Previously...

Factor: Charles Ogden Gears (Astaroth)
Universe: 2741-9280-2788 (“Oceanic Hate”)
Location: Site-19, Eurasian Ocean, Earth
Charles Gears did not like being in an acid bath.
But that was the extent of his antipathy. He was not agonized by the hydrochloric acid burning at his skin. He was not anguished by the hydrochloric acid eating at his flesh. He was not tormented by the hydrochloric acid biting at his bones. He disliked it. And in terms of that dislike, it was more akin to the irritation of having to buy store-brand cola than anything else. It was just that insignificant.
He twitched his index finger, the bony digit currently just as long as the rest of his arm. That would change before long: his entire body was constantly breaking down and reforming, like a phoenix never quite able to achieve incarnation.
There was a hollow click from a device built into the acid tank, and the nasally voice of a scientist rang out, muffled slightly by the liquid: “SCP-682. Can you hear me?”
Charles strained — and, responding to his want, a functioning mouth and set of vocal cords formed on his right shoulder. “Allison,” the mouth slurred. “A-Allison.”
That was right, yes, that was right. They had taken his Allison. He was… he had come here to get his Allison back, but he'd been delayed. He was simply having a detour to take a little bath. It was vitally important to stay clean, yes, vitally important. He had always told his Allison that, when she was reluctant to take a bath. And he was here to take his Allison back — they had taken her, after all, snatched her away and replaced her name with a number.
He opened his mouth to speak again, but the mouth on his shoulder had already been burned away. A new one formed on his thigh: “W-Where…is Allison?”
Inaudible speech trickled from the radio — the scientists were speaking amongst themselves — but Charles caught a phrase: “…asking about 239-D again…” An ordinary person would have had no way of hearing that, but Charles Gears was no ordinary person — he'd paid to be more than that, after all, and had such sensitive ears. Yes, he could hear everything.
Someone approached him through the green gloom of the acid bath — a small, mousy man in a crisp business suit, smiling up at him. It was his old friend Louis Chermain, the one who'd given him such sensitive ears. It was strange to see such a professional fellow hanging around in an acid bath, but Charles didn't question it. He was no ordinary person, after all.
“Good to see you, Charles,” Chermain said, his Afrikaans accent coming through unusually loud and clear through the liquid barrier. “So very good to see you.”
“Yes,” Charles mumbled. “Do you have what I… what I need? Yes…”
One of the scientists muttered over the radio: “What is he talking about? Is he lucid or not?”
“I would not come to you otherwise, Charles,” Chermain smiled, fishing a bulky syringe out of his suit pocket. Green liquid — with flecks of red flesh — bubbled inside the injector. “To oppose the Foundation, you must be strong, Charles — and this is strength itself. Extracted from the corpse that fell into the North Sea… if your body takes to it, there is nothing that could stop you.”
“Yes…” Charles moaned through a new mouth on his throat as he squirmed in his fiery ocean. “Yes, I'll have the money wired to your account. Thank you. I am most g-grateful. Yes, I am most grateful…”
“It's rambling again. I doubt it can even hear us. Terminate the interview.”
Charles sighed in relief as the procedure was performed, lying back on a surgical table. It wasn't as simple a matter of injecting the solution into his veins — his body had to be adjusted first, to handle the strain of becoming something beyond human. He was given organs people didn't even have names for yet, his genes stretched out and played with and plucked like the strings of a harp.
He had never been a very artistic person, but the music of his metamorphosis had been a veritable tour de force. And he had such sensitive ears.
Charles twitched his finger again — harder, this time — and the glass of his sanctuary cracked. There was the distant warbling of an alarm. He was growing stronger — yes, he was growing stronger. Soon, strong enough to retrieve his Allison. Strong enough to protect her. It was for that purpose he'd allowed himself to be captured, after all.
Sudden, shapeless panic gripped him, his usually steady heartbeat accelerating to a chaotic reverberation. He'd forgotten something, hadn't he? He'd forgotten something vital.
His arm flexed. The glass cracked.
His legs flailed. The metal creaked.
His mouth screamed — and the tank burst.
He'd forgotten to wake Allison up for school. She'd certainly be late if he didn't do something.

Factor: Allison Chao (Resh)
Universe: 2741-9280-2788 (“Oceanic Hate”)
Location: Site-19, Eurasian Ocean, Earth
Despite his usually easy-going demeanour, JACK was actually quite the expert murderer.
The red-headed storysprite moved through the Mobile Task Force like a scythe through wheat, his woodcutter's axe sending limbs and heads flying off with astonishing speeds. Every now and then, a long prehensile beanstalk would extend out from under his sleeve and smash a soldier against the wall. Twenty soldiers had moved into this hallway to greet them, and that number had already reached the single digits.
What few bullets didn't miss him simply bounced off his plot armour: JACK wasn't the kind of being who would die until it was narratively satisfying.
“Backup needed, backup needed!” the commander of the MTF screamed into his radio — and that was the last thing he screamed, as JACK had appeared behind him and slammed a pail of water into his skull. It wasn't teleportation; the storysprite had simply been so fast that no movement was visible. JACK be nimble, JACK be quick, indeed.
The commander went down heavy, and the room was finally silent.
As far as hired help went, JACK was well worth what Allison was paying him. She snapped her fingers and Paimon, the demon who'd enveloped her as a shield, dissolved into nothingness. She hadn't summoned the entirety of one of the Kings of Hell, of course — she didn't have the power or the idiocy required — but just around 0.2% of the Foe of Haziel's physical might had been sufficient to block bullets and get her into Site-19.
Allison wrinkled her nose, the omnipresent stench of seawater smashing into it like a hammer. Nausea rose up in her throat.
From what her reconnaissance suggested, this Earth had suffered from a severe ecological disaster back in the 1800s, much earlier than other universes. The oceans had risen rapidly over the course of the next two centuries, and at this point the only survivors of humanity were those residing on artificial islands like Site-19 or genetically engineered sharkmen lurking down in the abyss.
But Allison didn't really care about any of that — the circumstances of this place were only relevant where they intersected with her objective. In this world where humanity struggled against the rising tides, the Foundation was a much less significant entity. The number of anomalies they contained barely reached 700, and many among those had been decommissioned to save holding space: in all honesty, they probably held little more than two-hundred at any one time.
And one of those anomalies was her father, Charles Gears. In her universe, he'd been killed by an anomaly called SCP-682, a madly giggling lizard-creature that delighted in slaughtering everything around it. In this universe, he was SCP-682.
“How was that?” JACK asked, tossing his bloodless axe up and down, smiling cheekily down the hallway at her. “Think I might deserve a raise, eh?”
“We'll talk about it later.” Allison wasn't sure whether the storysprite was being serious, but they had no time for fraternization either way. There was a hollow thunk from the sealed blast door behind her.
“Two behind there,” JACK said casually, nodding towards the door. It began haltingly rising up, the systems falling back into the Foundation's control. Probably thirty seconds until it fully opened.
“I'm aware.”
He raised an eyebrow. “They'll shoot ya.” His accent was inconsistent, shifting from British to German to Texan in the span of a single sentence.
“Unlikely.”
Allison closed her eyes and, humming a tune, allowed herself to fall backwards towards the floor, towards the reflectionless puddle of water that had pooled there. She fell, fell — and when she should have smashed into the floor, she kept falling.

Factor: Allison Chao (Resh)
Universe: 2900-8193-8147 (“Blackbird's Roost”)
Location: London, England, Earth
And then she did hit the floor — or rather, she hit the comfy mattress she'd put here in advance. Her eyes snapped open to take in the view of a new universe entirely.
At first, it had seemed impossible for a single girl to take on an SCP Foundation, even with the resources the Library offered. No matter how much she knew, what she gathered, or how many allies she gathered, to oppose the Foundation was to oppose the very mechanisms that governed the world. No matter how much it prepared, an ant was still an ant, and a boot was still a boot.
But then she'd realized the potential of the Ways.
They were everywhere, if you knew how to spot them — the stitching that bound the multiverse together. Invisible pathways from place to place, universe to universe, reality to reality, traversable by anyone who knew the correct method. Sometimes it was a song that had to be hummed, sometimes a door that had to be knocked on — but once you'd immersed yourself in the Ways, you started to get a feel for it. Where there was a will, there was a Way.
And once you'd reached the point where you could step through Ways as casually as breathing, well… at that point, you weren't really an ant anymore.
She'd set up this temporary base in a boarded-up apartment with the most basic of amenities, sickly yellow light infiltrating through a crack in the window. A filthy flat in a plague-ridden London wouldn't have been her first choice for a safe space, but the Ways that connected this apartment to Oceanic Hate's Site-19 were too good to ignore. The Overseer Council would have fainted on the spot if they understood just how fragile their security really was in the face of such cosmic coincidence.
There wasn't any time to stand there and be smug about it, though. It had taken her ten seconds to travel to her universe, so now she only had twenty to go back to Oceanic Hate in an advantageous position.
As quickly as she could, Allison reached down and flipped the nearest coffee table upside down, tapping each of its four legs with her knuckles. Each tap was accompanied by a ringing sound, like glass vibrating. When that rhythm reached its peak, Allison braced herself. The Knock for this Way was particularly stressful.
Kneeling before the upside-down coffee table, Allison slammed her head down towards it — in such a position that the leg of the table would have gone right through her eye socket if she didn't stop. She couldn't stop, though, couldn't hesitate. The will and intention to lose one's vision was the only way to move through this Way.
Allison felt something invisible strike her in the eye, turning her vision into a chaotic mess of colours —

Factor: Allison Chao (Resh)
Universe: 2741-9280-2788 (“Oceanic Hate”)
Location: Site-19, Eurasian Ocean, Earth
— and when they had cleared, she was back where she'd started.
Not exactly where she'd started, though. This time, she was on the other side of the door — staring at the backs of the two security officers as they got the door open. One was tapping furiously at the control panel, while the other was getting ready to fire the second the entrance fully opened.
Reaching into her pocket, Allison pulled out a gun — a cobbled-together mess of mundane and anomalous parts — and popped the armed officer in the back of the head. He crumpled to the floor, smoke pouring from his eyes and mouth. The officer at the panel whirled around, reaching for his own sidearm — but the 0.2% of Paimon lurking in Allison's shadow dashed him against the wall.
She returned the gun to her pocket, staring impassively at the two bodies. A few months ago, the idea of personally killing someone would have been unthinkable to her — but now she could do it like it was nothing.
Perhaps that was because it was like nothing. An infinite number of variations of these two security officers existed throughout the multiverse, and almost all of them were still living their lives unchanged by Allison's actions. In the grand scheme of things, what she'd done was essentially the equivalent of trimming someone's fingernail. If she looked at things like that, her heart felt remarkably light.
The door fully opened, revealing JACK still leaning against the wall, tapping his foot and checking a non-existent watch. “And what sort of time do you call this?” he demanded, alleged humour heavy in his voice.
“I've only been gone thirty seconds.” Allison stepped over the bodies — and past JACK too, proceeding down the hallway. “Did I miss anything?”
“In thirty seconds?” In that annoying way of his, JACK easily kept pace with Allison's ferocious powerwalk.
“Answer the question, please.”
JACK flicked his ear, smiling smugly. “There's another kind of alarm going off now,” he said, prancing down the hallway beside her. “Keter-class containment breach — sounds nasty. It's getting louder, so we're probably going to run into it the way we're going.”
Allison grew pale. This was all becoming extremely familiar. “Does the alarm say which Keter-class anomaly has breached containment?”
JACK frowned as he listened closer — there was some vague tale about his eavesdropping skills, apparently — and then winced as the information registered in his brain. That expression was honestly the only answer Allison needed, but he spoke anyway:
“SCP-682?”

Factor: Charles Ogden Gears (Astaroth)
Universe: 2741-9280-2788 (“Oceanic Hate”)
Location: Site-19, Eurasian Ocean, Earth
Something was wrong. He couldn't find his Allison anywhere.
A choked moan rang out from the jaw on Charles' chest as he shuffled over the corpse of another scientist, checking Allison's bedroom again. She wasn't anywhere to be found. He'd dispatched personnel in the kitchen, in the garage, even in the bathroom, but he just couldn't find where they were holding her. His body shifted rapidly as a response to the stress, fur becoming scales becoming smooth white skin becoming fur again. A mouth on his back whined in pain as tooth enamel began to push rebellious out of his eyes, and he was forced to drive it back in again with his newly-armoured thumbs.
He lifted the corpse up with his prehensile tail, turning it over this way and that to get a better look. Perhaps this corpse actually was Allison, and his sight was simply faulty. That would make sense — he was used to seeing with eyes, not the laser-emitting fibres that had erupted from his skin over the last few minutes. If this corpse truly was Allison, that would be extremely convenient for him. That way, he could just wake her up and send her off to school.
The shape being beamed into his mind was a man's face, however. Not Allison. Charles dropped the body to the floor and crushed its skull under an elephantine foot — the rare indulgence of frustration. This was a stressful situation. Nobody would blame him.
Charles left a slick red trail as he moved through the hallways, leaving behind unnecessary body parts as he went. A leg there, an arm, a tail, a horn — replacements grew quickly, and the only thing Charles really needed was a body capable of moving forward. The method of ambulation was irrelevant. So long as he could be closer to Allison one second than he was in the last, he was happy with anything.
“A-Allison,” a mouth on his cheek whispered beseechingly. “Allison. T-Time for school. Time. Time.”
Time. He didn't have much time at all. He had to wake Allison up soon or else she'd be late. He'd seen her sleeping before, back in that test all those years ago, so he knew he had to wake her up.
Charles' arm fell off again — but this time, it didn't grow back. Still, that was fine. He didn't need arms to walk.
Sudden red-hot rage gripped him, blood spilling from the pores in his skin in sympathy. Strangled screams ripped holes in dozens of mouths, all across the surface of his body, and he battered his remaining arms against the metal walls.
“Allison!” he roared, rolling through the corridors like a gargantuan toddler. “Allison! Allison! Where?! Where Allison?!”
“Dad.”
In an instant, the thundercloud of rage that had been building up within him dissipated, replaced by an earnest calm that soothed his entire body. It was as if his entire blood supply had dropped down to room temperature. The very sight of the small figure in front of him, and the very sound of her face, had accomplished that immediately.
"A-Allison," Charles croaked, addressing the indistinct figure. "Allison. Time for school. T-Time for school. You'll be late."
"I know, Dad," Allison said, extending a hand. "Will you walk me there?"

Factor: Allison Chao (Resh)
Universe: 2741-9280-2788 (“Oceanic Hate”)
Location: Site-19, Eurasian Ocean, Earth
Charles Gears would not survive the next few minutes. Allison had known that from the start — in fact, it was part of the reason she'd come here.
Just because Charles shared his SCP designation with that damn lizard didn't mean he shared it's indomitability. While his body was occupied adapting to a continual acid bath, it could maintain cohesion — but once the situation calmed down and the necessary stimuli was nowhere to be found, it would fall apart.
It was doing just that now. The fleshy mass that followed Allison out into the sunlight left chunks of itself squirming on the floor every few metres, and those chunks writhed for only a few seconds each before falling still. Her father was dying again, piece by piece.
But this wasn't such a bad place to go. The outer deck of Site-19 was bathed in sunlight, the glow reflecting off the ocean that stretched in every direction, punctuated only by the occasional surviving mountaintop. It was like the sea was made of gold.
The Site-19 personnel would be busy with the anomalies she'd sent JACK to release. They had a few minutes.
"What do you think, Dad?" she muttered, looking out at the shining ocean. "It's quite a view."
"D-Don't forget to do your homework."
"I won't, Dad," Allison shook her head, very intentionally not looking at the fleshbeast beside her. "I won't ever forget, I promise. I don't do anything but homework anymore anyway."
A slimy, half-formed hand clumsily ruffled her hair. Allison suddenly became aware of how very wet her eyes were.
Waves crashed against the steel walls of Site-19 below, each impact like the firing of a bullet. The oceans rose second by second on this planet — before the year was gone, this island too would lie beneath the waves. In the end, the sea took everything away.
Charles Ogden Gear's final wisdom was like a whisper on the wind. “B-B-Brush your teeth.”
Then there was nothing — no speaking, no squirming, no breathing. The nightmare life of the man had reached its conclusion. Allison stood there alone, next to a decomposing pile of meat and bone, staring out at the sunset. Carefully, methodically, she reached her hands to her face and wiped it dry.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said. “I will.”

Factor: Allison Chao (Resh)
Universe: N/A
Location: The Wanderer's Library
The best thing about the Wanderer's Library — save for its infinite repository of knowledge and status as a multiversal hub — was that there was always a quiet reading room to despair in.
A guide to the Perseus sequence of universes, written by the Wandsman of Port Calamb, lay open on the desk before Allison. This was a tome she had acquired for herself — not loaned from the library — so she'd taken liberties when it came to annotating the volume. A big red X had been scrawled onto the page for Oceanic Hate, obscuring the grainy psychograph of the aquatic landscape. Another one down.
Allison sighed as she looked down
The door to the reading room creaked open, and a second later there was a thunk as JACK deposited a wooden bucket on the desk in front of Allison. She raised an eyebrow at the strange… gift?
“What's this?” she asked.
JACK's grin was innocence itself. “You asked for coffee.”
“A pail of coffee?”
He shrugged. “There're no stories about me fetching cups of coffee. Sorry, this is the best I can do.”
There was a moment's hesitation before Allison decided this wasn't a hill worth dying on. “I need to get some more research done,” she said, waving a vague hand — and then, once she was sure he had gone, she muttered: “Thanks.”
The pen in her hand started shaking, and Allison found herself having to seize her forearm to stop it's treacherous trembling. It was unavoidable: she hadn't been getting much sleep lately. Her mind was willing, but her body was weak.
She'd known that this Charles Gears was doomed from the start. He'd died years ago — the dissolution of his body was just making that official. She hadn't gone there to save him; she wasn't that deluded. She'd gone to watch him die.
The death of this Charles Gears made eight.
The first, her real father, had his stomach torn out by that damn lizard.
The second had his head crushed between the teeth of a gargantuan skeleton.
The third had been executed for crimes against humanity.
The fourth had been strangled by his only friend.
The fifth had burnt in nuclear fire.
The sixth had been wished out of existence.
And the seventh had put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.
Each of them had been dead from the start. Allison would save her father only when her father could be saved. No, she had pursued these eight to remind herself how it felt to fail. To keep herself on mission.
Perhaps, if she told someone about this, they'd consider it unhealthy — intentionally driving trauma home like this, like striking a nail with a hammer — but Allison knew that it was exactly what she needed. The other Black Queens had long ago accomplished their goals, moving on to whatever frivolities now occupied them. They'd done it. They'd done it easily — and yet here she was, a pathetic idiot despairing in an empty room.
She forced a bitter smile to her lips. That was fine. If she really was the worst version of herself, the worst Black Queen, then that was at least some kind of identity. Something that made her different from the rest.
Something that made her more than just the tip of a fingernail.

Elsewhere, Elsewhen…

Factor: Cowboy Fomalhaut (Apricot)
Universe: N/A
Location: Drunkness Street
When one was on the run from the Cowboys, it was best not to risk moving through conventional space. Those multiversal mercenaries could sniff out things that existed a mile away.
Still, the place Fomalhaut had elected to cut through was perhaps just a bit too fitting. A small alleyway on Drunkness Street, a thin, cramped line with a stairway going up at the end, each step soaked in Ways. The walls stretched up as far as he could see, emblazoned with bizarre neon images and text on languages Fomalhaut had never encountered before. Every now and then, he'd catch a shadow scurrying past in the distance, like someone was watching him.
He had no intention of sticking around — he'd heard the denizens of this place didn't take too kindly to intruders. The stories of what happened to those who broke into Drunkness Street. Ordinarily, even he wouldn't entertain the idea.
How had it come to this, though? It was the most unfair of the unfair. Fomalhaut lifted his bottle over his mouth and shook it, the last trickles of his Taboo Mix landing on his tongue. A splendid mixture of vodka, battery acid and the blood of an Anti-Human Unicorn. It wouldn't be easy to get his hands on more.
Tears came to his eyes, staining the bandages that bound him into this humanoid form. It wouldn't be easy to get his hands on more? A few days ago he could've gone into any bar in existence and ordered whatever he pleased. And now after one mistake — the moon hadn't even been that big — he was just a pariah to be hunted? A cockroach to be excised for the sake of cleanliness?
Bullshit, bullshit! Fomalhaut hurled the bottle at the wall and it shattered, the projectile moving with such speed and force that the glass shards lodged into the brickwork. What few drops of his ambrosia that were left trickled down onto the cement.
"Are you sad?" asked a quiet, soft voice.
Fomalhaut whirled around, hand reaching for the muzak pistol at his side. He'd been fully alert, ready for the assault of whatever beings lurked in this place, yet that voice had been much too close to comfort. It was as if it had just started existing right next to him.
The source of the voice stood at the top of the stairs: a small, slight young man wearing a white dress shirt and trousers. In his hand he held a red paper umbrella, the rim of which covered the top half of his face, giving Fomalhaut a view only of the boy's slight smile and a tuft of dark hair hanging over the back of his neck.
Still, though, surely from this angle — with the boy higher up than him — Fomalhaut should have been able to see his face. The Cowboy moves slightly, and as he did he swore the rim of the umbrella did as well, like an optical illusion constantly concealing the boy's features.
"You got business with me, kid?" Fomalhaut asked, hand on his pistol, eyes flicking around for any sign of reinforcements. "I'm just making my way through. Don't want any trouble."
"I understand completely," the boy with the red umbrella said, taking a step down the stairs. "You're not the sort of person who is allowed to move freely. I'm exactly the same, the most aberrant of aberrations."
The boy looked like a strong breeze could have knocked him over. He held no weapons. There wasn't a trace of hostility in his voice or his body language.
But still, Fomalhaut's body stiffened every second he looked at him. It was as if it were preparing for rigor mortis. Run, his instincts screamed at him as the boy descended the stairs. Run. Bad. Wrong. Danger.
The boy reached the bottom of the stairs, his umbrella still concealing his eyes. "Are you frightened?" he asked, with more than a hint of relish in his voice.
Fomalhaut's hand didn't leave his muzak pistol. "What's there to be scared of?" he scoffed. "You?"
The boy ignored the taunt. "I'd like for you to do something on my behalf. Would you like to be rendered innocent?"
He was only meters away. The animal instinct to flee and the human instinct to want warred against each for a moment, but the winner was obvious with the words that left Fomalhaut's mouth. "You can… get me back in the Cowboys…?" A poisonous hope blossomed in his chest.
"I can do a great number of things," the boy with the red umbrella said cheerily. "That is one of them."
Fomalhaut narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "And what do I have to do for you?" He was no stranger to the way the world worked. Equivalent exchange was the principle underlying everything.
The boy reached into his pocket — and it was all Fomalhaut could do not to fill him with musical holes right then and there.
"I'm glad you're such a prudent person," the boy giggled, noticing Fomalhaut's obvious caution. "But there's only one real thing I need you to do on my behalf."
He fished a small, grainy photograph out of his pocket — a picture of a young woman with dark, shaggy hair standing on some kind of artificial island, the waves crashing below her. Suspicion was written into every one of her features. Right in the corner of the image, someone had scrawled the words Black Queen.
It didn't have to be said aloud, but Fomalhaut found himself doing so anyway. "You want me to kill this girl?"
"Yes," the boy replied, his smile spreading into just the slightest toothy grin. "As many times as you can."


Previously...

Factor: Allison Chao (Resh)
Universe: N/A
Location: The Wanderer's Library
Allison Chao hated herself.
She hated the way she lounged on the reading room's couch as though she owned the place, she hated the way she waved her hands around like she was an actor on a stage, and she hated the high-pitched giggle she let out at her own jokes. Jokes that weren't even that funny.
More than anything else, though, Allison Chao hated the way Allison Chao looked at her.
Her double had invited her out to this secluded corner of the Library with a half-legible letter shoved into a shoe locker in Neon London — a rambling, self-important missive signed with the name Allison Chao (Quetzal). Normally, Allison would have just ignored a message from one of her irritating counterparts, but in this case the information Quetzal had been offering in exchange for her indulgence was too valuable.
Still, this was only just barely worth it.
As Quetzal lounged on the couch, rambling on and on, the ball-jointed doll arm she had bound to her left shoulder delicately fed her grapes in the space between her words. Her newsboy cap lay on the coffee-rotted coffee table in front of her, just outside of Allison's reach — she had no doubt that Quetzal had countermeasures set up to prevent theft, however. No matter how annoying her other versions were, Allison knew they were universally capable.
“So,” Quetzal concluded, with a dramatic swish of her blazer. “What do you think?”
She finally returned her gaze to Allison — sat on the other side of the room in a leather armchair. The two of them were separated by a fireplace that cast an eerie red light on the room, on the walls that doubled as bookshelves. This was the Library, after all — even in an infinite space like this, not an inch of real estate was to be wasted.
“Give me a second,” Allison sighed, crossing her arms. The emotional indicators were clumsy, forced, but Quetzal either didn't mind or didn't care. She was likely doing the exact same thing anyway. “I need to… to digest what you just said.”
In terms of appearance, she was a stark contrast to Quetzal — gloomy, listless and bedraggled would be the most common words to use, her long hair hanging over most of her face like some horror movie ghost. Her journeys throughout the multiverse thus far had not been kind to her: she hadn't permitted them to be.
“But of course!” Quetzal sat up, spreading her arms wide theatrically. “It's only best if we sisters are on the same page!
Allison clicked her tongue. “I'm not your sister.”
Quetzal winked at her, tapping her nose conspiratorially. “I think you'll find yourself in the minority on that one, my dear.”
“I'm not your dear, either.”
Her double sighed, cupping her cheek with a hand as she adjusted her lounging position. Her doll-arm brought a glass of red wine to her lips, and she sipped it elegantly, waggling her eyebrows. Allison wasn't sure whether that display was meant to be some kind of flex, or if her counterpart was just genuinely that decadent.
“So,” Allison said, resetting her face back to a neutral, blank expression. Her voice came out as a comfortable monotone. “Let me make sure I understand you correctly.”
“Go ahead!”
“Your big plan, the plan you made me come all the way here for, is to find ourselves a poorly developed Earth, trick the locals into thinking we're gods, and have them build a giant golden statue of you?”
“Of us!” Quetzal wagged an admonishing finger. “We have the same face, after all — we can just double up!”
“And then, once we have the statue, we somehow steal it and then sell it to another Earth?”
“I have buyers all lined up,” Quetzal grinned cheekily. “If I play my cards right — and let's be honest, I always do — I'm sure I can have a few of them pay up before they realize I don't plan on parting with my statue.”
“I thought it was our statue.”
Quetzal waved a vague hand. “Sure, sure, whatever.”
Allison allowed herself an exhausted sigh, steepling her fingers in front of her as she leaned forward in the armchair. “Listen,” she said slowly. “Now that I understand the idea, would you like some constructive criticism?”
Her counterpart's smug smile was infuriatingly wide. “But of course.”
“It's the worst fucking idea I've ever heard.”
The smile vanished. “That's not constructive criticism.”
Allison stood up from the chair, scratching at her ragged hoodie in a vain attempt to get the creases out of it. She knew she shouldn't have come here. Nothing good ever came from meeting these idiots on their own terms.
“First of all,” she said, looking dismissively down at her twin on the couch. “I'm not interested in money — and even if I was, your plan has no guarantee of getting money. Pissing off half-a-dozen alternate Earths for a laugh and a gaudy statue sounds more like an elaborate suicide than anything else. To be frank, it depresses me that you and I have the same brain. Please don't contact me again.”
And with that, she began marching to the door, her fingers curling around the handle. Just before she turned it, however, Quetzal's voice rang out from the couch.
“If you're not interested in money,” she asked, genuinely curious. “What are you interested in? What is it you want, little sister?”
That disgusting nickname again. “None of your business.”
Quetzal laughed from behind her. “No, seriously, I want to know! It's more my business than most things I do, after all. Really, what is it you want? Knowledge? Prestige? Exploration? Excitement? Girls? Boys? Friendship? Everyone wants something. That's what lets them keep living.”
With each suggestion — and with the one that was so clearly missed, again and again — Allison's anger grew. Finally, she threw her hand down from the door handle and whirled around, jabbing a finger towards Quetzal.
“What do I want?” she said, each word punctuated with an additional jab. “I want what we should all want — what we should all be working towards, or have you forgotten? Dad — what they did to him, what they're doing to him — or have you forgotten about that?”
Quetzal winced, something like genuine sympathy entering her eyes. “Oh,” she cringed. “You're one of those, huh?”
Allison faltered just for a moment, her finger hovering in the air impotently. “What do you mean, one of those?” she muttered.
With a grunt, Quetzal sat up from her lounging position, her legs dangling over the side of the couch and her hands resting in her lap. She patted the space next to her. “Sit down a sec, little sister.” Her voice was unusually gentle.
“Hell no.”
“Okay,” Quetzal replied without a beat, smiling in what was clearly an attempt to be reassuring. “Everyone's… all of us are like you at the start, Allison. Angry, bitter, wanting to… to get back at everyone or stop the bad things from happening at all. I know I was — the things I did, hoo boy.” Her gaze turned far away, as if her eyes were staring at another scene entirely. When she spoke, her voice was barely audible. “But they've already happened. They can't unhappen. You understand that, right? At some point, you have to give up, move on. For your own sake, if nothing else.”
“Move on.” The words were like sewage in Allison's mouth. A bitter nausea rose up in her stomach at what she was hearing. “Like you have?”
Quetzal's eyes flicked up to stare into Allison's — and for the first time, she saw her own self in her own gaze.
“Yeah,” she said, voice surprisingly firm. “Like I have.”
Allison was out of the room in a second flat.
Usually, even after having been here so many times, Allison would have to take a second to appreciate the glory of the Library — to experience a sense of awe at the skyscraper-bookshelves, the distant stars up in the rafters, the mingling crowds of the human and the inhuman — but her disgust at the cowardice she'd just witnessed thoroughly swept such emotions away. She stormed down the walkway, passing by dozens of doors to reading rooms just like the one she'd just been in.
No trace of emotion could be seen in her demeanour or her gait — but if one looked closely, very closely, they might just have seen a film of tears clinging to her eyes for just a second. She blinked, and then they were gone.
Move on? Move on? The idea that such a thought could infiltrate any version of her made her want to lean over the railing and vomit into the void below. Her father had suffered and died, she'd suffered and as good as died — and she was just meant to forget about it? Pretend like it had never happened? Hell no.
Moving on was the same as dying — and Allison Chao didn't ever intend to let that happen.
“Guess things didn't go so well then, boss?” JACK said, appearing at her side. Despite the respectable powerwalk Allison was executing, the red-headed storysprite's leisurely stroll was easily able to keep pace with her. Narrative convenience didn't much care about the laws of physics, after all.
“No,” Allison said, a little too quickly. “Things didn't go well, just as I said they would — wouldn't. I shouldn't have let you convince me to meet with her.”
“My bad,” the self-assured young man raised an apologetic hand. “But my reasoning was still sound, I think. No woman is an island and all that — this world abhors people without friends. If you ever want to achieve anything, you need someone to achieve it with you — and I'm not talking about your usual pastime, in case you think that counts.”
“Isn't that what I pay you for?”
JACK's laughter was genuinely mirthful, echoing through the Library's halls. He wiped a grammatical tear from his eye. “I appreciate your contributions, boss,” he chuckled. “But I'd advise you not to consider me a friend. You'll end up happier that way.”
“Fantastic. Thank you for the pick-me-up. Good to know I have you.”
“Is that sarcasm I detect?” JACK beamed, spinning as he pranced down the walkway. “You've come so far, boss!”
Allison stared straight forward. “Believe me, it's a source of continual shame.”
“Well,” JACK grinned, swinging over the railing to sit precariously on it, legs swinging over the void. “Maybe you'll have better luck with the next one!”

Factor: Allison Chao (Resh)
Universe: 5299-2192-8883 (“Clear Skies”)
Location: Eastminister, London, England, Earth
The air tasted different here — cleaner than Allison was used to.
She got more than a few funny looks as she marched through Eastminister: doubtless she looked like anything more than just another homeless girl, and the lords and ladies of London's richest district were used to a more discreet form of poverty. More than once she caught pedestrians wrinkling their noses at her as though she was exuding some kind of foul stench. Maybe she was — her memory of when she'd last properly washed was a little vague, after all.
The painfully loud hustle and bustle of the city didn't do much to help her mood, either — she was forced to plant her hands over her ears as a particularly loud megabus rumbled past, and that only increased the funny glances she was getting.
Ignoring the looks and the whispers, she came to a small, nondescript tea shop nestled between two celebrity chef restaurants, like the demilitarized zone between warring countries. Making sure she still had the invitation stuffed into her pocket — she was likely to get a bullet in the head otherwise — she opened the door and stepped inside.
Darkness.
The place was pitch-black… no, more than pitch-black — she was standing in an utter void, her legs dangling over nothingness. She got the feeling that, if she said the wrong thing here, she'd be stuck for a long, long time. Maybe forever. So, very calmly, she spoke:
“I'm here to see Penelope Carter.”
With her hands, she blindly fumbled in her pocket for the invitation — fingers tightening around the expensive envelope, palm slipping over the wax seal. For a single, horrifying moment, Allison thought that she'd dropped it into the darkness — but then a light chuckle rang out, it's cadence immediately familiar.
“You seem concerned, little sister.”
The void vanished, and Allison's feet again landed on wooden floorboards. She was now in a small room, mostly bare, save for an exquisitely crafted table and two chairs. A small window was present on each of the room's four walls — but beyond the glass, all that was visible was complete, inky darkness. It was like this room was at the bottom of the ocean, just barely avoiding being crushed by the pressure. A bright chandelier dangled from the ceiling.
Just like her voice, the woman sitting at the table, drinking a cup of tea, was immediately recognizable. Even with the eyepatch on her left eye and her motley collection of scars — faded gashes like the gills of a shark, the abandoned attempt at a Glasgow smile, the ruined and dangling left ear — Allison knew her own face. Just as she'd expected, Penelope Carter was just another Black Queen.
Well, she thought, a moment of arrogance slithering in her mind. Maybe not the Black Queen.
“You don't seem especially surprised to see me,” Penelope Carter said, delicately putting the teacup back down onto its plate. “Or rather, to see me with this face.”
The woman was wearing a brown pinstripe suit and a long coat, her dark hair flowing over the chair behind her. Black leather gloves covered her hands, steepled in front of her on the table. A golden image of a dragon decorated the surface of her eyepatch, roaring at some invisible threat. It was as if she'd tried to dress for a business meeting and a fashion show at the same time.
Allison walked around the table and sat in the other chair, watching her other self for any signs of duplicity. “There's only one person who'd bother getting in contact with me,” she said. “I don't like to waste time unnecessarily. What is it you want?”
As she'd said, she'd pretty much known that Penelope Carter was an Allison Chao from the very beginning. It was easy to stop your own behaviour patterns, and it wasn't the first time she'd encountered a Black Queen going by another name. After what had happened with that Henrietta III von Apollyon maniac, nothing could surprise her anymore.
An insincere, lopsided smile spread across Carter's face. “Well, you seem to be a young lady who wants to get right down to it. Are you in some kind of hurry?”
Allison shrugged uncertainly. “Like I said, I don't want to waste time.”
Carter glanced up towards the chandelier. Her good eye narrowed slightly — Allison wasn't sure what that movement indicated, if anything, but this version of her seemed to have a way of putting her on edge. “This room is very interesting. Were you aware of that?”
“No,” Allison shook her head. “What's so interesting about it?”
“Around ten years ago,” Carter explained. “A group of miscreants attempted to steal from the Wanderer's Library. A foolish mission, as I'm sure you understand, but these fools had somehow gotten their hands on equipment that allowed them much more success than you'd normally expect. They're all still suffering a fate worse than death, of course, but before they were caught they managed to scoop this room out from the Library and send it adrift, until it landed here. Still, it's connected to the Library by something like an umbilical cord. I just thought that was interesting.”
“So what you're really saying is that the Library's rules apply in this space?”
Carter's smile widened fractionally. “I'm glad you're such an intelligent girl. Just a little incentive for us not to kill each other.”
“Does that usually happen?”
Penelope sipped her tea. “It wouldn't be the first time. On this occasion, however, I'm pleased to tell you I actually want to offer you a job.” Her nose wrinkled. “Some actual purpose might be just the thing you need.”
And there it was.
Allison smiled sweetly back at Carter, but even she knew the expression was sickeningly fake. “Purpose?” she asked, her voice several pitches higher than usual. “Whatever kind of purpose could you be offering, hm?”
If Carter realized she'd already lost her quarry, she didn't show it. “I've already gotten several of us on board. The Marshall, Carter and Dark of this universe is making a killing in extradimensional artifacts — if you'd simply agree to assist us in fetching some simple items from realities a little closer to your own, I'd be only too happy to allow you to share in our success. There's a mansion on the coast of New Spain where I'm told the waves are just to die for. I'm sure they'd have no problem making room for another Allison to share in the luxury.”
Calmly, very calmly, Allison reached over the table, gently picked up Carter's teacup — and hurled it against the wall, where it shattered into hundreds of pieces. Carter sighed.
“Should I consider that a no?”
Allison turned to her double, the slightest desperation infiltrating her tone. “Is this it? Really? This is all there is, all you can think of? Look at you — you're one of the richest women on this planet! You could take them on, you could beat them easy, you could take him back! And you're just sitting here, sipping tea and — and doing fuck-all!”
“Ah,” Carter said delicately. “You're one of those.”
Sudden anger spiked into Allison's heart — shattering restraint that had been worn down over many months — and she lunged over the table to slam her fist into the business woman's face. If nothing else, if nothing else, she could wipe that pitying look off her face, make her realize that Allison wasn't a child to be looked down upon!

Ding.

Allison stopped her passage over the table, her fist hovering limp in the air. A razor blade was tickling against her jugular, held by a stern-looking woman in an old-fashioned maid uniform. Slowly, slowly, Allison gulped — she knew by instinct that this woman was a predator, someone who could end her life with the slightest muscle movement.
At first, it looked as if Carter hadn't moved — but when Allison looked closer, she saw that a small golden bell was now dangling between two of her fingers. The inside pocket of her long coat was now slightly visible, and there Allison could see countless more bells, some heavily damaged and some as pristine as the golden one.
“I'd thank you not to lay your hands on my employer,” the stern woman whispered, staring unblinking at Allison. “Shall I execute her, ma'am?”
As quietly as she could to avoid nicking her throat, Allison whispered: “I don't think the Library would appreciate you killing me on the premises.”
“Oh, I'd be very discreet,” the woman smirked, brushing a lock of unruly hair out of Allison's face. “Believe me — you'd barely feel a thing, and there'd be hardly a drop of blood at all. I doubt the Library would even notice.”
Carter raised her free hand, shaking her head. “That's enough, Miss Deeds,” she said. “I'm not fond of suicide — even if it's in self-defense.”
Instantly, Miss Deeds relented, returning her razor blade to her pocket and curtsying respectfully to her employer. A moment later, she vanished, with no sign that she'd ever been there at all — save for the momentary tightness in Allison's throat as it sank in just how close she'd come to death. The panic cleared as long seconds ticked on and the maid showed no signs of reappearing —
— only for the panic to return with a vengeance as Carter turned back to her, eye locked into a murderous glare.
“Listen, little girl,” Carter hissed, returning the golden bell to her pocket. “I see that you think you're very important and so very unique, that your pain and your hate are singular. Well, they aren't. I was you, once. They took Charles from me, just as they took him from you, and I made them pay.”
The word came out of Allison's mouth as a murmur. “How…?”
Carter closed her eye, a smirk crossing her lips as the scene played out once again before her. “I killed them,” she whispered, pleasure evident in her voice. “Everyone involved. I killed them. I killed their families. I killed everyone they'd ever cared about. I killed everyone they ever worked with. And then I went to another Earth and did it again, and again, and again. It was a long damn time before I was satisfied.”
When she opened her eye again, she suddenly looked very tired, and her voice cracked as she finished: “But I am satisfied — and now I can live my life. Do you understand? It won't make me happy. It didn't make me happy.”
Allison looked down at one of the most powerful women on this Earth, her hands hanging by her sides as she digested what she'd just been told. Coming from a version of herself who'd accomplished everything she wanted, what could this be considered but prophecy? If what she said was true, the best thing to do would be to take her advice. To give up. To move on.
But that was something she would never do. Instead, she opened her mouth and spoke, deathly quiet: “Does the Black Moon howl?”
“What?” For the first time since Allison had met her, Carter sounded confused.
Allison shook her head. “Nevermind.” And with that, she turned and left. She had that. At the very least, she still had that.

Factor: Allison Chao (Resh)
Universe: N/A
Location: The Wanderer's Library
Allison sidled out of the way of a heavily bandaged Cowboy as she made her way towards the nearest library desk, planting her hands over her ears and gritting her teeth to drown out the omni-lingual babble of the countless sapients that populated the Library.
Just like with every other Black Queen Allison had encountered, Penelope Carter hadn't known about the Black Moon. It was true, then: Allison was the only Black Queen that had that entity's favour. There was the less charitable interpretation, of course — that Allison was the only version that had needed outside assistance to reach this point — but she cast that aside. What it meant, what it really meant, was that she was the only Allison Chao with any chance of actually achieving her goals.
Her benefactor was nothing if not capable, after all.
After minutes of maneuvering through the crowd, Allison finally reached the desk, staring down the diminutive Archivist behind it. That was a little pointless, to be fair, since the Archivist had no eyes, but Allison still liked to feel she was in control here.
Following a few moments of silence, Allison cleared her throat to get the Archivist's attention.
“How can I help you?” it gurgled, twitching in its seat.
“I'm looking for the Seal of Solomon, ninth edition,” Allison said, injecting the necessary amount of confidence into her voice. “Paper format, please.”
The Archivist vibrated in its seat, the required information flooding into its mind. Thin, bony hands grasped at empty air for a few seconds. “Shelf Apple-92-Lemur,” it clicked. “Do you intent to lend it out?”
Allison nodded — and then, again realizing her mistake, replied: “Yes.”
“I will have it retrieved for you. Please present your Library card.”
She hesitated for a moment before pulling the card out of her pocket.
Unlike the standard-issue Library card, the piece of paper Allison slid across the desk held no picture of her, no identification at all in fact — just a jet-black square. No light reflected against the card, instead simply disappearing into its depths. In terms of appearance, it was more like a card-shaped hole in space than anything else.
Blind as it was, the Archivist recoiled once the card came near it, hurriedly pushing the item back in Allison's direction.
“I will have it retrieved for you,” it repeated — though it's voice was now more a snarl than anything. “May you die screaming.”
Allison wasn't especially surprised at the reception; she was used to it by now. Long ago, her employer had apparently managed to extract some concessions from the Library — even though this place obeyed those ancient agreements, that didn't mean it had to like them. So long as things still went the way Allison needed, though, she didn't much care.
Within a few minutes, she was marching away from the desk, the heavy tome clutched to her chest.
“That's heavy-duty stuff,” JACK commented. “You got a plan in mind?”
The storysprite appeared sitting cross-legged on a nearby reading table, earning himself a glare from a passing Docent. He seemed more like a JACK FROST than his usual heroic fare today, tiny icicles hanging from his eyelashes and a noticeable frostbite covering his skin. He tossed an empty paint-bucket from hand to hand.
While Allison doubted that JACK wanted an actual explanation, or would listen to one, she found herself speaking anyway: “The entities described in this tome are powerful,” she said. “If I can successfully summon and bind them, they'll make useful allies against Foundations. We'll test them against the Nautical Earth we were investigating last week.”
“Roger dodger,” JACK offered a lazy salute. “When are we doing this, then?”
“Tomorrow.”
JACK cocked his head. “Not today? That's not like you. What happened to not wasting time?”
Allison cursed inwardly: this damn thing could be too sharp sometimes. “I'm busy today.”
“With what? The only thing you ever do is… oh, I see. Your usual pastime.”
Allison ignored JACK, marching towards the nearest Way as the storysprite's voice faded away behind her:
“That isn't healthy, you know!”

Factor: Allison Chao (Resh)
Universe: 2190-7625-9811 (“The Road Most Travelled”)
Location: Los Angeles, California, United States of America, Earth
The girl seemed to be doing well at her new job.
It was something to do with computers, from what Allison had observed. Not a perfect job, but far above the norm in terms of what was available on this Earth. Good pay, good benefits, a sense of stability. Allison vaguely wondered what it would be like to have a sense of stability.
Allison watched the girl from a distance, her hood pulled over her head to hide her face. It wouldn't do for the girl to recognize herself, after all.
The happy girl was sitting outside her office, eating a sandwich on her bench as she watched the world go by. There was something different about her. The first few times Allison had come here to watch her, she hadn't been able to spot exactly what that was — but now that she'd finally figured it out, it seemed obvious. She was so much lighter than everyone else, like they had a weight on their shoulders that she'd thrown off with ease.
Give up, Allison had been told. If she did give up, was this the kind of life she could have? This sort of simple, easy happiness? It would be nice. It would certainly be nice.
A decision came dangerously close to forming in Allison's mind — but then the happy girl's phone rang, and she put it to her ear. Any treasonous notions still remaining were firmly eradicated with the disgusting words the happy girl spoke:

"̵̟̎H̶̘̿ì̴̥,̷̱̓ ̵̮̎D̶̯̐a̵͖̒ď̵̯!̴̲͌"̴̞̋

Allison's hands tightened into hateful fists in her pockets, squeezing with such force that her fingernails drew blood. Her breath felt like acid in her lungs, and she had to cling to the nearest lamppost to stay standing up.
That's not your father, she wanted to scream. Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten?! They killed him! They killed him and you're sitting there calling some trash your father like it's nothing, like he's nothing! How dare you?! How dare you be happy?!
Give up, they'd said, as if it was inevitable. Give up. Give up. Give up.
She wasn't like them. She was no coward. She wouldn't kill her own will — and she'd never give up.
The happy girl laughed at something her fake father said, and that was the last thing Allison could stand. She whirled around, turning her back on the happy girl, and marched through the shadowed Way back to the Library. Before coming here, she'd entertained notions of speaking with her ‘happiest self', but now Allison realized there was no point even talking to that blissful idiot.
She was one of those, after all.

Next...


Huxley hadn't remembered how warm and dry the air at Site-49 was when he stepped off the plane. It was almost hostile to his nostrils. Sweat formed on the sides of his face as he surveyed the yellow fields that surrounded the airstrip and the black mountains that cut into the land in the distance. He leaned against the railing as Emma followed him. His chest was heaving again. A voice in his head asked him why he wasn't doing it himself, why he was relying on her.
He didn't have time to answer that question as Emma, with a bright and cherry face, unleashed a torrent of comments about the place. She seemed immune to the harsh atmosphere. The two exchanged remarks as Huxley moved into his wheelchair. As they talked, Huxley saw a man exit one of the worker's entrances and make his way towards them.
Emma spotted him, and there was a subconscious agreement between them that she would take the lead. Like a friendly predator, Emma walked towards the man, hand outstretched to greet him. Huxley followed at a slow pace, keeping his eyes pointed away. The plane rushed past his head and sped sped away across the airfield.
Time passed slowly as Emma spoke with the man, like it was afraid to move forward. Finally, he reached over to shake Huxley's hand.
"And welcome back, Williams." The man grinned. "I hope you enjoyed your short vacation."
Huxley looked up at the familiar face, at the man's thick brow and chapped lips and stubbled chin that held dozens of tiny circular scars, almost like he had fallen face-first onto a bed of nails. His eyes were a murky brown like driftwood, and held a glimmer that suggested that there was some kind of soul behind them. Every time Huxley looked into them, he would always stare for a little too long, getting lost in the man's normal, acceptable features. The man's name was David. The David that had been Huxley's only regular acquaintance at Site-49.
"I didn't die. That means at least four people owe me money," Huxley said, shaking David's hand.
David laughed. It was surprisingly high-pitched, a sound that came from within his throat. Emma laughed too, but hers manifested from deep within her skull, like it was entirely calculated beforehand. A primal trigger went off in Huxley's mind, and he couldn't find the humor in it anymore. His face fell to a blank look.
"Oh shit, I forgot to introduce myself. David Emmerson, I spoke to you over the phone."
Embarrassment, pity, and slight disgust flashed across Emma's face over the course of a few split-seconds. Her mouth hung open, then closed, then grew into a smile. She was like a malfunctioning robot, her face stiff and hollow.
"Emma Sandaran," she responded. "I imagine you and Huxley were friends?"
"Oh, Williams has been here his entire career. Haven't you? Yeah, I'm pretty sure; six or seven years now?" David waved Emma away and focused on Huxley. Her face scrunched up, and she crossed her arms.
"A little under nine." Huxley grunted between words.
"Hell yeah," David said. "People like Williams more than the office dog, heh. Very lovable guy, isn't he?" His question didn't sound like it needed an answer, but Emma provided one.
"Oh, stop," she said, all of that anger somehow disappearing in a second, "You're going to make him blush." There was no hint of sarcasm or malice. It unnerved Huxley to no end. David, meanwhile, burst out into another fit of laughter, his large, meaty hand on his gut.
The group made their way to the doorway, David hurrying ahead to be at the front, Huxley slowing down to be at the back, and Emma finding whatever place was most comfortable in the middle. David flashed a blue plastic card at the keycard scanner by the door, and it popped open. The sight of sterile blue walls and bright artificial lights calmed Huxley's nerves a little. Before David could turn around, Huxley was already inside.
The tunnels were the veins of Site-49. They wove through the ground with no apparent rhyme or reason, sometimes extending straight forward for hundreds of meters, sometimes jutting left and right and left and right, sometimes presenting dozens of stairways that spiraled downward so far it took hours just to reach the bottom. Sometimes, it felt like the walls themselves shifted. They twisted around each other, creating an intricate web of concrete.
Huxley's wheels squeaked as they met the expanded metal floor. The sound was annoyingly loud, and killed any lingering discussions within the group. Nobody wanted to try and challenge it. The three passed door after door that led to empty room after empty room. There was rust on almost every hinge, and the ones that didn't have any were coated in dust, waiting for the day that they would finally be opened for the first time.
After a while, Huxley noticed that Emma was slowly falling behind the group. He was keeping up with David, ready for when they would inevitably find the place they were looking for, but she seemed uncomfortable to be there. She drew her arms behind her back and kept her eyes on the walls. Huxley wanted to throw a cursory glance at her, but he quickly shot that idea down. She had done nothing wrong, so why make her think that she had? She was new in this environment, so it made sense that she was hesitant to speak. He kept his gaze straight, and waited for her to find her way into the conversation.
"This place is really a maze, huh? Don't worry. Everybody's had that feeling. You'll get used to it after a while." There was a devilish grin on David's face.
Emma laughed. "It is, yeah."
"Hell, I've been here for over a decade and I still don't know everything about it. I mean, I walked through every single hallway of this place, but I just can't… get my brain to make a map of it all. They probably put some amnestic thing in the walls that's messing with our heads, making us forget. Something subtle, something undetectable."
"What makes you say that?" Emma asked.
Huxley jumped in, "I think that's just you, David."
"What?" David responded. "It's definitely not. I know you, you forget things all the time!"
"No. I remember things very well actually. At least better than you. I could probably tell you the latest subtherium capture report word-for-word."
"Oh, that's just because you reread the fucking reports." David threw in a chuckle. "You saw him do that right, Sandaran? He reads his reports like, a dozen times over. I have no idea why."
"I have to remember them. It's my job."
"Yeah, but do you think that you get an extra five cents if you can recite it on command? You know we have the reports ourselves, right?"
Huxley didn't respond. Eventually, the group came across a reinforced door that was fitted with a bullet-resistant window that was the size of Huxley's hand. It was obscured by smoky blue fog that warped the light around it. When he put his hand to it, it felt like ice was painfully stabbing into him. He quickly pulled away as David entered his credentials and opened the door.
Inside were a tiny set of wooden chairs that were positioned around a large glass table like thrones in a war room. An enormous television screen took up one of the walls, with a small doorway positioned directly in front of it on the opposite wall. David led the two to two of the smaller seats, pushing one of them aside for Huxley. His wheelchair was just barely able to prop Huxley up enough to rest his forearms on the table.
"I already pinged Director Flynn, so he should be here in a couple minutes or so. But he's old and, you know, so give him a little." With a nod, David unlocked the other door and disappeared behind it. Huxley narrowed his eyes, confused. He had been in this office countless times, but he had never noticed that door before.
Emma folded her hands on her lap. "He seems nice," she said.
"Yeah." Huxley's eye twitched.
"He sounded a lot different on the phone. He was… I don't like saying it, but he was quite a bit meaner. Has he been grouchy around you recently? He has, hasn't he?"
"No, he's like that every day."
"He sounded like he was having a bad day."
"He has a lot of bad days." Huxley words drifted away towards the end of his sentence. He suddenly grew more attentive to everything else in the room besides Emma, the one living thing beside him.
"Really?" Emma pushed herself forward, forcing his gaze back on to her. "Then why was he so…?"
"Nice?" Huxley couldn't tell if that was what she was actually asking. He went with it anyway. "He acts like that in front of every new person here. It's his nerves — they make him act polite in-person. He'll get back to his usual self in a few hours." Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Emma's dry smile tighten.
"Does he always joke around with you like that?"
"What does this have to do with the mission?" Huxley's words were too direct. He could see the embarrassment that was quickly filling Emma's eyes as she realized that she had pushed too far. A half-second later, he spoke again with a new tone, hoping that Emma would somehow forget his sudden burst of anger. "Yes. Yes he jokes like that."
She took a second to respond, but like he thought, there wasn't an ounce of bitterness or shock in her voice. "It must, uh, it must be hard to deal with that all day. He should really stop doing that. It's mean, it's cruel. And you know how we view cruelty here."
"He's better than most people."
A loud creak startled the two back into professional demeanors: shoulders back, chests out, backs straight. They watched with careful eyes as a graying man with a folder in his hands and steel-toed cowboy boots on his feet entered. The room heated up a few degrees. With each step, there was a hard clink. He was a heavy-set man with a large beard and a larger gut, his sweat-stained shirt tucked into his unprofessional pants — he looked like the exact opposite of a Site Director. This was a conscious choice, Huxley realized after a few encounters. Director Flynn owned as many black suits as was required, but he always preferred to wear more casual clothing with his employees. Huxley was sure there was some manipulative reason behind that, but he had never had time to figure out what.
Director Flynn did not sit in his usual spot, instead choosing a seat right in front of Emma, who remained still in his presence. David haphazardly took a seat next to the Director, placing a laptop onto the table. This caused blood to fire in Huxley's ears for some reason, and he began to simulate ways that he could get the Director to sit in front of him instead.
"Bring up the… Arizona presentation, right?" Director Flynn's voice sounded very, very young, too much to be real. If one were to hear it in isolation, they would have automatically assumed it belonged to a young adult or maybe a matured teenager, but the Director was even older than the Site. He was a young boy when the Pulse happened, and he constantly spouted off stories about life before the Veil fell, about pointless arguments and conflicts, about the ignorant masses and the hedonistic elites, about the false Gods and prophets. Nobody would ask for these stories, but nobody would stop him once he started, either.
The Director sauntered over to the television and fiddled with the buttons until the screen flashed white, eventually fading to the default homescreen. A metallic-patterned background offset by a grayscale SCP Foundation logo seared itself into Huxley's mind. He didn't look away. The Director had a keen eye for those kinds of flinches, and would always take time to acknowledge them loudly and obnoxiously.
David typed something on his laptop, and a few seconds later a short video began to play. Japanese immigrants, kilometer-wide ritual sites, squadrons of soldiers gunning down cultists, and carcasses of large unworldly creatures were fired rapidly across the screen. It took all of Huxley's and Emma's attention just to keep up. Suddenly, the gruesome videos shifted into black-and-white helicopter footage.
The Director spoke. "This is our target. A small settlement, they call it 'Leupp', or 'The Future Garden'. A group of Sarkics built it in California in 1933 while they were fleeing from Japan. It's been destroyed a handful of times and most of their members have been apprehended, but the few that escape always just migrate south and build another. The military has chased them all the way through California and Arizona, but now they're at their last stop."
A map appeared on the screen, with a line of red dots showing the locations of the previous settlements, eventually ending at the absolute bottom of the state. "They're hold up right on the U.S.-Mexico border, meaning that if we don't get all of them now, they'll be out of our jurisdiction. And you know how they treat Sarkics down there." The map was replaced by a photograph of young men and women, face-down, floating down a river that was choked with bodies and blood.
The Director leaned forward and stared at Huxley for a long, long few seconds. Huxley didn't move a muscle. The Director said, "We thought we had finally gotten rid of them in the 2010s, but…" He finally broke his gaze, allowing Huxley time to breathe. The interviewer still tried his hardest not to, though. "…apparently, we didn't."
The screen cut back to the helicopter feed that swept across buildings, roads, monasteries, graveyards, and acres upon acres of farmland. Everything was surrounded by black rubble. Sometimes, a few survivors appeared as malformed white shapes. The helicopter honed in on these shapes, on the frightened faces of those that had just had their livelihoods taken away in minutes from a missile strike. A man fell to his knees and cried out to his god, but all he received were bullet wounds from a sniper that he had no chance of hiding from.
Emma's hand shot up so fast, the rest of the men could feel a short gust of wind flying past them. She waited for Director Flynn to nod at her.
"Why do you need us then? I'm sure violence would be justified in this case. They're a threat to humanity's future." She was smiling. Huxley couldn't see it, but he knew that it was there. The way her words shook a little like she was just barely keeping her excitement in check show it. The way that her head tilted down a little, hiding her neck from a potential attack, showed it.
"What? No, no, of course not. We don't use violence much anymore, not since the Pulse. You should know why, especially." The Director turned his freezing gaze on, and directed it squarely at Emma's forehead. She just barely managed to jump out of the way to avoid an awkward moment of eye contact.
"I see you've heard of me. Yes, I am her daughter," she responded.
The Director chuckled like a child. David and Huxley laughed along, albeit with weaker versions. "Yeah, you sure are." The Director wiped his mouth. Was that pity in his eyes? "I'll refresh your memory, then. We don't kill Sarkics, we vaccinate them. We help them, like doctors. The Committee has already approved their treatment, and you two are here to convince them to take it. Subtheriums tend to be terrified of anything human."
There was a tingle of pain at the base of Huxley's spine. The pain rushed up his nervous system up into his brain, where it infected him with embarrassment and humiliation. That last comment from Director Flynn, it wasn't directed at Emma. The Sarkics needed someone they could relate to, a face that they could look at and couldn't associate with the SCP Foundation. They wanted a monster to convince them to give up their fight.
They wanted his face.
The presentation continued: command structures, interrogation tactics, bargaining chips. The best place to shoot was the head rather than the chest — neutralize the target instantaneously before they can retaliate. Huxley's brain was slowly getting away from him. He felt like he was swimming in an endless ocean in a realm where time melted into waves that crashed into the milky shores of his skull. It was so warm.
Before he knew it, he was alone with Emma. Both David and The Director had left without a notice. Huxley wasn't sure if Emma was contemplating doing the same, of leaving him alone in this room. Maybe she was in the same place that he was, diving down into the suffocating depths of her mind. He assumed that that was the correct conclusion, and waited for her to come back.
A while later, he blurted out, "We should get going." Emma twitched herself awake. "Our next flight's tomorrow. We're staying here for the night."
Emma kept herself from yawning. "Where are we supposed to sleep?"
"The living quarters." Huxley wheeled himself around and headed for the exit. If he took the lead, he might have been able to avoid the rest of the conversation.
Emma shoved her chair back. "Shouldn't we wait for David?" she said. Huxley halted.
"He already left."
Emma considered saying something else, but didn't. She let Huxley leave. There was a dull pain in her head, but she kept herself from showing it. It was a common thing, she said. Everybody in here had one at one point or another, that's what David told her. She had just had one yesterday. She repeated that to herself every time the pain stabbed into her again, hoping that eventually it would become true.

The room was nicer than Emma had expected.
It contained a few things: a bed, a table, and a nightstand that was filled with dozens and dozens of bottles of sleeping medication. A dirty window filtered dim brown light onto the bed. If she squinted, she might have been able to see to the other side. Fields of blue, red, and gold were compressed and darkened into different shades of black. Dead silhouettes of trees blended into the rolling hills like a painting.
The sheets felt bitter, like they didn't want her to sit on them. She decided then that she would keep on her clothes for the night. They wouldn't keep her warm, but at least they wouldn't hurt her. She almost laughed about it. It seemed like such a ridiculous thing to worry about, but she did. Emma couldn't stop herself from working up an intense fear within herself, pushing herself as far as she could before her natural mechanisms erased them.
There was a single bang on the door followed by a few quiet ones. Emma snapped into position, dusting off her hands with one hand and fixing her hair with the other. She mustered up as much confidence as she could as she strode to the door. As if she were on autopilot, her hand maneuvered itself to the doorknob, gripped it hard, and twisted it around.
It was David. Right in front of her was a sweaty, tired, guilt-faced David.
He gasped when he saw her still in her work clothes. A part of her wasn't sure if David wanted her to answer the door at all. "Why are you up so late? You should get some sleep." he said. "It's… I don't know, but it's almost tomorrow."
"Then good morning, then." It wasn't the morning, but that didn't matter. Emma's eyes instantly began scanning for weaknesses. She expected them to bring her some kind of advantage, but instead they slapped her in the face and told her to just think about the situation. Right in front of her was a large, tired, possibly drunk man. He was in her room. He was within arm's reach of her.
"Oh, shit. Wait, I'm sorry. Let me start over." David seemed more embarrassed with his apology than what caused it. "Can we talk? Private, here, in your room. It'll only take a few minutes. It's important."
Emma looked the man up and down, inspecting every crease in his face for dishonesty. The lights in the Site had shut off hours ago. The only things that still held power was the battery-power lamp on the desk. Adrenaline started to flow. Slowly, cautiously, she nodded and took a step back. Once David was inside, he immediately started to pace around the room. She leaned against one of the walls.
"You should move to the other wall." David put a finger to her lips.
"Why?" she responded.
David grew frustrated. "The walls are thin."
"What does that matter?"
David pointed to the wall and mouthed, "It's about Huxley." Emma conjured an image of him in her mind. She pictured him sleeping innocently, buried in the thin sheets, transcribing documents in his dreams. That wasn't how he was actually sleeping, though. Emma was certain of that. He was probably restless, trying desperately to force his brain to accept sleep.
She eased off of the wall and slipped behind the desk, still allowing herself a layer of defense against David. The hair on her neck stood still like thousands of tiny soldiers.
"What is it?" Emma kept her tone friendly. She repeated to herself: Emma doesn't think this is dangerous, Emma won't raise her tone, Emma can not care less about this situation.
"You haven't noticed it already?" David said, managing to avoid her defense completely.
Another strategy emerged. "Like, his demeanor? He has seemed pretty down lately, kind of quiet."
"No, not just that." David wiped the sweat from his forehead. "The way he talked, he couldn't even look you in the eye. Just the way he looks is different. He's never like this."
"I mean, it might just be hard to tell how he normally looks considering… y'know."
"What? No, I don't care that he's a cripple. Or that he looks disfigured. He's fine with it, so I'm fine with it. It's not important." David cleared his throat. Emma flashed red. "I mean… I don't know. He… doesn't really talk about it. I've known him for almost a decade at this point, but he's never brought it up. I've tried to force him into telling me something, but he shuts me down every time. Hell, he even had his medical profile expunged."
"You can do that?"
"No, you can't." David scratched his chin. "Or at least I can't. Hey, what's your clearance level? You're the same as him, aren't you?"
Emma nodded. "Level-3."
"Oh, great. That's really great. Um, I'm not sure if you understand, but I've known Huxley for a very, very long time. He doesn't each lunch with anyone else, just me. There could be eleven other tables in the cafeteria, but he always sits next to me. He looks out for me, and I look out for him." David's eyes were heavy like stones. It looked like speaking gave him great pain. "Could you get me his medical records?"
Emma was silent for a few minutes. Most of that time was spent thinking, but even when she had found a conclusion, she waited just a little longer. "Why?" she said.
"Because…" David sighed, rubbing his hands across his head. "Because he's been in pain. I don't know if it's something physical or just in his head, but there's something there. When he conducts interviews, he's… different. I remember once he talked with a subtherium for three hours, and didn't ask one of the questions he was supposed to. It's like he wants to talk to those things more than he wants to talk to me."
He waited for Emma to respond, but he only received a glazed-over stare. She found herself leaning forward, subconsciously mimicking the pose of the things that she interviewed. David grew angrier the longer she refused to answer, eventually tipping over — he threw up his hands and groaned.
"Just find out what you can, please. I'm not asking you to throw him in a cell, I just want to make sure I'm not seeing zebras everywhere," he said.
Something clicked inside Emma's mind. She didn't fully understand it, nor did she know how to, but she felt it burning in her heart and her head and her stomach like a raging fire. It wasn't anxiety, but something that filled her with just as much nervous energy; it wasn't frustration, but something that trapped her just the same.

“Okay.”
That was the last thing that had come out of Emma's mouth. The man claiming to be David turned around and stomped out of the room. His steps weren't this heavy normally. He was doing that on purpose. One good thing about the walls at Site-49 were that they stripped all sounds passing through them down to their barest essentials. There was no echo, no reverberation, no distortion; only the action. It was useful to eavesdroppers.
It was useful to Huxley.
If somebody had entered his room right then, he would have likely been thrown into a mental asylum. He had already stripped off all of his clothes besides a sweat-drenched pair of underwear. His eyes were bloodshot and his vision was blurry. His ears still worked though, he made sure of that. He had honed the ability to catch every word and lock it safely inside his head.
Emma sighed. There was a soft knock, then whispers as she sat down on the bed. She muttered something to herself. Huxley held back his breathing, terrified of giving Emma even a hint that he could hear her. There was a creak. Huxley whirled his head around. He didn't know if the sound was from Emma's room or his own. He scoured his room, but couldn't find an intruder.
There was nothing, nothing but blank walls and a blank bed and blank sleeping pills strewn across the desk. Emma hadn't heard him. It was alright. Yes, Huxley knew it was alright. Nothing was wrong. Soon, she would drag herself to bed and force herself to sleep. He should have done the same thing hours ago, but as with most nights, there was something dragging his mind away from it.
He slowly moved to his bed, but he couldn't bring himself to collapse into the warm sheets and get rid of these paranoid thoughts.
He wanted to run, but his legs would snap if he tried. He wanted to fight, but the noise would alert Emma. He wanted to sleep, but Huxley stayed away. He breathed in and tried to yell. Nothing came out. Rearing back, he tried desperately to get something, anything out, but his throat was empty. The sting of disappointment that followed was one that was all too familiar to him. It was yet another part of his body that was malfunctioning and could never be fixed.
The only thing he could do was sleep. He reached towards the nightstand and retrieved one of the bottles of sleeping medication. Each was labeled with a different brand name, but they all contained the same dark purple shapes inside of them. Those things were supposed to knock him out, to give him a brief reprieve from the dark. He pried open one of the bottles and emptied out six oblong shapes. He tore three more apart and added their contents to the pile.
Within minutes, he had amassed forty or fifty pills — enough to fit into his hand. He needed to sleep, like how he needed to breathe and to eat. Almost every night, his body deprived him of it. It was terrified. If Huxley was sleeping, that meant that he wasn't alert, he wasn't listening, he wasn't watching the things around him. His brain was convinced that, at any moment, somebody would appear in the shadows cast by the window or in the empty bathroom. He never knew what they would do, but the idea of them alone was enough to trigger a primal part of his brain. Huxley needed to override it.
His footsteps were silent as he rummaged through his equipment. Documents, photographs, printed-out emails all flew past him until finally he found it: a plastic sandwich bag. He bit open the seal.
Slowly, gently, he crushed the pills in his hand. Dust fell immediately, most landing in the bag and the rest clinging to the other pills as some last ditch attempt to escape their fate. There was a little bit of pain, but he couldn't feel anything anymore, so he kept going. He squeezed his hand, pulverizing all of the pills into a mound of purple dust.
Huxley's thighs shivered as he gazed at what he had created. He was scared to hold it, as if just touching it would be enough to make him unconscious. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing, he thought. Every cell in his body was chanting in unison, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep. One taste would stop those thoughts and David and Emma and the mission and the entire goddamn Site. It would all stop, at least for a few hours.
Maybe more.
He wasn't sweating anymore, but his face was still cold and wet. He shivered. The bag fell into his lap as he debated whether to consume the entire bag all at once or throw it away and pretend that nothing happened. His mind was at war with itself, one side convinced that its choice was correct while the other was just as adamant that that choice was wrong.
The moonlight bounced off of the bag, making the plastic look like glass at certain angles. It weighed heavy on his weak body. He could almost feel it slowly starting to break his bones. It was weak and pathetic, but still had enough strength to destroy him. He opened it. The dust was soft, and broke apart easily in his fingers. He let it fall back into the bag, then scooped it up again, then let it fall. It only took him a few more seconds to make his decision.
He swallowed.

Post-Foundation
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