enough for her to have to answer that question. Her tears dried up and a smile returned to her face.
The eyes — it was the eyes. She looked again at the figure's face and saw that its eyes had no life in them. The rest of the thing's face was perfect, but that one detail gave away the whole façade. It proved that it wasn't human. Nobody could ever think of it as such. All it could be, and all that it was, was an imposter. Emma's smile grew wider.
She was cackling like a madman. Even when her lungs started to hurt, she laughed. Even when the figure reared back and roared at her, she laughed. Even as her body became entangled by dozens of invisible wires tore into her skin that began to lift her up to the black sky, she laughed. Her stomach recoiled violently and her eyes watered in pain, but it didn't matter. She had won.
Emma continued to rise as the figure remained stuck down there. It tried to reach up to her, screaming out disconnected words that didn't form anything meaningful. Regardless of its efforts, it would stay down there, alone at the bottom of the darkness inside her mind.
Emma raised her head, presenting a blank expression to the teenager. "Can I ask you a question?" she asked. No more than five seconds could have passed, but Emma's entire composure had shifted. The teenager recoiled slightly as if she knew what had happened.
"Um. Yeah, I guess." There were still traces of confidence in her voice. Emma took a morbid pleasure in stomping them out.
"Do you hate me?"
"What? No. I mean, I don't…"
"You know, this game you're trying to play right now won't help you. This idea that we're just some group of government drones that do whatever some dipshit from upper management tells us won't help you feel better about yourself. I don't care about your excuses. You want help. And do you know who will help you? Me. I will help you."
"No! I just—"
"Let me tell you something right now. It's important, so you should be listening." Emma stood and cast a long shadow on the girl below. "I've been working with the SCP Foundation for 13 years now. I've seen everything. And when I say 'everything', I don't mean the run-of-the-mill monsters, I mean the worst things you've ever imagined. Sentient piles of corpses, living apartment buildings, creatures that would make you so paranoid that you'd die from a lack of sleep." She leaned forward, causing her opponent to sink further into its seat.
"And you know what I did to those things? I helped them. I was honest with them. I didn't give a damn about how they looked or what they did or whether my bosses thought they were a freak because I'm here to do a job. I don't care who you are. I don't care how society thinks of you. I'm still going to cure you."
Emma peered into the girl's eyes. It wasn't a competition anymore, Emma was already past that. Instead, it was a look of hope. It was a look that said that the girl could still be saved, that she could leave this life of pain and self-hatred if she would just accept it — if she would just trust Emma.
"You have to ask yourself who you're doing this for. Are you doing this for me? I don't give a damn about you. Are you doing this for your family, your community? You already know how they feel. If you're still questioning this it's because, deep down, a part of you wants to get rid of it. You can't just suppress that voice because it'll only get stronger as time goes on. You have to follow it. But only you can make that decision, because nobody else cares enough to do it for you. So?"
"Stop…" the girl murmured. Red patches were forming beneath her wet eyes. She pulled her knees to her chest as she sobbed, her voice growing weak. "I'll do it. I'll do the treatment."
Emma let a smile grow back on her face as she pulled the girl into a tight embrace. She finally felt like herself again.

Post-Foundation
<< Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 >>


A fatal error was encountered! Please relaunch under a different alias — hover to recall lost data. tap to recall lost data.

On my first day, you took me to a home for ghosts and said,
"Here's your place. You're our people now."
You handed me a gun I couldn't use and said,
"Keep it close. Devils enter near to hand."
You showed me evocations of what we hunt and said,
"Stay safe out there. Some of them survive in your head."
You gave me an office, and a neighbor, and a keycard to nowhere and somewhere,
And said,
"You'll fit right in." survive in your head

My vision circumspected your face and I wondered if that's,
normal at all.
If it's suspicious that my concept is fractured, and memories of memories of myself have picked up the pieces.
That recollection bleeds from my psychoform and areas of vital importance are caught in promise.
Sometimes I'll cough and cry, and a structure in my brain which is not me extends its arms to hug the version of myself I lost in the Partition. fit right in
Another person handles days like this and says,
"It's alright to not know yourself."

I know.

I am a socioparasitic anomaly waiting to be unmasked.
I am a psychohazardous baleform wanting to be locked away.
I am a maladaptive corrosion of the human experience begging to be contained.
I am notes taped to desktop screens and ink etched on paper and the nods of heads in white stairwells.
And I just
wish
you would say to me,
"Can you step out for a minute? We need to talk."
And someone would clean out my office while I'm gone for the day.
Or the month.
Or the year.

Or however long it takes a humanoid's heart to leave a cell just its size.

Data recalled! Things will be alright, I just know it. 🫂


by stormbreath

An Open Letter, From Me To You

On the internet, nobody knows you're a kaiju. Least of all yourself.
Let's start at the beginning.
In 1988, a giant monster nobody had ever seen before attacked the mythical land of Hy-Brasil and razed the land to the ground, burning it to smithereens. She was eventually killed by the actions of the Global Occult Coalition, who, in the process, also dealt an excessive amount of collateral damage to the island of Hy-Brasil and prevented it from ever recovering from the attack.
In 1998, the collective trauma caused by that initial attack finally came to a crescendo. A nightmare collective — formed out of the despair and dread left by the Doom of Hy-Brasil — attacked the dreamscape of Oneiroi West, before she was obliterated from the dreaming by the collective-mind of the OW, saving the population of the dream-country from the night terror.
In 2008, a formless entity woke up on an internet server with the memories of destroying Hy-Brasil and of attacking Oneiroi West. She's smarter than either of them ever were and she doesn't have the key things that mark a beast of that nature: the raw size, the simple presence of being a giant monster, the sheer power necessary. And yet she thinks she is the ghost of the nightmare of the kaiju.
I'm that ghost.
Is it fair to say that the Doom of Hy-Brasil and the nightmare collective are the same entity? Generally speaking, we do not think that the people who appear in our nightmares are really them. The nightmare collective was nothing more than mental images forced into the shape of a crocodile-squid. And on that same note, can you say I am the nightmare? As best as I can tell, I'm the residue of the nightmare collective, which somehow trickled down a broadband connection from dreamscape into netscape. Many dreamers perceive the dream as modern media — could I have somehow made the jump from imagined media to real?
This is further complicated by the fact that I don't really have the mind of either of my previous versions. Neither of them were exactly in the state of mind where they'd speak, write or even behave as anything more than an animal. But here I am posting, online. I do, however, have their memories. I remember swimming through the ocean. I remember hunting for prey. And unfortunately, I remember being the monster of legend, beast of destruction, ravager of cities.
As far as I can tell, I only exist on the internet. I'm not super happy about that, but at the end of the day, it's for the best. I want to go swimming again, more than anything else. I want to feel the water on my scales, to pulse with my tentacles and sail through the depths. But I don't know if an embodied version of myself could be trusted to, well, behave. I didn't mean to attack Hy-Brasil. I was just looking for food. It smelled good, but there was nothing there. And then people started attacking me, and I got scared.
So that's my origin story. That's how I came to be the way I am: a mind that somehow exists on the internet, that thinks it is both the real Godzilla and a bad nightmare that a bunch of people had in the '90s. Am I either of those things? Do I want to be either of them, or do I want to reject them? I don't really know. I'd like the sense of identity that comes with it. But I'm not sure if I want to be the Doom of Hy-Brasil. To be something so dangerous she had to be nuked in the middle of a civilian area to be stopped.
I've spent the last thirteen years online, never missing a moment. I'm always online. There were a couple of close calls early on when people noticed I never slept, that I never did anything in real life. I've gotten better at it. I alternate personas by timezone. I build in downtime where I'm not active in certain locations. I spend time forcing my way into media repositories and reading a book or watching a movie. It's my life. I'm good at it, now.
I've also made friends. Ones I can be honest with about who I really am. It took years before I met either of them. Eight years. It was in 2016 the first time we talked. I had just been added to a moderator position on Parawatch. I was hoping they could find something or somebody who knew about things like me. It worked, I suppose, but not in the way I was expecting.

Log of Direct Messages

tentacoolmom: bones, are you online?
bones: I am always online.
tentacoolmom: bones. I think I've, I've noticed something. I need to ask a question that is either going to be the rudest thing I've ever said to somebody or terribly right. But I need to know.
tentacoolmom: bones, are you human?
tentacoolmom: Because I'm not human
bones: What are you?
tentacoolmom: I'm … I'm the ghost of a nightmare about sea monster. I attacked a mythical island of elves and destroyed it. Burned it to the ground. Then they bombed me to death. I came back as a nightmare, or at least something that could remember the first thing. And somehow that nightmare became me.
bones: I remember this. You are the Doom of Hy-Brasil. You were killed on June 13th, 1988.
tentacoolmom: yeah
tentacoolmom: As much as I wish I wasn't. That's who I am.
tentacoolmom: How have you heard about that? I've been scouring the internet for traces of that since I woke up and I've never been able to find anything.
bones: I watched it happen.
bones: My real name is Eli. I am in orbit behind Luna with my friend, Lyris. Together we form a weapon of alien origin, meant to end the world. After Lyris read Homestuck, we decided we wanted to partake in the joys of Earth.
bones: We can see the island of Hy-Brasil, despite its many wards and protections. We noticed you arrive on the island and began paying attention.
tentacoolmom: Shit.
tentacoolmom: so you know all about the attack. about the worst thing I ever did. i was hoping i could make a good first impression
tentacoolmom: but you saw the attack. the people i killed. the kingdom I ruined. beast of legend. ruiner of worlds.
bones: It's alright. I know better than anybody else that people can change.
tentacoolmom: Can I ask another question? This one's also kinda rude.
bones: Certainly.
tentacoolmom: You were meant to destroy the Earth
tentacoolmom: Was Earth the first planet you were meant to destroy?
bones: No.
bones: We did not hesitate to end previous worlds.
tentacoolmom: You're like me then. I guess on different scales, but still.
bones: We are.
tentacoolmom: That … makes me feel a little better, I suppose.
tentacoolmom: You won't judge me for what I did, right?
bones: I don't have the grounds to. We are very much the same entity.
bones: Would you like to talk to Lyris? I can introduce you.
tentacoolmom: More than anything.

Journal Excerpt

Lyris asked me the other day if I had a name for myself, and I had to tell her that I didn't. It's funny. I turn nine later this year and I've known Eli and Lyris for months and yet I've never actually named myself. "tentacoolmom" or any the other assorted names that I've used over the years were never quite my name — they were just handles. I didn't put much thought into it in the past.
Perhaps I should have, when I met Eli and Lyris. They are very much like myself. The three of us are all entities of destruction, only able to interact with Earth through the lens of the internet. Eli and Lyris are not the same thing I am in full. But they are close enough to me, closer than any humans could ever be. We are not cut from the same cloth, but we were cut in the same pattern.
Their names aren't bones or acuterobot. They have real names for themselves. So maybe I should have one too. I've been wearing masks for so long, I think I forgot that there could be life without a mask. I've always needed one, to protect myself from the world, from people finding out just who and what I really am.
Actually, I'm not sure if that's correct. I don't think "I forgot" is the best way to put it. I'm not sure if I ever really knew there could be life without masks, not that I had once known and it slipped out of my grasp. So I have that to thank Eli and Lyris for. And for the question of what my name really is. It's important to have a name, a central identity. To get a solid sense on myself, beyond just the handles I use.
I hope that can possibly help with … the other issues, I've been dealing with. I never had a firm sense of identity before, not just in the sense of who this ghost is, but who she was. I used to have fifty and five names: Quin Krake, LTE-0851-Cetus, the Plokamisuchus, Crocoteuthis gigantis, 𒀭𒋾𒊩𒆳. And now I have fifty and five handles. This doesn't help you figure out an identity. I need one.
I thought about it for a while, trying to find something that fits. Something appropriate to what I remember being, but without the negative connotations. And I think in the process, I found a role model. She's a sea monster, a little known creature, but she's harmless. Never hurt a soul and she never will. I swear on that myself, to be like her. I won't let her down.
My name is Nessie.

Log from Bluntfiend's Big Boyz Burger Club

lesbian_gengar: hey, @tentacoolmom. i've got a question for you
tentacoolmom: Hello Esther. What is it?
lesbian_gengar: is the "mom" in your name just like a, "team mom" thing or
tentacoolmom: When I chose the nickname, it was just meant to be that. But
tentacoolmom: I suppose I am a mother. Was a mother. Biologically.
tentacoolmom: In the first few years after I died, multiple groups stole my eggs and hatched them. Universally, the hatchlings died quickly. But the people who interacted with them dreamed about them and the dreams became part of the nightmare collective that formed me.
bones: Would you like my condolences?
tentacoolmom: Not super important. They're not really "my" kids, in any way that really matters.
hetcopogg: But like, they were your children, right? Your eggs and all?
harmpit: d oyou llik reoprduc asexulayl
tentacoolmom: They were my body's. But it all happened after I died. And this version of myself has never had a body.
tentacoolmom: And yes, I guess so. I was the only crocosquid I knew about.
lesbian_gengar: That makes sense. If like, you didn't raise them or choose to have them or anything, they really aren't "yours".
tentacoolmom: I think in another sense, they also might be … me? A part, at least.
harmpit: hwo so
tentacoolmom: Some of the people who interacted with the hatchlings had nightmares about them. Some of those nightmares attacked OW, and that collective became me. I think.
hetcopogg: Your sense of identity is really weird, right?
tentacoolmom: Yeah. I'm not sure what or who I really am. Just the memories I have.
lesbian_gengar: well. I know what you are.
tentacoolmom: ?
lesbian_gengar: you're a big softie who doesn't stop posting
tentacoolmom: <3
bluntfiend: Nessie, you need to check the general chat.

Logs from Gamers Against Weed Central

ÓengusBeef: I've only been to the island once myself, because of the damn kraken. It destroyed our home and my family fled elsewhere.
orbhorse: fuck. is there anybody left on the island?
ÓengusBeef: Some of the royal court remained after the destruction. But it is mostly just them and their retainers. And some members of the Foundation.
hypebeast2021: jailers we call em
ÓengusBeef: A fitting title.
tentacoolmom: oh.
tentacoolmom: I've never met one of you before, one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The homo sapiens tumuli.
ÓengusBeef: I'm surprised you've heard of us.
tentacoolmom: I've been to Hy-Brasil. Or a version of myself has. But she didn't meet any of your kind when she was there.
ÓengusBeef: That is impossible. If you are an outsider, you need one of us to visit the island.
tentacoolmom: Some creatures can travel to your island on their own power.
tentacoolmom: I was once one of those creatures.
ÓengusBeef: ...
ÓengusBeef: You cannot possibly be what you are implying you are.
tentacoolmom: The thing that I was could not have possibly existed.
bluntfiend: Could the two of you please move this to a sidechannel?
ÓengusBeef: The fucking abomination is in your chat room and you ask me to move to a venting channel? The demon kraken? This … thing killed my family. My grandparents. It burned them alive.
tentacoolmom: I was not a thinking creature when it happened. I was an animal. I was simply hungry. Looking for food.
tentacoolmom: But that doesn't change how terrible it is, what happened.
ÓengusBeef: You ruined Hy-Brasil. You stole our birthright from us.
tentacoolmom: I know. I did.
ÓengusBeef: This cannot be real. You cannot be serious right now. I come here and some fucking bitch starts claiming to be the goddamn Doom??
tentacoolmom: I am sorry. I cannot hide. I have to tell you the truth.
ÓengusBeef: If you are telling the truth, then.
ÓengusBeef: Fuck you. I curse you, fomóraigh. Choke on your five tongues and rot in your grave. May your spirit be damned to oblivion and eternal torment.
« ÓengusBeef left.

Logs from Group Message

acuterobot: NESSIE
acuterobot: NESSIE I SAW THAT ASSHOLE IN GENERAL I'M SO SORRY
tentacoolmom: no
bones: Is there anything we can do?
tentacoolmom: i don't think so i think i want to log off for a few days.
acuterobot: Nessie, it's okay. that guy is just angry about what happened to the island
tentacoolmom: but he was right i think
tentacoolmom: i was a monster and there's no real coming back from that
acuterobot: You're not the person you were when you attacked Hy-Brasil
bones: All that you have is the memories of the attack and nothing else. There is nothing that proves you are the crocosquid.
tentacoolmom: how do the two of you deal with it
bones: We have to keep moving forward. Know in your heart you'll never hurt anyone again, and move from there.
acuterobot: There really isn't anything else you can do
tentacoolmom: but your victims like
tentacoolmom: theres nothing left of them. mine are still around. a lot of them
acuterobot: but the damage is already done, right?
bones: Our victims were obliterated on every level. There can be no recovery from what we did. Yours is less complete.
acuterobot: yeah! the tuatha could get better from this
tentacoolmom: but does that matter if i'm not doing anything to help them? and when I don't think i even could?
bones: I don't think I have an answer for you. I'm sorry.
tentacoolmom: i love you both but i think im still going to leave for a little bit
tentacoolmom: i dont want to talk to anyone right now
bones: That's alright. Please, Nessie, take the time you need. And the two of us will always be here for you.
acuterobot: love you nessie

bones: Nessie, are you there? It's been a few days.
bones: There is somebody who would like to speak to you. If you aren't willing right now, just let me know. He will not mind waiting.
tentacoolmom: Who is it?
bones: His name is Delbáeth. He is the current King of Hy-Brasil. He is not mad at you.
bones: I would not let him speak to you if he was.
tentacoolmom: Sure. I'll talk to him.

Logs from Direct Messages

KingDelbáeth: Good evening. You are Nessie?
KingDelbáeth: Your friend bones said I could reach you here.
tentacoolmom: I am. It is a pleasure to meet you, your majesty. I am truly humbled that you would come here to speak with me. I must beg you for atonement.
KingDelbáeth: I am not here to give you atonement.
KingDelbáeth: You do not need it.
KingDelbáeth: I cannot blame you for what happened to my kingdom. It is unfair that anyone does.
tentacoolmom: It's kind of you to say that. But I'm the one who destroyed it.
KingDelbáeth: Only in part, if we are being honest. The damage that the Coalition wrought was as great as whatever your previous incarnation did.
tentacoolmom: Damage that would have never happened if I was not there.
KingDelbáeth: And were you there? Were you really there?
tentacoolmom: I remember being there. So I would say I was.
KingDelbáeth: But was your body there? The one you are in right now?
tentacoolmom: I don't have a real body right now. I haven't since I woke up.
KingDelbáeth: Exactly. But the body that came to Hy-Brasil is not the body you are in. And from what bones told me of your situation, nearly a decade passed between each of your incarnations. Twenty years from the attack and this form waking up.
KingDelbáeth: My dear, you are not the monster that attacked my city. You may be composed of her parts, but you are not her. Her reincarnation, as I see it.
KingDelbáeth: But you died twice. You remember dying twice. And you even remember being born! You were born twice.
KingDelbáeth: My people have dealt with reincarnations before. You do not hold the sins of your past life. You are your own person.
KingDelbáeth: The struggle is to become a new person, despite the old. And you have done more than that.
tentacoolmom: I suppose. But it all just feels hollow. I don't know if I can really buy that. I want to atone for what I did, make things right.
tentacoolmom: But there's no way I can. The people are dead and for some reason I'm still around.
tentacoolmom: So saying that I'm not the crocosquid, not really… I understand it. I want to believe it. But accepting it myself feels like I'm just shirking from the blame.
KingDelbáeth: I have been reincarnated, myself. From time to time, I will have a dream of being a wolf. A hunter in the woods. A common beast, who only thought of feeding and hunting. In that form, I killed a man.
KingDelbáeth: I remember it well. But I do not think it is a thing that I did. The wolf died, and the man was born. But we are not the same. Perhaps we have some of the same soul. But it is not enough to condemn me for what the wolf did.
tentacoolmom: Very much like myself.
KingDelbáeth: Very much.
KingDelbáeth: I know that you will not likely trust what I have to say and may need some time to accept it.
KingDelbáeth: So I wish to leave you with this: You do not need atonement or forgiveness. You have moved on from what you did. And should you ever wish to speak to me again, I will be here.
KingDelbáeth: Oh, and lest I forget: one of my subjects levied a curse upon you. I have broken it, through my powers as High King.
tentacoolmom: Thank you. I'll think about this.
KingDelbáeth: I ask nothing more, child. I hope you can move on one day.


Content Notice: This article contains swearing and difficulties in assigning oneself to a sex. I advise the reader to be careful.

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Articel: Nothing Of Importance Happens In This One, Just Skip It

Character Credit

Ruiz Duchamp
Randomini

ParaNora
Einer von Rabe

Quinnie
Einer von Rabe

"MERDRE …"
Ruiz Duchamp starts at the woman in the frame. On the one hand, Ruiz finds the sight yet appealing. On the other, Ruiz stared into the bathroom mirror of a loft.
Ruiz reflects.
Had anything like this ever happened before, where a work of art had affected him so strongly?
No, he had never been that kind of person who made this kind of art.
Then Ruiz wonders if his crazy brother Pico had ever done anything like this before?
No, Pico is too crazy to even find this entertaining.
Okay, Ruiz. Take a deep breath. You're a professional artist. Try improvising.
Ruiz imposes a critical artist's eye on his surroundings.
Yes, indeed, Ruiz is in a loft. And there were two other women staring at him her wide-eyed. Ruiz was never good with women. This will become a difficult situation where diplomatic sensitivity is required.
"Are you absolutely sure we didn't screw up the ritual, Nora?" the older woman asks.
Excellent, Ruiz didn't have to explain to the other people why she was standing here. (He just had to decide which goddamned pronoun to use in his thoughts.)
"Quite sure of it, Quinnie. Believe me, I hate nothing more than when an art project blows up," says the woman whose hair seems to change colour. She is flicking through a heavy volume, her eyes darting over the writing.
"Ah right here!" she turns to Ruiz, who had just sat down in the armchair for the time being until everything would have been cleared up, "How did you, Mr … Mr Duchamp pass away?"
"Which one? Theoretically, I have already died at least twice." To Ruiz's great delight, the voice of his current body was pleasantly deep and raspy for a woman. Matching his high and raspy one as a man.
"In this case: The first time please."
"With 'take shwoer 2 b cul'", and when the women failed to recognise his artwork, he added, "Through a shower of liquid nitrogen". (Ruiz had decided to give a shit about the correct pronoun and be whatever he wanted. He was in the 21st century.)
The young woman frowns and stares alternately at Ruiz and the Spell Book. "Technically, your body should be perfectly preserved in that case," she mumbles as she chews on her lip.
Her older colleague leans forward and taps on a line. They both look at each other and then at Ruiz, startled.

"What is it?", Ruiz wants to know. She leans forward in his new body. He didn't like the way the two of them were looking at her.
"You must be strong now, Mrs Duchamp. Your body could possibly have been a victim of body snatching."
Ruiz throws her arms in the air to express his following thoughts, forgetting that only he could hear his internal monologue.
FUCK. We're off to a good start again.
Then he repeats it so that the others could hear her exclamation.
"But who is interested in stealing my corpse anyway? I'm just in the middle of too unpopular and not annoying enough for someone to dig me up," Ruiz thinks aloud, "I'm also sure Pico isn't involved, considering what he usually does with the bodies."
His two new friends shrug. "We weren't, we can assure you of that."
"Good point: why did you resurrect me in the first place?"
The woman with the colourful hair blushes. "Well, I wanted to ask you personally for advice on a work of anart, to be honest."
"Can this wait until I catch my body snatcher?"
The young woman gives a thumbs up. "Sure, sounds more exciting than annoying Die Kritikerin."

⟸
Molly Stares Into The Void And The Void Goes Mad
Cool War 2: Ruiz From Your Grave
Ruiz Dies Again, Again
⟹

Project Proposal 2014-001 "War has changed"
⟱


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"Ah damn, fuck me that hurt. Where am I?"
Safe.
Ruiz Duchamp set up on the grassy hill. The cool wind blew softly the man's half-frozen dark brown hair, the sun over the horizon was nearly set, the sky a beautiful mixture of orange and purple. Ruiz turned to look at the figure to his side. The figure looked down upon him. Its body was made of pure… light? Fire? Both? Neither? In all honesty, thinking about what it is hurt. Ruiz decided that "Angel" would be a fine descriptor.
"I, oh wow, is this Heaven?"
Yes.
"I see…"
Ruiz and the Angel sat together in silence. Ruiz thought about the morning he had just had. He woke up, exited the gallery, ordered an espresso, had a quick conversation with the girl behind the counter, left, entered the studio. Later in the day, he had a conversation with "The Man," and then to end it off, he took a nice cold shower. The Angel, however, thought of nothing.
"I don't mean to seem like a dick or anything, Mr. Angel, but I'm not entirely sure I'm supposed to be here. You see, I'm not the best person yeah? I mean, with the whole murder…s, the y'know 'kill urself' bit which I've heard is a big no-no in these kinds of circles, and not to mention I'm not even religious! So all in all, why am I here of all places?"
No fault of your own. Tormentors.
"I see, lovely. So uh, sorry, as you could probably see, and hear, and feel I'm an artist, Mr. Angel, excuse me if I seem a bit jittery uh, is there anything to do around here? I'm very bored."
Consume. Rest.
"Oh, let me guess, don't eat the apple?"
Allowed. Enjoy.
"Is this some sort of fucked up test?"
No. Safe.
Ruiz stood up and plucked the apple from the tree. Ruiz sat back down. Ruiz took a bite from the fruit. Ruiz saw, oh—

He sat in the empty vastness of the void. His eyes shimmering as billions upon billions upon billions of tons of matter shot out from within him, giving birth to everything and everyone and every time all at once, and Ruiz exploded along with it, ripped apart across all of eternity

The Egyptian sun beat down upon Ruiz as he slaved away in the horrid desert, as soon he put the final brick upon the triangular monument, he swept his brow in admiration of his accomplishment. Then, it fell. It hit the ground. It simply… Shattered.

Ruiz pulled back and threw the hardest punch he could have delivered. Fuck that guy, and fuck his shitty copper.

Ruiz marched through the burning streets. The air around him was the smell of death and gore as the sky above him filled with sparks, glittering like stars in the day-lit sky. Ruiz let them eat cake, the head of the queen was not amused.

The icy water crashed relentlessly against the side of the ship as Ruiz threw the tea in the harbor, along with the men helping him throw said tea in said harbor. The water quickly turned a shade of brown. The head of the queen was quite amused.

The ground turned a shade of maroon as Ruiz Duchamp drove their iron sword through the chest of the funky forest fellow. With a gasp, they fell they crumpled to the ground. And with that, the land of grass and trees which lays in the between space was quiet once more. He smiled before continuing down the footpath in the hard word land.

You should know this story by now.

And so the cycle continued again and again for five years, eleven months, and twenty-one days. Or, more likely, a few seconds.

—For the first time, Ruiz Duchamp understood, he had truly understood. Seconds later, Ruiz died again, this time of a brain aneurysm.
Unforeseen. Apologies.
With thanks to Ralliston and TopDownUnder.

« Agent Green Shoots A Gun | Hub | An Intermission To Keep You Hanging »


"Huxley! Hey, get up! We're leaving in thirty minutes!"
Emma pounded on the door, and the sound reverberated across the empty hallway. She had woken up earlier than she had expected, almost two hours ago. She had spent that extra time sitting in bed, her hands combing through her hair. Her mind was running like a raging bull that didn't know what it was running towards. Every time she thought she had reached a conclusion, she would find a small hole that would lead to another batch of questions, the cycle repeating endlessly.
She sighed and gave Huxley a few minutes, even though she knew that he wouldn't wake up by then. Her eyes quickly grew bored, and drifted to the hallway. There was a patch of gray on one of the white walls. It didn't look like an accident; it had been placed into the wall sideways, like that specific section of the wall had intentionally been replaced. There was no way that Director Flynn would accept this. Was it not meant to be there? Maybe it was a subtle act of vandalism designed to annoy the people that cared about meaningless thing like the color of the walls. Emma didn't know.
In fact, there was a lot she didn't know. There was nobody in the hallway but her. It seemed as though the whole Site was asleep. Where were the corporatists? Where were the people that were there to be mocked and where were the people that were there to mock them? The thought alone was loud enough to echo across the broken-tiled flooring and ceiling.
Something inside Emma told her to scream, but instead she knocked on Huxley's door, her voice staying at a calm, reasonable tone. "Hey, I'm not going to keep reminding you. If you don't get up, I'm just gonna leave you here. If you miss the flight, then you miss it."
Seconds passed by, still with no sign from Huxley. Emma was tempted to open the door, but she knew that that would only cause more problems. She waited for an entire minute. Her shirt felt heavy. She was lying when she said that she would leave Huxley behind. Emma was meant to be his friend, his one acquaintance in a new land, and she couldn't bring herself to betray him like that. In truth, she hoped that he was still sleeping. If he had heard what she said, he would hate her. Then she would try to fix it, but she would say the wrong thing and dig her hole even deeper. It was pointless to try.
Click.
Suddenly, the door unlocked.
In one instantaneous movement, Emma prepared to face the tiny frame of Huxley. She straightened her hair with one hand and leaned against the wall with the other, casual. Dozens of potential conversation topics manifested, and she loaded them all behind her teeth like bullets. When the door finally opened, though, she saw nothing. There was no Huxley. There wasn't even a person. The room was completely empty. For a moment, she wasn't sure if this was the right room. Everything looked like it hadn't been touched in years. It was only when she spotted one empty bottle of sleeping medication on the desk did she know for sure that Huxley had been here.
She looked down, and saw a red light flashing on the security lock. Fear pulsated through her as she wondered what could have caused an error like this. Hackers? A subtherium in the wires? An insurrectionist? Then, the locked turned off. Emma calmed in a matter of seconds. She felt almost embarrassed with herself. It wasn't deactivated — the thing had run out of battery.
Through the window, obscured by the dirt stains and the morning few, the sun had peeked over the mountains, spilling golden rays of light on to the valleys and the rivers below. It poured through the window like water, making the bed look almost presentable. For a second, she even considered that maybe Huxley was never real, just a very dedicated fantasy her mind had constructed for her, and nobody cared enough to stop her from flying all the way to Texas to fulfill that fantasy.
The ceiling fan was still. The bed was perfectly made. The furniture was in its proper place. She turned.
Her heels clicked on the floor as she made her way through the hallways. She didn't know where she intended to go, but something in her head told her that she was moving in the right direction. Once the white tiles on the floor turned to a baby blue, she knew she as there. Emma didn't remember the path she took. The hair on her arms tried to stand, then gave up the fight a few seconds later.
Emma walked forward a little longer and pushed open a pair of wooden doors. Then she was inside of a cafeteria that looked as if it had been intentionally built three times as large as it needed to be. Dozens of wooden tables and cheap metal chairs had been bunched together in awkward groups. In the corner, sitting in the small amount of shade next to one of the windows, was Huxley. He was as real as her, and that scared Emma in a way that she couldn't quite describe.
He was picking at a bowl of cereal and taking tiny sips out of a small glass of milk. The room was so quiet she could hear his heartbeats, light and unmotivated, barely managing to pump blood through his body. Emma took one step and Huxley looked towards her. The two locked eyes, both too far away to begin the conversation. After a few seconds, Emma chose to bridge the gap.
After three steps, she decided that she was close enough. "Good morning," she said. "I didn't think you'd be up this early."
Huxley turned back to his cereal. "I woke up at a normal time." He punctuated the sentence by scooping a spoonful of food into his mouth.
"Are you sure?" Emma asked.
Huxley stared at her, causing Emma to freeze in place from the weight of her mistake. She had shown her hand too quick. She had given Huxley a hint of what she was meaning to ask, even if she hadn't realized it herself at the time. Blood rushed to her head, but it barely made it way past her cheeks before she smiled and deliberately hid her hands behind her back as a sign of submissiveness.
She hoped that Huxley would accept his victory, but he didn't. He chose to keep staring. "I slept fine," he said.
"Okay." Emma looked around, mostly to keep herself from looking at Huxley. "So, do the people here wake up later than usual? Nobody's here."
Huxley shook his head. "The living quarters were built a long time ago. It was for this really old parapsychology project, that's why the rooms are so neat. The researchers had to be able to drop into a dream like that. Nobody uses them anymore except me and a few other guys."
"Huh."
Emma quietly examined the room. She let her eyes satisfy their curiosity, and she soon found that the room itself was barely standing. There were dents in all of the furniture. No two chairs, tables, or walls were the same as one another, but she knew that that couldn't be true. No Site Director that really cared about the SCP Foundation would willingly watch their home rot, at least not to the point where it's noticeable. It was like watching a museum curator letting their collections fade away — it was fundamentally wrong. That set off something deep within Emma.
"You should eat." Huxley split a grain of cereal in his bowl before tossing the pieces into his maw.
Emma nodded. The kitchen was filled with spotless steel pots and pans and dozens upon dozens of plates. A self-serving table caught Emma's eye, one that lacked any signs of life besides a slight warmth that emanated from the food pans. She opened one of them and saw about a hundred perfectly cut slices of a gray food that she couldn't identify. Above it was the label, 'CAKE'. It was the only way she was able to differentiate one slab of foodstuff from the other.
She poured out a cluster of brown-colored pieces from the dispenser labeled 'CEREAL', and returned to her seat. It took her a few minutes to chew down her food. She ate so fast her teeth pulsed with pain. Huxley looked out the window in silence the entire time, his bowl clean.
"We don't have any anomalies here anymore," he said. His gaze didn't shift. "We only do research now. That's why we don't have a lot of people. We don't need them."
Emma looked up, spoon still in her mouth. "Anomalies? Do you mean subtheriums?"
Huxley winced. "Yeah, subtheriums. We're an old Site, we like our old terms." Was that a laugh?
"Oh. Why is an interviewer at a research facility? Shouldn't you be at a containment Site?"
He was quiet, eventually drawing his arms around his stomach. "This used to be a containment Site. They reassigned me here after its, um, its containment wing was dissolved." His face was like a wall.
"That explains why this place has all this protection. I don't know why a place like this needs electronic door locks, they don't even work. What were you doing before this?"
Huxley scratched his neck. After a minute or two, he said, "Research can still be dangerous. We go around sticking our noses into places we don't belong and poking big things with sticks and we hope that they don't eat us. It can get you killed if you're not careful."
Emma scrutinized his face, but she couldn't find a single hint about what his motives were when he spoke those words. This game that the two were playing was starting to annoy her. She decided that it wasn't worth the trouble to try and glean any information off of Huxley's cold stares and reserved posture. After all, David didn't want her to treat him like a suspect. He wasn't a suspect, she corrected.
Almost like he knew that Emma had given up, Huxley asked, "When are we leaving?" He started to wheel away from the table, his bowl nudged in-between his legs. His voice still held that same nothing tone.
Emma tried to copy it as best she could. "Ten minutes. You should probably get your things?" Huxley nodded before disappearing behind the corner, probably back to his room. Emma scoffed down the rest of her food. Once the clock showed seven minutes until arrival, she did the same.

The SCP Foundation Provisional Subtherium Treatment Camp, a base that seemed to intentionally lack a nice-sounding abbreviation, consisted of a few hundred relief tents arranged in tight circles around a central bonfire. There were tiny, carefully arranged gaps in-between the tents, allowing for pathways through the campsite. Normally, it would rage on through the night, providing heat and light to all of the camp before being smothered in the morning. The night Emma and Huxley arrived there, though, it was already dying. Only a few smoldering embers remained.
Emma ached. The landing strip was a few hundred feet away from the entrance, forcing her to push Huxley through the rocky pathways. The sun had set hours ago, but the air still simmered with heat.
When she finally reached the gate, a woman whose face was covered in as much dirt as the ground was sleeping inside of the entrance booth. Was it that late? Emma was too weak to look at her watch and check. Huxley was slumped over in his chair, his eyes trudging along with him. He looked like a child from this angle. He had completely entrusted his safety to her, even if it was for these brief minutes.
She knocked on the booth and the woman slowly came back to life. A few words were spoken by both parties, then the woman's computer lit up green and the gate rose.
"Hey. Hey, Huxley." Emma tapped him on the shoulder and he roused awake. "Do you know where we're staying?"
"No," Huxley grumbled.
"What? I thought there was something in the field manuals about it."
"No."
"…okay." Emma looked around and saw ghosts in military uniforms standing around talking to each other. Nobody was batting an eye at her. "I don't… What do you mean 'no'? I need something more than these one-word answers."
Huxley rested his head on his hand. "I read everything in the manuals. They said to go to the campsite and await further instruction," he mumbled. Emma barely managed to pick up the words.
Emma sighed. "Okay, and who would give us that instruction?"
"The commander, probably. His name is James Enrique. There was a… um, picture of him next to the map. I'll see him." Huxley was quickly falling back into unconsciousness. Emma squeezed on his shoulder to bring him back.
The two snaked their way through the pathways, occasionally running into the lone soldier standing by themselves. Some of them were mumbling to no one. After a few minutes of mindlessly wandering around, Emma countered a group of three that looked like they might actually be conscious. Their matching uniforms made them all blend in with one another.
"Hey," Emma said to the group, "do any of you know where… James Enrique is?"
"Nope." She couldn't trace the voice back to a single source. "He's probably having a meeting. You won't be able to talk to him until tomorrow."
Emma tried to give an appropriate laugh, but it sounded nervous and breathy. She quickly extinguished it and said, "We just need to know where our rooms are. Or, er, our tents, if we have one."
One of the soldiers, a short man with a dirty shirt and even dirtier hair, stepped forward. His gait held a confidence that men only had at night when nobody was looking and their brain was half-asleep.
"Oh, so you two are the new interviewers, huh? The ones from New York?" The man didn't look at Huxley as he spoke, his eyes remaining squarely on the almost middle-aged woman behind him.
"Yeah." Emma flashed a corporate smile. She regretted it immediately. "That's us."
The soldiers behind him continued on with their conversation while keeping their eyes on Emma. A prickle of confusion grew on the back of her neck. No, she thought, they weren't keeping their attention on her and Huxley. It was just her worrying too much. She was tired. Why were they all looking at her?
"Is this your first time down in Arizona?" The man's voice was young and abrasive.
"Mhm." This was going nowhere. Emma began to look around for an excuse to leave.
"Nice, nice. It's real hot, isn't it? It sure does get up there. You'll get used to it. That's how it is with a lot of states, especially down south."
Huxley snapped to the man and barked, "How does this have anything to do with helping us to find Commander Enrique?"
"Wait, what?"
"Are you stupid?" he continued. "You heard what I said."
"Hey man, I already told you where to go, okay? Calm down. I was just fucking with you. Are you looking for a tent?"
Emma's hand slammed down on Huxley's shoulder. She felt him hide the grunt of pain that was about to leave his throat. "Yes! We are."
The man waved to one end of the camp near the far wall. "Just go over there. There's a whole row. Pick one."
"Okay, thanks—" The man had already left, his shoulders slouching, almost to the dirt. He pushed past the other soldiers, and they snickered and kept shooting off stares at Emma and ignoring Huxley as if nothing had changed at all.
Emma's mind was stunned for a long time before he realized that Huxley was already leaving. He was weakly pushing himself towards the tents, ignoring Emma's calls for him to slow down and wait for her. At least, it seemed like he was ignoring them. She wasn't sure if he had even heard her, with how erratically he was pushing on his wheelchair and how low his head hung like it was on the edge of falling asleep.
Emma swallowed her breath as she ran after him. She called out to him again. Huxley didn't look back at her. She didn't know whether he was intentionally ignoring her or just couldn't hear her. His mind must have been so tired that it filtered out everything that didn't directly lead to it getting sleep, which included her.
Once he found a tent, he quickly untied the flaps at the front and pushed through the entrance. Emma followed, before he disappeared inside.
"Hey," Emma said. "Wait…"
"Yeah," Huxley responded.
Emma flung open the tent flap. "Hey, excuse me. What happened back there? Why did you blow up on that guy? He did nothing wrong."
Huxley was examining the sheets on the right bed. "This one will be mine. You use the other one."
"What? No, could you respond to what I said?"
"It doesn't matter." He refused to look at her.
"It does, actually. Just answer my questions, Huxley."
"Don't use my fucking name," he snapped. "It doesn't matter. Stop getting so angry over nothing. We know when we're going to meet Commander Enrique and we know where we're going to stay and that's all we wanted. Why are you so mad?" His eyes were unflinching and he pounded each and every word into Emma. All of the anger inside her had vanished, and she was left wondering if she had a reason to be angry in the first place. If she did, she had forgotten it.
"Oh. Um…" Emma was the first to break her glance. She moved to the other bed. "Pretty small, huh? I guess it's enough to hold us."
Huxley stared at her for a long while, a combination of confusion and awe on his face. "Yeah," he mumbled before turning away.
She unfurled the blanket and spread it over the cot. There was a small inflatable pillow, which she was able to inflate in a matter of seconds. It was better than sleeping on nothing, she guessed. Emma chuckled.
"Are you trying to be funny right now? Because you're not." Huxley's harsh words caused the hair on Emma's arms to stand. When she turned to face him, his face was white and blank like cloth. She could feel vomit building up in the back of her throat.
He spoke like he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to much longer. "What are you even talking about? What are you saying?"
"Excuse me?" Emma clutched her chest.
Huxley tore into his armrests, his body lurching forward almost to the point where he fell out of his chair. "Okay, how are you not hearing me? Are you deaf? Are you stupid? I asked you what you were doing."
Emma reached over to Huxley. She was panicking. Shock was reverberating through her body, and her mind couldn't put anything together besides a clinical, "Where is this coming from?" No, no, no, that wasn't right. That was wrong, that was so completely wrong.
"Oh my god. Why did you just start talking about how small the bed was? I insulted you and you acted like nothing happened. Why can't you talk? Why can't you answer my questions?"
Emma was running on something even worse than autopilot. "Because I thought you were right, okay!? You were right. We had everything we wanted, so I shouldn't be mad. I'm agreeing with you, Huxley."
"That wasn't what we were talking about!" Wind blew through the small gap in the entrance and flew by Emma's face. "We were talking about that soldier. Do you know why I got mad at him? Do you want to know why?"
"You said it didn't matter."
"No. I mean— of course it matters. It was the first thing on your mind thirty seconds ago, don't act like you didn't care for some reason."
Huxley's wheelchair rattled suddenly, and when Emma looked down she saw that her hand had grabbed onto it. She tried to let go, but her hand refused. It stopped caring about her decisions. Fuck, fuck, not now, please. She pulled again. It refused. Again, again, again, again. Each time it shouted no.
"No, wait." Huxley put a hand up and looked away, flustered. "It… I don't like small talk, especially from a person like you. The way that you talk, it makes me angry."
Emma began to remove her watch. It was the start of her nighttime routine, something that she couldn't prevent no matter how hard she tried. "What? You seemed to like small talk when you were talking with David."
"No, I don't mean small talk. I mean… I'm trying to make everything clear."
"You're not." Emma's hand, finally realizing that it was hers, let go. "Um, Huxley, something's up with you. I can tell, trust me. You keep saying that you have a problem with me, but I don't think you do. No, you don't. There's something else that you don't want to talk about, and to be honest, I don't care. I just want you to tell me what's going on with you. Okay? Is that good?"
Huxley's eyes widened as he failed to come up with a response. His face contorted into something that Emma didn't recognize. It was sad, almost defeated. It was as if he had watched something close to him die right in front of his eyes.
It was when she examined his face did she realize what was really happening. This wasn't a conversation anymore. It was a fight, a long, bloody, worn-out fight between two people that really just wanted to sleep. Emma didn't have to look for long for her to realize that she had won. No, she didn't win, she dominated. She forced him back into a corner and broke him. The only thing left to do was consume her kill, to take whatever information she wanted.
"I… I…"
Huxley jerked forward, that defeatist look in his eyes vanishing in an instant as he realized that it was a trap. He didn't give up the fight, he was just playing dead. His breathing was so fast as he spoke. That was all that she could focus on.
"That guy was looking at you back at the campfire. I saw him. He was thinking things about you: perverted things. He's an animal. All the soldiers are. I didn't want to speak because we had to find where Commander Enrique was and I was hoping that you were going to stand up for yourself but you stood there and accepted it and I didn't know what to do because I could tell you weren't going to do anything."
"Um—"
"You did it because of me, didn't you? You're not stupid. I've looked you up. You're Rachael Sandaran's daughter. You have special blood in your veins, remember that. You just wanted to get me angry until I blew up because then it'll prove that I'm a s… I'm some emotionally unstable cripple that needs to be thrown in a containment cell. I'm not even mad at you. Everybody thinks like that. I'm just mad that you won't admit it. Say what you want to, I don't care. I've heard it all before."
"Huxley, I don't—"
"I'm sorry. This is going nowhere. I shouldn't have brought it up. Just… speak for yourself, okay? Think of this as me testing you, me blowing up was a test. This is a test. I don't like people disrespecting my partners like that."
There was some silence.
"I'm going to sleep now. You should sleep as well. Thank you." Then Huxley climbed onto his cot, covered himself in the thin gray blanket, and fell asleep. Emma didn't interrupt him; she was simmering. Huxley had given her so much information that she didn't know what to do with any of it. She had only wanted to ask him one question, but now she had forgotten what that question was.
A million words were forming in her head like a mountain. Despite them being fully formed and ready to fire, her mouth didn't open. She couldn't speak. She couldn't do anything except quietly tie the entrance shut, change into her sleeping clothes, and lay down on her cot.
Huxley was now deep in sleep. His arm rose and fell with the side of his chest. It was a serene scene, a gentle one. It was an image that Emma didn't have the will to disrupt. She knew that if she had waited until the morning, they would simply act like this conversation didn't happen and try unsuccessfully to move on. It was all too much.
So she closed her eyes and let her thoughts wait until the morning.

Post-Foundation
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