I had been beautiful once… I suppose I'm beautiful still. But by the time I woke up they had already covered me in jewels and gold and ivory, put me on a steel rack and polished me to an unnatural gleam. Obviously I wasn't beautiful enough for them. Encrusted with gaudy rocks and metal, I watched the crowd as I was wheeled out, the auctioneer telling my ‘story'. He upsold me as being fitted with ‘the most precious gemstones and genuine ivory, carved by the finest craftsmen alive', and that I would be ‘the beautiful, perfectly unique centrepiece of any collection'. I remember the crowd murmuring in shadows, the air of excess filling the room like a stinking fog. The bidding soon began - one hundred, hundred fifty, two, three, five, seven - soon the auctioneer went silent, simply pointing at numbers in the crowd. I'm not sure how much I was ‘worth'. I don't want to know.
I spent the rest of the night stored off to the side, among paintings and sculpture and God knows what else. Even after the auction itself ended, as I sat in the dark under a sheet, I could hear the after-party down the hall. Hollow laughter and quiet music and muted chatter, pretentious to the nth degree. They sounded so confident in themselves. It was horribly intimidating.
Later some men came in, wrapped me up tight, put me to a crate, and wheeled me away somewhere else. The movers weren't gentle with me. There was movement and talking, some dusty rays of light peeking through the spaces between the boards - and then it all went dark, muffled. It was claustrophobic in there, like I was put in a coffin too early; I felt like screaming, but nobody would hear.
I'm not sure how long I was in transit, but eventually I was unloaded and unwrapped, set in front of the one who bought me. He was old and sharp looking, with leering eyes like a vulture and the coldest hands I've ever, ever felt. His very presence was terrifying and inhumanly cruel as he inspected the precious ivory and gemstones that adorned me, his breath somehow both careless and greedy as he laughed with the men that took me from the box. His ‘morbid antiquity' was what he called me. I was chilled down to my bones.
Soon he decided that he had better things to do, and had me set in a corner in the frigid room, among his gallery of expensive things that deserved better. I remember a painting of a rowboat on a riverbank, with two children, a boy and a girl, walking along the other shore. For some reason that stuck with me - it makes me want to cry, to think something so innocent was owned by that man. The entire gallery was like a crypt, a hideous chamber packed with things that would be better off dead and buried. It was the darkest place I've ever been in, and at the same time it was lit with the most tasteful fluorescent lighting I'd ever seen.
Time passed and I was moved to a big, vaulted room with chandeliers and tables, put up in front of a stage and podium. That night the man had invited dozens of ‘his associates' to wine and dine on a whim. I remember the man was complimented on his taste in decor by a nasty, witchy looking woman in a red dress. She looked right at me. She knew I heard. I hated her.
I hated everyone in that room.
After that horrid ordeal he had me put back in that corner of his gallery, where I stayed for God knows how long. I was there for too long. More than a few days, maybe weeks. After a long while I could hear voices echoing down the hallway. I recognized the man's voice instantly, it made me nauseous to hear - but there was also a woman. She seemed warmer, almost familiar to me. If it wasn't for the man's voice I would have almost felt relief; by the time they finally turned on the lights I was shaking hard enough to rattle the stand.
She seemed so familiar. I couldn't place her face, but I knew her. I definitely knew her from before this horrible time. She looked heartbroken when she saw what had become of me, and got right to work at unhooking my spine and ribs and arms from the stand. She helped me shake off the jewellery and took the rubies out of my eye sockets, and the crown from my skull. If I had skin it would probably be bruised from the weight of it all. I still have marks on my bones.
I can't really remember what happened after that. I remember holding the woman's hand and being led at a dead run down a hallway. I was led down some stairs and outside and then I was in the Library.
My saviour stayed with me for a long while. She's something like my guardian angel; she got me clothes and helped me find a place for myself, and helped me learn to take care of myself after what I'd been through. She introduced me to the Hand, and her allies there who helped her find me and break me out. I owe everything to them, really; the Hand saved my life.
And now, I'm going to try and save yours.


Kagome kagome
Kago no naka no tori wa
Itsu itsu deyaru
Yoake no ban ni
Tsuru to kame ga subetta.
Ushiro no shoumen daare

Yume Kurosawa hummed an old Japanese children's game song to herself as she sat in the darkness of the Den of Freaks. Outside she could hear the crowds of people swarming and chatting as they ventured into the dozens of attractions and booths the Circus of The Disquieting had to offer. Far off towards the carnival grounds, there were screams of delighted terror coursing through the rides, and the occasional yell of triumph or disappointment by the game booths. Outwardly, Yume kept a stoic smile on her face, but inside, she felt a rush of dread; even though she couldn't see it, she could hear the Freewheeler, the Ringmaster's watchdogs, a few rooms down, its awful, squeaky metal wheels rolling over and over as its Rider's feet fumbled unevenly on old bike pedals.
The Den of Freaks was some twenty feet across from the Ringmaster's domain. Unlike the vivid scarlet and gold that adorned the Big Top, the Den was a tent of deep, poisonous purple and neon green. It was here where others such as herself were looked upon in awe and fear for their abnormalities. Yume had spent the majority of her seventeen years as part of the Circus in this very place; now twenty-three, it was the only life she was truly used to, and this tent was the only place where she was surrounded by a select few she considered friends. Life was hard for a Freak; Manny was kind to all of them, but the Ringmaster looked down on everyone in the Den as if its inhabitants were his personal playthings. No one dared to speak out though; that could be a one-way ticket to the Clowns.
Along the inner wall of the tarp, Kurosawa gazed at the posters depicting various human oddities; all of them had stretched grins on their faces, all of them looked lively, and, most of all, all of them looked happy. Kurosawa creased her eyes in bitterness and looked down at her feet, then continued humming her song. Her shift as a display was over, and now she had ten hours of solitude to brood…

Mommy, she looks gross!
Can we go now? I don't like these people…
Weird!…
Sniffle…Sniffle…
Freaks.
Monsters.
Creeps.
Freak
Freak

Squeak, Squeak, Squeak
Yume snapped out of her two hour doze to the sound of distant retching, followed by a gasp of awe. It was a familiar sound she had grown accustomed to over the seventeen years; she and the person uttering it had been taken by the Circus within weeks of each other.
"Quincy's up…" she murmured. Even as she said these words, a breeze blew into her room from the main Den, and with it came three, dainty, winged creatures. Yellow swallowtails. The butterflies fluttered around Yume in synchronization, guided by their master's will. It was his standard gesture of camaraderie. Pursing her lips, Yume smiled a sad smile and held out a finger; the butterflies flew about it, then slowly flew away, back out the way they came from, back out into the Den. Yume knew better than to follow; it was against the rules for an unscheduled freak to enter the Den during a show. Still, she wished she could have seen Quincy's act; she almost envied her friend for the positive reception the crowds gave him. She immediately regretted thinking that.
"Stupid," she told herself. "It's all so stupid…"

The main room of the Den was some fifty feet long, with little lighting, except for the dozen or so pedestals that lined the edges of the interior; these pedestals shone and flashed in circular patterns, each one illuminating a Freak. There were five on exhibition at the moment. Four remained on their stands; the fifth was in the center, illuminated by circling spotlights.
He was a scrawny, pale man of thirty, clothed in a frilly suit colored neon pink, red, and green; a cheap plastic tiara hung lopsided on his unkempt blonde and dyed, purple hair. His mouth bulged and curved in an odd, filled shape, as if he was trying to swallow an unpleasant pill. Then, without warning, he retched. A torrent of vermilion, orange, and black spilled from his mouth, flooding the floor. For a moment, the mass he vomited lay inert. Then it started rising up. It started flying. The audience shouted with approval once more. Quincy Allicott, The Man With Butterflies in his Stomach, grimaced as he rubbed his stomach delicately, looking up at the orange cloud above him.
It wasn't his sick, it wasn't even liquid. The mass was a swarm of monarch butterflies.
Quincy raised his eyebrows. Haven't seen those in awhile, he thought to himself. That ought to earn me some recognition.
He walked off the main ring and returned to his pedestal, sitting down on his wooden stool.
A throne fit for a butterfly king. Someone toss me a real crown! Quincy smiled crookedly as he thought wryly to himself.
"Monarchs? You're stepping up your game, Quincy."
Quincy turned his head at the sound of a melancholy, airy voice.
"Hello, Fish."
The Fishman of Manasquan looked at Quincy from his adjacent tank/pedestal. He didn't have nearly as many people surrounding him as the most popular performer in the Den; having gills and being covered in fins and scales was interesting, but not as…exciting as having the ability to exhale butterflies.
"Thank you," Quincy said, leaning with his hands on his knees. "Act going along well?"
"It's been better," The Fishman said mournfully. "You know how they have me speak to different sea creatures in here? My fish haven't been exactly cooperative as of lately; they hate being in this place, and they all go belly-up sooner or later. The salmon just died in the middle of my act, and—" The Fishman broke off midsentence.
"Oy! Fish! What's going on?" Quincy spoke in a hushed bark.
"The—those damned Freewheelers, Quincy!" Fishman's voice suddenly rose in pitch. "They've been eating all my friends after every act!"
"They've been—" Quincy closed his mouth quickly and looked past the Fishman; a Freewheeler had poked its rag-doll head into the tent flap, and was now looking at the Fishman with its black, button eyes. Freewheelers had superb smell and hearing.
Quincy widened his eyes and gave the Fishman a minute lift of the head. The Fishman didn't need another warning; the anchovies and minnows in his tank had already told him of the potential danger; he dived back into his cylindrical tank and quickly put on a show of complex underwater acrobatics, which drew in enough cheers from the audience. The Freewheeler retreated back into the shadows.

Back inside the Freaks' lounge, Yume's flowery hair shook as the pink roses began shedding petals from her fear. She had heard the Freewheeler make its way to the Den entrance, chittering excitedly to its Rider; from the response, Yume guessed that the Freewheeler's bicycle was being driven by a toad. The croak sounded awful.
What went wrong? What went wrong? she wondered in terror. Something must have gone wrong.
Squeak, rattle, squeak, rattle
Oh, god, there's another one now.
Squeak, rattle, squeak, rattle
Three?!

Forty feet away, hidden in the rafters of the Big Top, the tall, thin Ringmaster sat with his legs outstretched, his top hat tilted over his face, his maroon-red suit swaying gently. He grinned.
"Dear, dear, Fishman," he crooned as he watched and heard everything occurring in the Den of Freaks through the button eyes of a Freewheeler. "You must really learn to know when to hold your tongue."
Below him, the crowd cheered as the Clowns took a bow and walked offstage; the lights dimmed for the next act. A circle of a dozen elephants emerged from the tent flap and gathered into a conga line. The giant animals were all garbed in stars and stripes, and were trumpeting as a calliope continuously played its lighthearted, celestial tunes; with the swirling, color-changing spotlights, it almost looked as if the elephants were walking through space. The Ringmaster clapped his hands together.
"Such resentment towards me, Freaks? You hurt my feelings…" The Ringmaster moaned in mock offense. "Manny, Manny, Manny! Keep your pets more loyal, s'il te plait? Oh well, old friend, I'm afraid I have to take matters into my own hands… I apologize in advance…" The Ringmaster pressed his fingers together, cracking his knuckles.
"Now then, which Freak, which Freak? Which Freak to beat and meet? Where to go? Where to go? Freak Show if I know…"

AND NOW, THE FISHMAN OF MANASQUAN WILL RETURN TO HIS UNDERWATER HOME! WE THANK YOU FOR WATCHING THIS MARVELOUS SPECTACLE AT—HERMAN FULLER'S CIRCUS OF THE DISQUIETING! A male voice boomed throughout the entire of the Den of Freaks.
Fuller?! Yume let out an involuntary gasp. The remaining pink flowers growing from her head contracted and withered, their now dried petals fluttering to the ground. Yume felt her head growing a new arrangement. She picked one.
A gladiola…
Yume heard a gasp of surprise from the audience, followed by an eerie, empty rippling of water.
No…
Back inside the main Den, Quincy spat out a moth.

The Ringmaster hummed nonchalantly as he sat in his velvet chair, his feet propped up as he reclined back as three Freewheelers rolled up to him in his "office". It was more of a side tent than anything, smaller than the Freak Lounge, but comfortable nonetheless. A simple wooden desk sat in the middle of it; an ornate swing arm lamp illuminated the room. A portrait of Herman Fuller looked around the room from an easel off to the side, and a single photo frame lay face-down underneath it.
The lead monster's chest cavity bulged and squirmed with a human-sized lump. Ragged breaths could be heard from within. Fuller smiled and ignored the cries.
"Hello again, Freewheelers!" The Ringmaster sang over the muffled yells. "Brady, Bridget." He nodded towards the giant horned toad on a scarlet bike; the Ragdoll, as usual, was mounted in the place of the handlebars. The pig-tailed, patchwork torso tilted its head.
"Willard, Warren." A barn owl clicked its talons in greeting.
"Now, you know why we're here. You should know, I made you," Herman Fuller guffawed. "Once again, Manny's little pets have dared to raise a voice against me, and we all know that that simply won't do. Dish out the usual punishment, please; but keep him quiet while you're doing it. I don't want another disaster like the one with the Crane Woman!" As he spoke, the Ringmaster picked up a wooden plank and swung it into the lump within the Freewheeler. "Shut up, Freak! I could have you set on a hook right now with a Clown grub in your mouth! I'm not some bait you can just bite and expect to get away with it, you fishy bastard! Now, toodle-loo! Wheelers, do do your thing!" The Ringmaster shooed his watchdogs away.
The Freewheelers turned to leave their master's office. Then they suddenly stopped. Six pairs of eyes turned their heads back towards Herman Fuller.
"What are you doing?"
Fuller threw his hands into the air. He picked up his chair and turned it a hundred and eighty degrees. He pushed it up against his desk.
"I repeat, what are you doing?"
"My job as a leader, Manny." Utter contempt bubbled from the Ringmaster's as he glowered at the ground.
"Are you going to move your chair? Or will I have to do it for you?" A cold voice spoke softly from underneath The Ringmaster's worktable.
"Oh…go flirt with Emily again, will you? The little minx doesn't respect me anyways." Fuller's chair shot out from under him, spinning in the air like a wheel. He jumped out of it and gracefully back-flipped onto his feet as his seat cracked in splinters to the ground.
The Man with the Upside-Down Face, Leader of the Freaks, emerged from the desk cabinet and stepped on the dirt.
"Learned a few more tricks, I see." The Ringmaster looked at where his former Circus partner had stepped out from.
"It's nothing, really," The Man said coolly. "Same principle as to what happens when you saw a Clown in half, or when you pull a Fun-Lover from a hat. Any hole can be a door. Now, what's going on here?"
Herman Fuller sighed. "Andy and Alice, let him out, please," The Ringmaster asked with his eyes closed as he waved his hand towards the duo of ragdoll and bicycle-riding box turtle. The box turtle tilted its head slightly, staring curiously at the Ringmaster; the ragdoll did the same, then swung its head towards the floor. The seams around its mouth opened up, and out of the ragdoll's mouth tumbled a disoriented Fishman of Manasquan. He immediately leapt to his feet and looked around. His crazed eyes stared at Fuller for a moment, then he began backpedaling, frantically running toward the exit flap.
"Manny!" The Fishman shouted as he ran. "I'm sorry, I—"
"That will do for now, Gabriel. Go back to the Den" The Man spoke curtly. The Fishman bowed in gratitude before ducking out. The Man turned back to Fuller, and the two sneered with mutual hatred. Then, without warning, The Man with the Upside-Down Face lunged forward and swatted Alice the Turtle off of its bicycle seat. Andy roared in protest and opened its mouth; four sinewy, snake-like tongues shot from it towards the turtle's attacker. The Man snatched them all at once and drove them into the ground with a tent spike and a swift stomp. The Freewheeler lurched forward, its bicycle unable to stand without a Rider, and it flailed grotesquely on the ground like a potato sack baby. The other two Freewheelers quickly turned tail and sped out of the room.
"Andy!" The Ringmaster rushed forward only for The Man to step in his way.
"You know, considering your little toys are old Freaks, I'm surprised you care for them so much." The Ringmaster flinched involuntarily as Manny, who towered above him by a good two heads, leered down at him.
"Now, what were you doing to Fish?" The Man with the Upside-Down Face inquired, taking a step towards Fuller.
"It's my Freaking job, to carry out discipline within these grounds!" The Ringmaster spat.
"It's your job to watch over your area, your goddamn Big Top that you're so proud of!" Manny shouted. "We agreed on that! We operate separately, on different terms!"
"Well," Fuller laughed mirthlessly, "I don't agree with your terms, and seeing that I'm the head around here, I can do as a I goddamn please!"
"You make me sick!" Manny hissed. "You were bad enough when we first teamed up, and now you've somehow gotten even worse off since the Clowns!"
"The Clowns? The Clowns are amazing!" Fuller threw his head back and cackled. A dribble of spit rolled down his lips.
"You're not fit to be a leader," The Man said quietly. "You're just a greedy, Milk-snorting fop!"
"Well, it blows to blow, Freak!" Fuller exhaled sharply. "And until I drop dead, I, make, the rules around here! But you'll be long gone by the time that happens, oh yes, you'll be long gone! I'll see to it that you meet your end in due time!"
"'In due time?' Fuller, Fuller, Fuller, you know as well as I that I'm the one who keeps the Clowns in check, not you! You rely on me, Herman! You've got the show, you've got the tent, and you've got the money, but you still need me!"
Silence rang through the Ringmaster's office. The audience was still cheering; they couldn't even hear what was transpiring as they goggled at the Flaming Lions and Tigers and Bears.
"I'll have you stuffed into a Freewheeler soon enough," The Ringmaster's handlebar moustache twitched as he bared his teeth. "Get out."
"You stay away from my kind," The Man with the Upside-Down Face warned. "Or you'll find yourself strung up as a squeeze toy for Luana."
"Oh, we'll see who comes out in first. All in due time." Herman Fuller snapped his fingers. His ruined furniture pieced itself back together, restoring his office to its clean state.
The Man kicked his foot through Fuller's portrait, leaving a neat, boot-shaped hole. He leaned through the opening, and seemed to melt through it, until his whole body was gone from sight.
The Ringmaster sat, slightly disheveled, his top hat knocked askew. He put his hand in it and pulled out an apple. He bit it, then spat the chunk out.
"Strung up, eh?" The apple was full of worms.


The beginning was defined primarily by separation. It was a mess of thoughts, of feelings. To be honest, it was difficult for one to say if it was truly an existence at all at that point, but it was there. There, and all too short. Ghufran was made to sigh by the brevity of such memories. The beginning was separation, and then the light came into him. And everything was ruined.
He remembered, distinctly (though he had no nostrils to speak of), the smell of the desert air. The stinging of the wind and the feel of the coarse earth. Every single thought, every sensation from that point on was utter agony to him. His brothers did not know this pain, and they were quick to establish themselves. 'Yes, I am', he could practically hear them say. 'I'm here. I'm thinking.'
And one by one, they would come to know their names, as if they were branded with them. The others were, of course, prideful enough to credit themselves with this - with names, with being. Though they offered lip service to the humans, recognized the possibility that their coming was a cultural phenomenon (Ghufran nearly spit the word out), it was not in their minds that this was the case. How he hated his brothers. Almost as much as he hated the humans. It was true, he had decided soon after his 'birth', that they were responsible for his creation. There was no doubt in him at all that the widespread belief in the djinni had come to make them so. But if humans were his creators…
Ghufran was drawn back into reality by a tapping upon the chair in which he was seated.
"Are you listening? It is, eh, Ghufran? Yes?" The thin, bearded man opposite the desk in front of him was clearly asking a question, and the crease in his brow seemed to indicate that he wasn't exactly pleased with Ghufran's tendency to let his mind wander. "I am sorry, perhaps it was a bit rude to distract you. My speech can be very dull I'm told, and you seemed to find the wall there much more interesting." The man pointed demonstrably to the wall and then back to himself, causing his fatigues to rustle slightly. "Now, as your House has finally seen fit to contract with our office, a few of you have been assigned to work with our teams. You came…" He paused for a moment to look over some documents gripped in his sweaty hands. "…well, let us say, 'recommended'."
Ghufran nodded curtly, to show that he had been paying attention this time around. Inside, he bristled.
"I will say again, since you did not seem to hear the last time. My name is Karim al-Abbasi. From now on, you will be following my orders."

The subject's pupils constricted as the beam of the flashlight was directed toward them. Ghufran did not know what this meant. A good sign, or no? It is normal. That is all. He let out what might have been interpreted as a sigh and leaned back in his chair.
Karim, meanwhile, stood in the corner of the tent and looked over a folder full of documents, as he was wont to do when his nerves seized him. At the sight, Ghufran could not help but smirk haughtily. The show of strength did not last long, did it? Humans are all the same. They all piss their pants when they are given even the slightest glimpse of—
The train of thought was interrupted as Karim looked away from the papers and opened his mouth to speak. "Well? What do you think?"
Ghufran only shook his head in response. There was a brief pause before he elected to expound upon the gesture. "I am no doctor, but he seems to be in good health. The muttering is trouble, of course. But you did not need a Type 2 to tell you that." He had taken to using the term to define himself. 'Type 2'. It seemed sufficiently detached. "Smiling God? What is that, Smiling God? It is absurdity. A bunch of beshoor antar who have lost their heads to a shiny object." The mention of the 'Smiling God' caused the subject (one of the ORIA's own personnel) to resume his nonsense muttering. Ghufran scowled and pushed his chair out while Karim clicked his tongue and returned to the safety of his papers.
"They may ask us to investigate this in person, you understand. It does not seem likely to go anywhere. There's a request to abandon the project in here." Karim waved the manilla folder gently before slapping it down on the only folding table in the tent. "A fool's errand, I suppose." Still, the shaking in his hand said plenty about how the possibility made him feel.
Having no place in his heart for sympathy, Ghufran simply snorted in response. "You fear this…thing? I have read the reports as well. 'Oh, the Type 2 Personnel'," he said in a mocking voice, "They are also afraid. So very afraid of the shining orb." Ghufran turned his head to the side and spit upon the ground. "Have we been reduced to this? We were low when we came to be, beholden even to khuk humans, but now a floating, formless heresy makes us weak at the knees."
"You sound disgusted."
"That is because I am."
Karim clicked his tongue once more and poked his head out of the tent, gesturing for someone to come and remove the man who had not yet ceased his fanatical mumbles. For a moment, the area was empty of prying ears. "You are not worried about this, then?"
Another shake of the head was Ghufran's immediate reply. "If they send us out, we will have no trouble. I am not worried, no." He moved to the entrance of the tent in two quick strides, only turning back toward Karim once he had partially lifted the left flap. "You will need to send a report once we are done, yes? I will start it for you. The situation with Project 934 has improved dramatically…"


☦Collaborated with djkaktus and Faminepulse.☦
Clyde and Umiko rode home in the darkness. For once, Clyde wasn't tuning a guitar. He was tuning the radio instead, dialing station to station. Umiko drove, headlights telling little in the darkness ahead.
“Hey, Umiko, wasn't Brook supposed to be coming with us?”
The bigger man's hands squeezed the wheel at the mention of Brook. She never felt at ease around him and he never figured a way to earn the drummer's trust, not even after all this time. “No, she go with other friend. I think she don't like me.”
“Hey, don't say that, big man. I'm sure she'll come around. Women and their intuition, you know? Hey, isn't this our song?” He turned the radio to a familiar tune, a grin spreading to his features. Umiko joined in the display of pride despite himself.
“Yes, our song. Even skits! Much good! We on radio now!”
But Clyde wasn't listening to Umiko's words. He had joined the collective in the music. He remembered. Umiko fell with Clyde shortly after and the two added their voices to the song. Shadows flickered across Umiko's hands, urging them to turn the wheel and drive towards the ocean. The headlights of other cars joined them on their journey, all migrating to the same destination.
The music lulled their minds to rest and guided them home.

Rosa woke up fast, rising to a seat and pushing herself up. She could see the back of Morgan's head in the driver's seat. He was very still. She scampered over, eyes wide in confusion.
“Morgan? Hey, what's up? Where are we?”
His eyes remained closed as he began speaking. “We're almost done.”
Rosa couldn't hear the motor running and it was pitch black outside. She went to open the driver's side window but the crank was missing. “Hey, what happened with the thing?”
“We shouldn't open the windows. It's really cold outside.” He said softly, opening his eyes and turning to Rosa. “Hell of a night, wasn't it?”
“Yeah. Hope everyone made it back safe.” She said, before a realization dawned on her. “Oh my god!”
“…what is it, then?”
“You're drunk, aren't you? Seriously! Thats why we're idling here! I can't believe you actually drank!”
“I'm a bit hungover, not drunk. It's not the most pleasant feeling.” Morgan said, a faint smile appearing on his face. Rosa rolled her eyes and turned to face him. A yellow light passed by the driver's window. She thought she could see the silhouette of a head for a moment, before it faded into the murk.
“I am so thirsty. Do we have any water?”
“N-No…” said Morgan as Rosa rolled around to open the rear passenger door. “No!” He shouted, leaning over and snatching her wrist. “Don't do that, we're on a ferry right now. We're not supposed to open the doors.”
“What?” She noticed he was breathing heavily but his face was rested and calm as ever. They were so close. Was he nervous?
He righted himself and sat back down. “Just sit tight. We'll be there soon.”
She lay there flustered for a moment, looking on out the window. More strange glowing yellow lights, falling down slowly, drifting alongside them.
“Be where? This some kind of surprise? We going to an off-shore resort thing? Oh I love those things. Is it Pipers Crossing? Pelican Landing?”
“Not quite,” he felt the urge to laugh, but couldn't bring himself to do it, “deep space. We're headed off to deep space.”
Rosa giggled to herself, just before being shot in the face by a jet of water. Morgan heard it, and closed his eyes again. “Well, looks like we're ahead of schedule.”
Another jet of freezing water burst through the van ceiling.
“Looks like we're fucked.” Said Morgan, a faint quiver could be heard in the back of his throat.
“What are you talking about?! Go get a patch! Why is the roof leaking! Why is the floor leaking up!?”
Morgan pulled a small handgun from out of his coat.
“I'm sorry, Rosa. I can't expect you to understand any more than I did at first.”
Rosa was hysterical. “What do you mean? What the fuck is going on, Morgan? What's going on?”
Morgan looked over the cold steel of the handgun with the cold steel of his eyes. “There was something else there with us tonight. You could feel it, right?”
“I- I mean, I don't know. Maybe. I thought it was just a good concert.”
He looked at her, eyes full of sympathy but demeanor unbroken. “Rosa, it was a great concert. I'll never forget it as long as I exist. I'll never forget any of them, Brooke, Umiko, Clyde,” he paused, his throat catching, “and I certainly won't forget you.”
Rosa's eyes were full of fear as she gazed around them, but began to calm when he grabbed her hand. She sniffled back a tear, shaking slightly. “Morgan… are we going to die?”
He smiled. “Yes. We're going to die, Rosa. But we're going to do it together, right here, ok?”
The water had gathered up to their knees as an additional crack started to form in the rear window. They were surrounded by lights, so many lights that Rosa couldn't count them. Some far away, some so close she could just barely make them out. They all danced around her and Morgan, like fireflies when she was younger. In another life, she could've reached out and caught them and put them in a jar and fell asleep to lull of the tiny bursts of light.
He cocked the firearm. “I brought this for you, in case you don't want to… It's yours, Rosa.” His outstretched hand held it before her, and her eyes focused on it. She lifted a hand gingerly, picked it out of his hand and held it close to her. She looked up at him, eyes full of fear.
“What about you? What are you going to do?”
Morgan looked at the gathering of falling stars, his face illuminated by a billion points of light. In that moment, Rosa felt like she could see Morgan differently, like the boy with the black hair had been peeled away and left to float somewhere behind them, and in its place was a low burning fire, resilient and unwavering. She could see in him all of his hopes and aspirations and dreams, as well as her own, everything they had both desired their entire lives, and yet…
The water was unrelenting. It had filed past their waists, and the back window was ready to burst. Rosa choked back tears and looked out of her window. Next to her, she could see one of the stars drawing close. Inside sat two familiar figures, and yet, she couldn't make out their faces. One of them waved, the other threw a thumbs up.
And then they were gone. Rosa's tears flowed freely now, and she would've given anything, everything she ever had, to be sitting in her apartment, warm and dry and safe. In a moment, Rosa was terrified of death, and saw its gaping maw closing in around her. Panicking, she turned one last time to Morgan, to beg him to do something, anything, so they could go on, be together, live…
But her voice caught. The dim flame was gone and replaced with a magnificent roaring fire, reds and yellows and whites, filling up the entire car, and in the middle of it sat Morgan. The thing he had been was stripped away, replaced with fervor and zeal, its eyes blazing like a million suns. It looked at her, and beyond everything, beyond his face and the fire and the water and the stars around them, she saw something else. She saw…
CRACK!
She threw the gun into the water at her feet as it rushed in from behind them. “No,” she shouted over the growing din of the torrent. “No Morgan, I want to be there with you.”
The lead singer smiled. “To see it all within you.”
Water circled their necks, passing their mouths, then their eyes, and filled the car completely.

There was a moment while they floated in the weightlessness, where Rosa reached out and touched Morgan's face. He opened his eyes and looked at her, and then towards where she was gesturing. Lights surrounded them, the lights of cars like theirs, floating in the depths of sea, hovering just above the edge of oblivion. They were all very still, yet pulsated like the night sky. Morgan glanced back at her, to share the moment with her, but she was already gone.
He unbuckled his seatbelt, felt towards the back window. When he reached it, he pushed himself out.
Around him he saw the lights flickering, and knew it would not be long. His mind reached out, looking for his friends among the stars, and felt them all around him. Clyde was to his right, guitar in hand, grinning while he tuned the damn thing for the fiftieth time. Next to him sat Brooke, crosslegged, spinning a drumstick and drinking a giant Mt. Dew. She laughed at some untold joke, and the rest of them guffawed along with her. Standing just outside of them was Umiko, calmly moving boxes back to the van. Morgan called out to him, and the big man turned and smiled at him.
Finally, there was Rosa. She was quiet, peaceful. She approached Morgan, held him, and then pointed skyward. Morgan looked up, then at his friends, and together they left for the next gig.

Morgan's empty body floated in the water.
The stars hung for a second more, and then went out.

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You're fine like trans-Alpine wine, Prissy-bitch

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Manna Charitable Foundation Cheers, bitch
Start here
Eat more of my SCPs. Eat them all.
Also please eat some of these

Anabasis Hub Probably the greatest story involving a pair of redheaded siblings whose infighting causes the end of the world
Manna Charitable Foundation 2000 The sequel to the above, collaborationed with Dr Reach
The Stuff Industry What happens when everyone around you at work is a complete idiot and so are you, but not only does no one get fired, but you actually turn a profit? I don't know, some stuff.
When MCF and Stuff happen A fun story of incompetence

Her eyes were shut, and she daydreamed. It helped relax her, easing her breathing. It smelled horrible around her, but at least she could finally breathe clearly. She smiled to herself, feeling someone nestled in her chest lovingly. Then her eyes came open as she remembered who it was.
It was dark out. Hours had passed, not minutes. She pushed the body off of her. There was enough light for her to see bodies around her, some of them sporting bullet holes in the center of their foreheads. Whoever had won the skirmish had started executing people, or else shooting the bodies to make sure they were dead. Yasir had covered her, protecting her in death. She didn't even know his clan, his full name, or if he was even working with the MCF.
No one had shot her, but the force of Yasir slamming into her had broken something in her. She had never broken anything other than an arm or a leg. She brought a hand to her nose, gently pressing against her nose and mouth, checking for blood. "Oh, good," She murmured, seeing fresh black stains in the moonlight, followed by a strong surge of pain. Broken nose rather than internal bleeding. That would only make it harder to breathe.
"Oh, good," She whimpered, and started to pull herself up to her feet, trying to ignore the childish panic running through her as she started tasting and smelling blood in every breath she took. She stopped moving at the sound of gunfire. Scattered shots, followed by a volley of semi-automatic fire. Professionals.
The Global Occult Coalition had arrived.

"Targets in sight," Agent Bijl of Strike Team Phalanx didn't hesitate, raising his rifle and firing off a shot at the shadowy figures. Both drew back.
"Check your fire, might be civilians!"
Bijl furrowed his brow. He hated hearing that. Killing civilians held a certain horror for most people. He couldn't help but not feel the same sort of concern, but it was still a pointless exercise. He was a professional killer; killing wasn't something he took lightly, or took pleasure in. At the very least, he preferred an enemy that could fight back.
Gunfire came his way, bullets thumping against his cover and spraying a fine mist of dust on his Black Suit. The two shadowy figures had emerged again, short and gangly. They couldn't have possibly been older than thirteen, yet both were firing in his direction. AKs, sloppy aim. Child soldiers. He hated that even more.
"Last Hearth, we have children here," He called in, firing at the figures without hitting, trying to suppress them.
"Civilians are being evacuated from the area," The voice of Team leader Umber "Last Hearth" came over the wire in bland response, "You are authorized to engage any remaining contacts in the vicinity, civilian or otherwise."
"I didn't say civilians, Hearth, I said children."
A long silence passed. The shadowy figures didn't pop up again to fire. He could hear them talking in hushed, panicked voices from behind the alley.
"Confirm, Phalanx 1-8, are they armed?"
"They are armed, Last Hearth."
"Engage all hostile contacts, Phalanx 1-8. One has a weapon, they all have weapons."
What the fuck, man? He'd shoot anyone who tried to shoot at him, but they were kids. What was he supposed to do?
"Hearth just tell us to waste these kids?" Another soldier asked. Just then, the shadowy figures burst out of cover. They were firing wildly as they made a run for a squat shack several meters back. Five shots rang out from behind Corporal Bijl, and both figures dropped.
What the fuck, man? He whirled on the others, but they were already moving.
"Fuck. Fine," It was just Somalia, he reminded himself. Just another sub-Saharan war zone, "You don't see the green and white, you don't fire! Copy?"

As night began to fall, Frank was still running to the hospital, trying to remain away from GOC teams. There were fires in Laascaanood, shots everywhere, black choppers, a small war. He saw the flare of an apported bomb suddenly appearing and immediately blasting a house several blocks ago. He heard more and more blasts behind him; the refugee camp. There were bound to be AMISOM soldiers there.
He wondered whether or not the GOC would make a distinction between those who shot at them and the rest. Probably not. They were already bombing a city with civilian inhabitants, right?
He gritted his teeth as he ran faster towards the hospital.
He almost collapsed before reaching the place, but he finally got there; it looked like the militants had gotten there with explosives or shot a gas tank, because two of the MCF pickups had caught fire and another one was already turned upside down and smoking. There were a few corpses, mostly locals and a few wearing MCF's colors, laying around.
Many of them were just out of the hospital, about to force their way trough the makeshift barricade hastily covering the main gate. Fortunately enough, they seemed to be out of explosives; a man was goading the group to attack the place. Dodger's stranger, maybe. Except she never mentioned a beard on him. Some of them were already trying to break the strong glass over the windows, reserving their guns for the inevitable slaughter that came to those inside…
Frank took out the gun. It was a pretty shitty pistol, but the preacher guy was pretty evident, standing over the mass. He pondered his options.
He could make the shot. He could take the bastard out. Then die a horrible death by rioting mob, of course, but that was not a problem to him…
Frank came closer to them, discarding the MCF vest as he got closer to the man. He was standing over a few piled boxes. Two of the militants noticed him, saw his weapon.
Suddenly, he felt the stream of authority and power, the intimate comfort of a gun. He had missed that. He knew it was an armed mob and they would not respect a Westerner with a gun any more than one without a gun, but he did not cared.
The men who saw him were shouting. He raised the firearm to take aim —
There was a screeching sound behind the hospital. It was like a metal bud, blooming into a flower, petals chafing each other as they unfolded.
Then, there was a roar. Then, thundering steps. At that point, the mob looked unsure, none of the people in front of the hospital were paying attention to Frank and he knew what was coming. So he decided to get away from the mass of people before Olympe 'walked' around the hospital.
Olympe decided to jump over the hospital instead. Frank pushed through the terrified crowd, in the middle of their confusion, and found a place to hide behind a half-demolished cube Torres had grown there as an extra supply room. From there, he watched the show.
The Old Orange moved faster than usual, walking with potent strides over the sturdy Vestan building. It stopped right before the mob, standing over the edge of the rooftop, right over the barricade.
Frank noticed Olympe had applied a dozen pieces of scrap metal over the canopy and several joints. The Old Orange looked like a jagged steel gorilla; now it was the beast its creators had intended it to be.
Frank heard the machine scream Olympe's words, spoken in Arab, Somali and French.
There were insults. Threats.
Then, there was simply a mindless howl.
Most of the men had tried shooting at the Old Orange, but Olympe simply ignored them, or at most mocked them, challenging them to keep firing. Few of them took up that challenge.
And when mindless shouting had driven most of the militants away, the Fifth Coalition Donation dropped from the roof top, crushing what remained of the toppled pickup.
At that point, no one was left to keep fighting.
Frank stood and walked slowly towards the Old Orange. "Frans!"
The machine spinned, its pilot barely visible underneath the metal armor that surrounded him. "Salut, Frank. It is not combat if I just threaten them, right?"
Frank laughed and rised the gun, clasped in his hand. "Hey, I was about to shoot them! You might as well be Volunteer of the Year!"
"Keep it with you, just in case," the Coalition ex-operative said. "I'm going out. To follow them, roam a bit. Patrol, you know."
"What about the battery?"
"It's unloaded. I've got hours of battery, Frank. Don't worry about me."
"They blew up the trucks, Olympe. They'll try to do the same to you."
"Sure they will!," the machine seemed to shrug. Frank noticed how asymetrical the motion seemed. "And I'll be glad to find out they think this is just another pickup truck to be blown up, 'cause I just mounted enough metal panels on this thing to turn it into a tank."
"You have no guns."
Old Orange's left 'fist' reached into the engine of the destroyed pickup it was standing on. It then clenched tight, a horrible crunching sound indicating how metal was mass in its manipulators. Frank uncovered his ears once it stopped.
"Good hunting, I guess. Be careful."
The biped vehicle dropped from over the pickup and walked away, treading with ponderous steps. Frank ran towards the hospital and screamed: "It's me, Skipper!"
"Frank! Have you seen my brother?!" Martino cried out in response.

She could walk fine, only having to deal with the aches and bruises on her legs. But trying to run would easily wind her. Asthma, she thought to herself, not for the first time, It's always been asthma and I kept putting off doing anything about it.
At least she had a gun now. Few people bothered to look her way, but with a mud-caked AK-47 cradled to her mud-drenched breast, she was functionally invisible. Whatever had happened the night before, it had escalated. Gunfire was everywhere now, and the GOC had deployed. Either she'd been out for longer than she thought, or someone had told them the situation was out of control. Ironically, the GOC's arrival made that a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What she saw as she dragged herself from block to block was like scenes from a documentary, unfolding on either side. Just down the block in one direction, a young man caught another unaware, and bashed the back of his skull in with the butt of his assault rifle. He ran her way, but ducked away into a hut before she could consider raising her own weapon. Directly in front of her, an older man was shooting down a narrow niche. He looked her way, waved a hand, and shouted out in Arabic for her to follow him as he went in to the niche. She didn't see any sign of him as she passed it by.
Another few blocks, and she saw a naked woman hacking two men apart with a machete. Either they'd been trying to rape her, or she'd been playing possum as they looted her, thinking her a corpse. She ran at the sight of Dodger.
The closer she got to the hospital, the louder and more frequent came the shouts and cries in Somali and Arabic. One side had more Arabic than the other. Somewhere around, a speaker was issuing orders or a call to prayer, tinny echos adding confusion over the already chaotic place. Despite this, she saw nothing else, no one else.
Preacher guy, she figured. Guy on the back of the truck. No fillings, or otherwise amalgam fillings. Newer, non-metal. She hadn't spent much time looking at Somalians' teeth, but her gamble had paid off—guy had to be a fraud.
I'm right again. She looked up, seeing light starting to creep through the billowing smoke, and the sounds of helicopters droning between hard cracks of gunfire. A couple of dark forms darted over the town, recklessly low. Drones. One of them sprayed a line of bullets for an obscene length of time over the other side of town. Beyond overkill for a case of local warlords and gangsters. One of the drones was suddenly lit up, catching a well-placed RPG and smashing against the other, the sorcerous engine's screams drowning out any victory cry given by the shooters. The wreckage started littering buildings below, setting more fires, and driving off the victors as the flames spread quickly.
I wish I could be wrong more often.
She had steadily made her way back to the hospital. She expected it to be swarming with civilians looking for help, seeking shelter. There were dozens of those. Not quite hundreds, but close. Some of them even had guns slung over their shoulders. No one was shooting here just yet, but there was more than enough of them armed to start a massacre. She made her way across to the entrance, people parting for her. She belonged here. Some were starting to press onto her, begging for help, as if she were one of the doctors.
As Dodger came into the hospital, she saw Opal's broken shape sprawled on a collapsible field pallet. Her face was riddled with shards of glass and horribly bruised; she bled through her ears and nose, and her arm was covered in a large plaster of different bandages, all of them reddened with blood. Even under the dressing, she noticed that the limb was twisted in a shape that couldn't be natural.
Locke was there, looking the most rattled by the badly maimed woman. Mirror Universe Locke. Dodger nearly spouted out. The other woman rushed up to her, as if Dodger would keel over at any moment. Surprisingly she found herself already off her feet, and being carted away. She looked down, "Oh, good," That must have been that sudden stabbing of pain a while back; blood was leaking from one of her boots. She couldn't feel most of her toes.
Priss let Dodger go, to be settled in with the dozens of others already being treated. She called out for her sister, then disappeared. Dodger closed her eyes, and again lost sense of herself as she was somewhere else when she opened her eyes. She still couldn't feel all her toes. Her feet were both wrapped in bandages, one thicker than the other, so she couldn't tell if she'd lost anything. Oxygen was being carried straight through her straightened nose. Westinghouse was over her, clutching one of those Wondertainment birds.
"Oh hey, Frank."
"Not so pretty anymore, huh?" He noted.
She smirked up at him, glad at least she could breathe more clearly. Whatever was on her nose was holding her nostrils up, giving her a piggish look, "You saw Enrico?"
"I saw. I told Martino. Wanted to get to the Myrmidons and do something reckless. Had to sedate him. We'll try to recover the bodies later, if this calms down. What the hell happened, Dodger?"
"His team was disposing of the tainted meat. People in the neighborhood started burning the MCF food and supplies they were handing out, thinking it was infected like the meat. Someone's been spreading rumors and stirring up shit about us. I'm pretty sure I know who, but I don't have a name or possible allegiance. They probably called the GOC, too."
Frank groaned, and shook his head, "GOC's been anxious to crack down on the whole thing from the start. Somalia's too unstable for their tastes. No place to bring anomalies to, they say. They'd get 'em and trade them with the Foundation, or worse, the Insurgents. Can't have that, too risky, et cetera. Any excuse to bring the hammer down on us."
"Lindsberg…"
"Huh?"
"Call him. With the fucking bird."
"I've already been in contact. Situation is officially out of our hands, and it gets worse; SCP is on to the whole thing."
She blinked. SCP Foundation arrival meant detainment and amnestics at best. She rather preferred remembering things and not risking the health of her long-term memory retention. Given her own long history with anomalies, she likely wouldn't get off that lucky.
"Evac?"
"'Fraid not. GOC's our only ride out, unless you wanna be processed and finely chewed out by the Foundation."
"Eff that, I says."
"Well you're not alone. A bunch of volunteers were talking about heading east, then hitching a train out to Eyl airport and heading out with Ruperts-3 Work Group. Mostly kids, spooked by everything. I doubt any of them won't be stepping onto a GOC chopper by tomorrow morning."
"Good, I'll head that east alone, then."
Frank sighed, "You don't look like you'll be walking right for a while—"
"I'm not going with the GOC," You don't know me, Westinghouse. She wondered what explanation they'd come up with to explain her disappearance. She wondered if Kone and Lindsberg would even care, "I'll find my own way."
"No way to talk you out of it?" Frank offered, knowing she wouldn't budge regardless of what he said.
"Save your energy for Priscilla Locke."

Priss had tried to step out of the hospital, panic threatening to unman her as the crowd of helpless natives kept pushing her back. She saw bodies near the flaming wreck of an MCF truck, but couldn't tell if Rhiannon was among the dead.
"Get back!" She flailed uselessly at the crowd. Some had guns—they wouldn't dare draw on her; the MCF wasn't their enemy. She didn't trust them not to pull their guns on her if they saw her lashing out at them in turn.
She gave up trying to get past them, and went back inside. She stubbed her toe against a wall as she made a right into a hallway. Then she realized the wall had partly given way from the impact.
"What the fuck, man?" She yelped out, realizing it was the fungus.
"Get back here!" It was Jacob. He kicked down the semi-solid mass, and yanked her through by the sleeve, before patching up the opening with fresh fungal growths, "Local militants are swarming this way, gunning down everyone remotely connected with this site. We need to slow them down long enough for the GOC to reach us."
Priss stared at the mass of fungus, rapidly spreading to encompass the open crevice 'Rabbi' Torres had made to pull her through. She hadn't realized it could form so quickly. But it was just a wall component. Probably no insulation, no wiring, just solid fungally-grown concrete.
"You better find Skipper, he's been looking for you."
"Where is Rhiannon Locke?" She asked in stentorian tones, as if he didn't understand English. Her mind was racing; she'd been arguing with herself and hadn't realized who she was talking to just then.
The look he gave her seemed to reflect that. You don't belong here. "Last I saw, she was in the reservoir with the Hippo, checking up on the water and stuff you brought in. That was hours ago, before the fighting reached us."
Priss nudged past him without a word, and nearly tripped over a short mass of fungus growing nearby.
Hey Hey Hey Hey, baby sis! How're the hormones treatin' ya?
Priss looked up. Rhiannon was there. Rhiannon Locke, covered in tattoos, eyes bloodshot, missing her front teeth. She scowled; now wasn't the time to be hallucinating!
Who's hallucinating?
Priss shook her head, refusing to acknowledge what was undoubtedly a stress-induced delusion. She could even smell Rhiannon's earthy scent, taste the liquor-drenched tongue she'd once nearly shoved down Priss's throat. She dimly remembered the scientists who'd been around the Anabasis for long periods of time. After a while, they claimed to be smelling people who weren't there, seeing them, tasting them. Priss moaned and mashed her palms into her eyes. Now she was fucked; she'd let the thing get into her head and twist her brains inside out.
You're fine like trans-Alpine wine, Prissy-bitch. You always have been. Speakin' of which, you've left your friend behind.
She looked behind her. Anabasis. She'd dropped it some time ago and forgotten. It was sitting there, just on the other side of the slowly spreading fungus, threatening to separate them. She reached over it as it started to reach chest height, hoisting the Anabasis up and bringing it across.
"I've got you," She hugged the device to herself, then slung it over her shoulder, "I will keep you safe."

Sarah woke up.
"Oh, my, I feel tired… why is it so dark? It shouldn't be this dark."
Suddenly, she could make out where she was. The basement of the hospital. Every wall was covered in green veins, the dark green of the Mason Mold, flocking to the ground; a whole section of the room was now perfectly covered in it. There were many people there, most of them patients and volunteers; not even sixty in total.
Many members of her Work Group were there. Some were not. Locke wasn't there, and good riddance. The Rabbi and his bunch were furiously smashing on the keyboards of a few thin computers, shouting something complicated. Frank and Alba checked on people, trying to help the three Satanist Scientists tend to them. Garziel had been hurt, her perfectly shaven head smudged with bruises all over.
Lila and François weren't there. Enrico wasn't there. Martino was laying on a stretcher, apparently unharmed, but moaning. Dodger wasn't there. Yusuf wasn't there.
"Please, people, be alive and well," she murmured, feeling desperate for a moment; that moment passed, and her heart filled again with the fire she knew so well. "What am I talking about-"
Sarah tried to stand, but realized she was on a bed just a moment after trying to stand. She fell down to the ground, acute pain seizing her. There was a cast on her left arm. Her head was burning, except where the blood hadn't yet dried. A thousand cuts announced their demands that she did not try to move again.
She didn't realize how badly hurt she truly was. It all registered to her as a clumsy body, dull after resting too much. Resting! Now!, she chastised herself, How can I be such a lazy idiot! Come on, UP!
"Opal!," Mirra said. Sarah recognized her voice through the heavy mantle of her pain, her confusion; she looked at the young girl — dear lord, why are they all so young — squinting as to try to make out her expression. "Opal, please, stay in your bed- wait, your eyes, your eyes were wrecked a moment ago!"
"Don't be ridiculous, they're just fine," she said.
And so they were. And they had always been so.
She looked around her again, seeing the mess she knew that was there, but suddenly it wasn't blurried.
"Very well, they're fine, my mistake!," Mirra said. "Now Sarah, please, just go back to your bed, you're hurt-there was an explosion and-"
"Hurt? Me?," Sarah laughed. "No, I'm fit as a fiddle, sweetheart, see?"
And so she was.
Sarah "Opal" Desjeux stood, still bloodied but decided and as healthy as the moment before being blown away by an explosion. the arms and legs of her clothes were ripped apart, and so she pulled from them until she was comfortable with a state of acceptably partial nudity. As she covered her freckled body again with a white lab coat with the MCF logo stamped in the left chest, she noted her hair was free.
Her hair moved almost freely. Like if it was alive, coils slithering against each other, the brown darkened but with a brighter shine of an almost green color.
Ah… so that's it, I was hurt. It's just that I'm doing it again, am I not? Sarah felt, once again, like she was a stone in a pack of twenty eggs. The world was so fragile around her…
She would have to be careful with what she said now. The world is too fragile, she heard her ex say to her. You are a thrown stone and the world is thin glass in front of you. That is why I'll be leaving. Can't know for sure if I love you or you just made me love you.
You never know with the Greens.
She chose to let her hair down for a while. It was an emergency, and she'd be careful. She could control it.
Mirra was staring at her. "That's… impossible," she said, blinking and slowly shaking her head. "You can't be doing this. You'd have to be a-"
Sarah pressed a finger against Mirra's lips. "Mirra, my dear, forget about it. Just for a little while, hmm?"
And so she forgot about it, despite Sarah's own feelings on the matter.
Guilt… sorry, Mirra. I'll be dealing with that later. She raised her sight and listened; the sounds of battle were faint, but they persisted out there.
"There is a lot of Blue going on out there, Mirra, my dear. Is it a Coalition attack?"
"Yes, Opal," the Satanist answered, seemingly upset without knowing why. "They've been here for a while. They shot Lila and a few others that were trying to leave through the front door."
"Oh, my! Is she alright?"
"Well, I'm not sure. She just ran for it as soon as she was full-on wolf. Through a Coalition formation," Mirra looked genuinely uncomfortable. "But, uh… I think she didn't kill anyone or anything."
Sarah smiled. Ah, my only confident… I hope you live through all of this, 'cause I'll need you later.
"What about Olympe?"
"He took Old Orange out to scare the militants off. Hasn't come back yet."
Sarah looked down. "That so."
She felt the hair around her head coil and turn and sliver and hiss, asking her to command him to come back, to speak the words, to say it-
No. There are limits. There have to be limits. I will not use you. I haven't used you in decades, and I will not use you now.
The voice that demanded her to make use of her heritage was silenced. Sarah "Opal" Desjeux glanced up to her robed friend, grinning.
"Well now, tell me. I see Jacob has been toying with the Mold again. I know him. Certainly better off finding our own way out than wasting weeks or even months in Coalition detention… How is he getting us out of here?"

This was a familiar experience for her, more familiar than she'd expected. Trapped in an underground facility, gunfire and shouts emanating from the surface, Anabasis sitting with her, suit drenched in sweat.
Rhiannon was here, at least. Or someone who looked like her, sounded like her, claimed to be her. No, she wasn't Rhiannon Locke, Priss decided. She no longer cared; she accepted that she did not belong here.
"Oh shit… Oh shit. Fuck. Shit." Rhiannon was hyperventilating, pounding the keypad of her cellphone frantically. No one was answering. Somali gangs had been advancing on the hospital, and now they were trapped between the MCF and the GOC. A clear violation of what Sun Tzu says, Locke thought… leave your enemy a route of escape, lest you wish to see them truly fight. Confronted with a heavily armed para-military force and a ragtag band of MCF peacenik volunteers holed up in a bunker, they were gunning for the MCF.
"Stop," Priss croaked.
Rhiannon didn't listen. She was starting to whimper and gasp, holding the phone to her ear, clinging to the desperate hope of hearing anything but static on the other end.
"Stop!" Priss yelled.
Rhiannon looked over at her sister, "You've been in this type of situation before; I haven't!" She lashed out, then shook her head, "I'm sorry. I'm… I'm scared."
Priss looked over at the Anabasis, and smirked, then back to Rhiannon, "Don't be. We're safe. Ana will keep you safe," She patted the device's fount, "I will keep you safe."
Rhie shook her head, "No way… that's insane."
Priss shrugged, "Turned out okay for me."
"Where will we go? Some dimension where there's no United States and no England, where no one will understand us? Some place where Rome never fell and there's gun-toting centurions roaming around Africa? Some place where the Nazis won?"
"Turned out okay for me," Priss repeated.
Rhiannon seemed to lose all composure, and started to shriek at her sister, "That's YOU! YOU could handle it! I'm not fucking YOU! I can't handle losing all my friends and family and everything I've ever known"
Priss's blood rushed, and she shocked herself at how rapidly she rose, and advanced on Rhiannon, "You think I could?!"
Rhiannon gaped at her, eyes wide and open mouth quivering. That expression was such a departure from the cracked grin she expected from Rhiannon the "Subhuman Mongrel" whenever Priss raised her voice at her. Priss's yelling fed Rhiannon the Subhuman Mongrel. Rhiannon the Junior Assistant Director quaked and collapsed under it.
"I'm sorry…" She sobbed, pulling away from Priss, "I don't wanna die…"
Priss could see Rhiannon the Subhuman Mongrel, standing there in her tanktop and baggy pants, grinning at the well-kempt girl barely able to stand. Priss saw her sister…
"No," She growled, and sat back down, caressing the Anabasis affectionately, "My only friend. You're right."
Rhiannon looked over at her, overhearing her, "Right about what?"
"Not you," Priss snarled.
"What?"
"I wasn't talking to you. You don't want to die? Just sit here and keep crying like a baby. The GOC will get to you eventually, and take you back home. I saw Torres setting up barriers along the way down here. Meet up with him. You'll be safe."
"What are you saying? What about you?" Rhiannon warbled, her hands visibly shaking.
"I'm saying sit down, cry like a baby, and wait for the GOC to take you home."
"Take us home."
"No. I'm not going with you."
Rhiannon squeaked, "No?! Why not?"
Priss looked at her glumly. She looked like Rhiannon Locke. She was Rhiannon Locke. But she wasn't Priss's sister. She was someone else. She had tried to love her, and Priss couldn't hate her for that, but the woman just wasn't her sister.
"Because you're not my sister." Priss said, smiling as she saw Rhiannon catch on to what she meant. She had told Priss the very same thing weeks ago, when Priss first met the MCF directors of Africa branch. It was an ugly smile, and it hurt to see its effects wrought on Rhiannon's face. Despite that, she kept feasting on the pain Rhiannon surely felt. It was an ugly, painful gruel, and she swallowed it down with an ugly smile.
The ugliness finally got to her, and she got up to her feet, ready to kneel down before her sister and embrace her, to finally be the one to apologize to her for a change. A subtle tug, and she looked down. Anabasis held her hand. Let's go home, it said, and offered its lever to her.
"Goodbye, Rhiannon. Maybe I'll see you on the other side." Priss said in a soft voice, and cranked the lever.

Rhiannon Locke could barely see through the rush of tears in her eyes, only making out the black and orange of her sister in front of her. A light started to dance across Priscilla's suit. Rhiannon turned around, thinking maybe the GOC soldiers had arrived, flashlights mounted on their guns. But there was no one there.
As she turned back around, there was no one in front of her either.
Rhiannon Locke had lost her sister again.

« Breaking It All Down On Me | Hub |  »
\\ First Locke Donation //


...
A black sedan rolled down the street, electric quiet in the dead of night, toward "The Rusty Cam". A true hole in the wall, this place. Dumpster overflowing out front, smoke pouring from all the vents, windows and doors. True to its name the place smelled of petrol and motor oil and coolant and burnt rubber. No one with a net worth over $20K would be caught dead there. Exactly the atmosphere required for this particular brand of meeting hall.
Or Church. Same thing, really.
The driver threw the car into park, and mashed the "Stop" button on the dash. His forehead rested on the steering wheel a moment as he steeled himself up for the night's task. A furtive glance to the briefcase in his passenger seat. A dry swallow. He closed his eyes and tried to think of this meeting for what it was. To remind himself that he was allowed to be here (strictly speaking). That this had 'already happened' from a certain point of view. It did little good.
"…Fuck it."
His hands wrapped around the plastic handle of the case, and he stepped into the night, glasses fogging in the muggy heat. Past the threshold, he counted no less than 23 eyes trained upon his person (some of them were probably even human). The man cleared his throat and pressed forward into the wolfs' den, heading straight to the bar.
2245 MDT, 18 July 2031 CE. A Friday. 36 degrees in Edmonton that day…
"…what can I do for you?" the bartender asked.
"Your finest 5w-30. Straight." He had a seat.
The bartender cocked his head to the side. "You sure about that? I don't think I've seen you around before."
"A whiskey while I wait, then," the man said, placing the briefcase on the bar and patting it twice. "…For your 'manager', of course."
The bartender's tongue clucked (No… ticked. That was definitely a tick.) once, and a glass was filled with amber oblivion and placed before the visitor. "It might take a while. He's a very busy man."
"Tell him 'Book of Pieces, 12:6.'" the visitor said. "Don't worry, I'm expected."
"I never heard about it."
"I don't expect you would."
"Look, who are you, really?" the bartender demanded.
…And then someone over the visitor's shoulder whispered the word 'foundation,' with a capital f.
The visitor was now acutely aware of the silence in the rest of the bar. No music, no conversation. Just the slow ticking of machinery, the soft hiss of release valves, and the hum of cooling fans. It was true, then. He had definitely come to the right place. And that was all the more terrifying.
The visitor took up his glass and downed what must have been 90 mL of bottom-shelf Bourbon and hacked up half of a lung. He had already been quiet too long. Anything but the truth would be sniffed out in an instant. But perhaps he could get away with telling only half.
"I am a traveler. From faaaar and away. I have come to barter for a service." The visitor took hold of the briefcase and opened it, revealing the leather-bound codex within. On its face was a single roman numeral: 'XXXV'. "Do you know what this is?"
The bartender's eyes opened so wide that one of them slid out 20 cm on a stalk, adjusted focus, and snapped back. "…That's not…" He began to reach for it, but the lid to the case slammed closed on his fingertips. "OW!"
"Yes. It is," the visitor asserted. "This interview is concluded. Either eject me from the premises or get your manager. I no longer care which." His palms were wet and his mouth was dry, but they bought it. The bartender poured a double out of a brown, unmarked bottle and hurried into the back. Top-shelf, home-made stuff this time. No junk in it, clear as a bell. Tasted like new-car smell with a hint of old-world coriander and nutmeg. By the time he was finished, a woman he did not recognize was standing in the doorway, silently beckoning him to follow with one cybernetic arm; a civilian appliance, by the look of it. That was one thing Church-goers liked about the slow creep of trans-humanism. It made it easier to blend in.
Don't worry, he thought silently into the room around him. Your time will come… You'll all get to sing your hallelujahs out loud like the rest of them.
The metal-armed woman and a man made primarily of bronze duct work stood like a wall in the archway. The woman stepped forward and nodded. "I am Acolyte Henrietta Ford, this is Militant Clutch. Please open your jacket and spread your arms."
The visitor looked back and forth between the two of them and decided that it was too close to call, and so he would comply. He opened his coat to rest on his shoulders and spread his arms. "Careful with the case. That's the only copy."
"Careful yourself, heathen," Clutch puffed, and took the briefcase from the visitor's hand. A series of lenses clicked into place in front of his left eye.
Henrietta flipped her cybernetic hand around three times to reveal some kind of scanning apparatus that the visitor could not quite place. It swept up one side of him and down the other making a bunch of meaningless noise, and Henrietta's pupils swallowed her irises whole as the data streamed in. "…Wow."
The visitor nodded. "Yup."
"That's…" She stammered. "It's a lot. For a jailor, anyway."
"You'd be surprised."
Clutch shoved the case into the visitor's chest with a grunt. "The case is clean."
Henrietta nodded and grabbed the visitor by the shoulder, ushering him forward roughly. "A few things need to be clear before you meet the Reverend Automaton."
"The Reverend what?"
"Automaton," Clutch said roughly. "His Holiness Reverend Fourier 7, fourth generation of the Design. No more questions, heathen. Listen now."
"First," Henrietta continued, "any hostile action on your part will be met with immediate deadly force. Second, our cooperation with you today in no way implies continued cooperation with you or any other party associated with the Foundation. Thirdly-"
"With all due respect, Ms. Ford, please don't mistake me for an errand boy. I'm here on my own."
"All the more reason for us to be suspicious," Clutch hissed quietly, and reached for the doorknob with a single brass claw. "Watch yourself closely. For your own sake."
The room had no air conditioning, only a large exhaust fan bellowing a constant 65 dB through the tiny space. Behind the desk sat an automaton of some kind, but not the sort one would expect was once a man, like his escort. Five lenses stared at him dispassionately from a central mass, held aloft by four of its eight appendages. The other four, each with their own lenses attached, busily shuffled and marked and scooted and filed papers away with rapid precision. The being adjusted focus twice, and produced a brass horn from the top of its central body.
"Greetings," the automaton clamored. "I am Fourier 7. We have been expecting you, Doctor-"
"I would prefer if my name was not spoken aloud in this establishment," the visitor interrupted. "I am not a moron."
The being's lens shutters fluttered audibly (all of them), which would have sounded vaugely of laughter if one had cotton in their ears. "Do you insinuate?" it asked.
"I do not," the visitor replied, "but the Foundation has ears even in places as hidden as this. Prudence demands discretion."
"Very well. Please present the volume for validation."
The visitor took a deep, nervous breath, and opened the briefcase again, very gently placing it on the desk before him. "The Design of the Mind, Volume 35 of 36. I believe it is the only one you are missing."
One of Fourier 7's appendages finished its filing task, and swung over to the desk, analyzing the codex from multiple angles. Carefully, it opened the cover, and with a wheeled attachment clearly designed for the purpose, flipped through all 1378 pages in less than 10 seconds. Its shutters blinked closed twice, and the lenses focused on the visitor yet again. "The volume appears valid, with 99.95% confidence. However, the condition of this volume is in-congruent with its age by nearly seven centuries. How was it obtained?"
"Never mind that. Are you satisfied with its authenticity or not?"
The Henrietta and Clutch looked at one another in solemn silence, and then at Fourier 7 expectantly as small fitted gears in its trunk clacked and clicked and shifted against one another. Its lenses shifted back and forth between the visitor and the volume several times before the cacophonous clickety-clack finally quieted, and the automaton spoke.
"I am satisfied. What is your price?"
The visitor let out a long breath before beginning. "I am currently host to a Mark XXV Cerebellar Device, which has had its wireless transceiver removed. I can't file a claim through my company health insurance for reasons which should be obvious… So I want a good Maxwellian surgeon to repair it."
Fourier 7 stopped all of its ancillary filing and fixed on the visitor with his full attention. Faster than he could blink, the visitor's glasses were removed, head cocked to the side and skin at the base of his skull probed by a cold, metallic something. He tried to struggle, but his two attendants grabbed his arms and pinned him to his seat. A magnifier lens was placed over his eye, and from somewhere within, a light scanned his retina from top to bottom, left to right. As quickly as the probing began, it ended, and the visitor fell back, suddenly quite exhausted. He checked his neck and found that he was bleeding, thought it wasn't serious and would probably stop within the hour. He pressed a handkerchief on it firmly, sat up straight through the woozy, and regained his spectacles. The dirty look shot in Henrietta and Clutch's direction was not returned.
"Your claim appears to be genuine," Fourier 7 said finally. "But again I am confused. The current generation Cerebellar Device developed by our Maxwellian brothers has been designated Mark II, and is not yet available for general installation."
"It will be, though, within this calendar year. And although the components have changed, the architecture of the device should be familiar enough to your surgeon that he can solder a goddamn pin!"
"Sir, please relax. Since my assembly, I have waited over 200 years to read this volume. I would be remiss to deny your request." Fourier 7 made a sort of nodding motion to Henrietta. She stepped forward and picked up the receiver of an old touch-tone phone, dialed a number, and spoke a screeching series of fax machine sounds into the receiver. "My assistants will furnish you with lodging for the evening. In the event that the Foundation discovers your capability has been restored, I believe it goes without saying that this transaction is not to be mentioned."
"Of course," the visitor said, slowly climbing to his feet.
"It is a very serious thing you have done for us, Doctor," Fourier 7 said, extending an appendage to take the visitor's hand. "I hope one day you will understand how serious."
"I do," the visitor said with a smile. "'Broken are we in his image, that we might make him whole'. Isn't that how it goes?"
Fourier 7's shutters flapped open and closed wildly as it heard this. "Indeed, it is. Good journey to you, Doctor. May you be forever whole."
The visitor was led up to a small clean room on the fifth floor, carried some of the way as his head refused to clear. "Have I been drugged?" he asked his attendants. "I feel like… like I've lost a lot of blood or something."
"It's normal," Henrietta responded. "The Reverend's examination required a full system diagnostic on your Cerebellar Device. I wear a Mark I myself. The effect can sometimes be quite draining." Slowly the two escorts lowered the visitor onto a bed and placed two pills and a glass of clear water on the side table.
"These sedatives will keep you unconscious, but physically responsive through your surgery," she continued. "Take them as soon as possible. You will awaken in 18-24 hours in the Edmonton Garden Inn/Hilton. Your vehicle will be in a reserved space in their parking garage. Check-out will not be required. If you are in any way dissatisfied or require technical support, a number you can call will be provided. Do you have any other questions?"
The visitor shook his head and waved the escorts out of the room, downing the pills as quickly as he could.

On the morning of July 1, 1999, Agent Burt Tomlin sat idling in a black sedan, smoking too many cigarettes to kill the time and resting his foot on the accelerator to keep the engine from stalling. Two hours late. Dr. Thaddeus Xyank was never late. He was just about to radio in an emergency and book it back to Site-17 when an innocuous door down the street swung open, and a very groggy looking theoretical physicist carefully stepped out of it and down to the sidewalk. Tomlin honked the horn just once to get his attention, and Dr. Xyank, eyes puffy, ear bandaged, and face red methodically walked to meet him.
"…You okay?" Tomlin asked.
"I… Yeah, I'm fine. I… There's…" Dr. Xyank's voice was cracking. He took off his glasses and vigorously rubbed his eyes. "It's a lot to take in, you know? I just… I need a minute."
Tomlin nodded and pulled deftly into traffic. "Everything go alright?"
Dr. Xyank looked dead ahead as Tomlin's phone buzzed in his pocket. Tomlin picked it up, noted the "unknown" number, and answered. "This is Homer Simpson, who's calling?"
~Everything went fine.~ said the voice of Dr. Xyank on the line.
Tomlin blinked, looked at the cell in his hand, and then back to his passenger before putting the phone back to his ear. "…Doc?"
Dr. Xyank smiled in his seat, chest bopping up and down in silent laughter. ~Yeah, it's me. See me waving?~. He looked Tomlin dead in the face and waved like a big grinning idiot. ~It's like I can see again. You can't… You can't imagine how good this feels.~
Tomlin smirked and hung up the phone. "Very cool. So… what now?"
"Don't worry about it," Dr. Xyank said as that stupid-happy smile spread ever wider across his face. All at once he watched TV, listened to the radio, and logged on to every wireless network he could find as they passed. "Everything is under control."
And lord willing, he thought to himself, all 'god's' children know well enough to wait to strike until the iron is hot. Though he wasn't quite sure, even though he'd seen it himself. Patience was, after all, a virtue best left to God.

...

Epilogue:

"Nothing?!" Clutch screeched in shock. "NOTHING?!"
"Relax, brother Militant," Fourier 7 said quietly as it placed the volume in a small, unobtrusive fire-safe near its desk. "Your will-pressure is exceeding standard tolerances."
Clutch puffed loudly as his relief valve opened, and his Mark VII weaponized exoskeleton fell slack around what was left of his biological form. "…With all due respect to the Patriarch, 200 years delay in reassembly is plenty long enough. Why do we not act?"
"Because, brother Militant, it is the logical thing to do. The heart is stopped. God's ichor is known to our enemy and isolate. The soul is lost to us. The eye sees only the profanity of the heathen jailers. We will not continue building the God, because at present we have no God to build."
"But couldn't those parts be rebuilt?" Henrietta asked. "I mean… I know the Mind could not be, but surely the other pieces are not out of our grasp!"
"They are not," Fourier 7 replied, sliding its trunk into a small slot in the floor. From beneath, a small electric motor rose and spun the crank in Fourier 7's base, winding him in seconds. "But there are many factors to consider. Creating these new parts in the image of our Lord would require extraordinary expense and risk. Have we forgotten the Surrey incident of 2004?"
Henrietta sighed and nodded, folding her arms tightly. "I know, 'When you go in foreign lands, go in secret and in disguise.' But we have been hiding for so many centuries…"
"Please, sister. Do not attempt to instruct me as to the anguish of waiting," Fourier 7 scolded gently. "Children of your generation have difficulty waiting for 200 ms, let alone 200 years."
"Forgive me," Henrietta bade, half-heartedly.
"Pardon my bluntness," Clutch injected, "but what value is this object if we are not making use of it?"
Fourier 7's gears ground against one another in frustration, but the ugly sounds within were short lived. With a single appendage, it opened the safe, and conveyed the volume, open to a random page, into Clutch's line of sight. "What do you see here, Militant? What marks are on this page?"
Clutch turned up his nose at the document and turned his head away. "Absorbing information through the use of digital binary is heresy. I will not!"
Henrietta's eyes would have fallen out of her head if they were not soldered in place. Clutch could not have just said what she thought he said. She played back the recorded sound-byte just to be sure. 'binary…binary…digital binary is heresy'… By WAN, he had!
"Am I a heretic, Militant?" Fourier demanded.
"No, Reverend."
"Yet I read and understand this document. Do you say that I am forbidden?"
Clutch crossed his arms and stayed quiet, as Militants are often instructed to do when they find themselves disagreeing with their betters.
"So… This is… This is a message written in machine code?" Henrietta asked. "A message, dictated by the Six Angels of WAN directly to our faithful scribes almost a thousand years ago… And it's in machine code?"
Fourier 7 lowered the volume and turned several lenses to face her, shutters fluttering slowly. "If this was true, it would seem that such a discovery, if taken by Father Bumaro before the Patriarchs and the Administrators, might do much to re-cast our broken Church. Would it not?"
"Yes, Reverend Automaton," Henrietta said with a cautious smile. "It would indeed."
"Enough to justify a small free service to a jailer, brother?" Fourier 7 asked Militant Clutch.
The Militant said nothing. He had nothing more to say. History and God would find the truth in it. Such pursuits required patience he did not possess. It was, after all, a virtue best left to God.

Part 5: Document 1780-WL | Hub | Part 7: Set Up Thine Altar Here


Three days later, Arjun found Zhi Xin on the rooftop of the San Francisco headquarters. There was a smile on her face as pale and insubstantial as the moon itself. Cigarette smoke formed a light cloud around her head. When she saw him, her smile grew wider. She said, “Hi, Arjun.”
“What are you doing up here?”
“I've been hard at work over the past three days, and I've decided that I want…a break. Yes. What have you been doing? With what endeavor have you been spending your life and time?”
“Trying to make sense of whatever you were doing with the book.”
“Were you? Wonderful. And what have you discovered?”
“Nothing.”
“Even better. You're as ignorant as always. Come on, Arjun, sit down.”
Arjun approached slowly. Zhi Xin was slumped against the fence that encircled the perimeter of the rooftop. Beyond her, the darkness past the edge of the building loomed.
“I told nobody about what happened,” Arjun said.
“Good for you,” Zhi Xin said.
Zhi Xin took the cigarette out of her mouth and crushed it into the ground. “Why do you think the O5 created us?”
“I could say that they wanted us to do their dirty work for them, but I don't think that's the answer you want.”
When Arjun spoke to the O5, he did not use his sight to look too closely at what took place behind their closed doors. The reality of the situation was that they were reasonably competent bureaucrats in starched suits sipping water out of shiny glass cups during board meetings, but Arjun knew reality to be wildly inconsistent and often misleading. Reality was the cage. That which defied reason was hunched over in the damp cell behind reality.
“What do you think the engine is?”
Arjun shook his head. “I don't know.”
“The O5 knows what it is,” Zhi Xin said. She laughed. “What did we expect? That we could hide from their all-seeing eye? They know…they've known, for God knows how long, exactly what this thing is. But they're not telling us.”
“That—that can't be true. They wouldn't withhold that sort of information.”
“It's containment, Arjun. They are pruning the tree.”
Maybe the O5 Council and the Insurgency had made the mistakes that mattered far before they had ever seen the engine.
Arjun wondered just how deeply the anomalous had been part of the Insurgency—not just a tool, but an organ, the beating heart. He wondered how long the O5 had known of their mistake, or how they would punish those responsible for the mistake. It was the intermittent vengeance of an inscrutable force from on high, a force that splintered and reconstructed itself at the same time.
The sound of Michelle opening the rooftop door startled Arjun out of his thoughts.
“Hey, Michelle,” Zhi Xin said. Arjun could only stare at her. His tongue was wrapped in too many questions to choose one.
“Arjun, Zhi Xin,” she said. “What are you two doing up here?”
Zhi Xin shrugged. “Shooting the shit.”
“Why don't you two follow me? I have something I'd like to show both of you.”
“By all means,” Zhi Xin said. “Come on, Arjun.”
Arjun followed in complete silence. The hand of dread was gripping tight around his throat, preventing him from speaking. He was only now realizing that for some time he had been dependent on the security that the Foundation provided. The base was cracking now, and with each step Arjun felt the earth shake as the Foundation rattled itself apart.
Michelle led them down to the basement of headquarters, where they stopped at the room in Zhi Xin's picture. The engine still sat quietly in the middle of the laboratory.
“Don't be afraid, Arjun,” Michelle said.
Zhi Xin snorted. “Yeah, Arjun, don't be scared. It's too late for that.”
Arjun's eyes were fixed on the engine. He felt his mind begin to run wild. He was being told something—the engine was telling him something. It whispered at the corners of his mind, speaking a language that Arjun couldn't understand. The patterns of science and logic unraveled to reveal higher and higher forms of knowledge while the remains of discarded theories piled in the sewers of humanity and began to rot. The higher the human mind reached, the deeper the refuse grew.
He was asked—he was challenged—didn't he see?
Arjun stumbled backwards, clutching at his head.
“Look into the future, Arjun,” Michelle said.
Arjun saw stagnation. The human race eked out a miserable history until inevitable annihilation. Nihilism's gaping maw swallowed up the essence of existence itself. There was no meaning, no value—nothing. Nothing! No matter which way Arjun looked, humanity was headed towards a heat death of the soul.
“Let's talk about chaos, Arjun,” Michelle said. “The primordial nothingness from which we came and the infinite void to which we go. It is the Alpha and Omega, and accordingly, chaos is in everything. It is our unavoidable destiny. There are forces which drive us inevitably towards that chaos.”
Arjun looked at the engine and understood exactly what it was.
Zhi Xin walked up to the engine and stared at it. “So O5 said, ‘Fuck it,' and abandoned us to this thing.”
“Whatever is taking place inside the O5 Council is much more complicated than that. They are driven by blind vengeance and over-pragmatism both at once. More than anything they are compelled by the all-consuming drive to contain. It is their survival strategy. But all of us here know how effective that strategy is, right?”
“I can't blame them,” Zhi Xin said. “There's no way out. The endgame deal for all of us is some dusty, shitty end. Although, I suppose that now we're stuck with this thing, that endgame deal is going to happen a lot sooner.”
Michelle turned on Zhi Xin. “Fatalism produces no results.”
“Look, I'm not really in the mood to talk about fatalism, how we're saddled with that fucking thing, or our inevitable death. Let's talk about why you ordered Owen to destroy the book. Because I know you did that.”
“It was a cognitohazard.”
“Bullshit. The only reason the GOC found it was because they were looking for information on what the Ahnenerbe was after, and the Ahnenerbe was after that thing. That book was information. It was knowledge. And you burned it. Why? You think there's a way out, but the engine is already affecting your thinking.”
Michelle stepped closer to Zhi Xin. “Are you suggesting that I'm compromised?”
“Nothing personal. We're all probably compromised.”
“The engine had nothing to do with my decision to destroy what I knew to be a cognitohazardous object!”
Zhi Xin smiled. “Whatever you say.”
“Michelle,” Arjun said, “we would know if she were compromised. We would be able to see.”
Slowly, Michelle drew back.
Arjun turned to Zhi Xin. “Regardless, that doesn't explain why you exposed yourself to that book in the first place. You haven't told any of us—not even me—what you saw inside that book.”
“Meaningless bullshit,” Zhi Xin said. “Nothing important.”
“Xin, for God's sake, you have to tell us,” Arjun said.
Zhi Xin laughed.
“To be completely honest, I don't care what she saw in that book,” Michelle said. “It's irrelevant. We have enough information in front of us right now to proceed with a plan of action. The O5 Council is shaking itself apart. There are some who recognize that the entire project of the Insurgency was an enormous mistake. And then there were those responsible.”
“The ones who will join us,” Arjun said. “In our exile.”
Michelle shook her head. “They will aid us in the beginning. Open doors that we don't have the key to. But we will be alone after that. I don't know what will happen to them.”
“They disappear like fairies into the night,” Zhi Xin said. “What else?”
Arjun looked at the engine. It stood silently, content to only watch them. Why not? Arjun realized that it needed only to do very little—subvert a situation here, give a suggestion there—because it would win in the end anyway. But he wondered if even the engine could have infinite patience for the end of time to come.
Arjun said, “That thing is impatient. Sooner or later, it will act.”
“Very soon,” Michelle said. “But we can use it.”
Zhi Xin covered her mouth with her hands and started shaking.
“When the O5s wanted more out of this project, I used HALMAS to look deeper into the engine. It is knowledgeable. And it is willing to give up its knowledge if we fight against the Foundation. That is the way forwards. As we are now, humanity has no choice but to fall into unending chaos. But if we understand the anomalous, then we have a way out.”
“If we understand the anomalous?” Zhi Xin said. “Oh, God.”
Arjun shook his head. “If we fight the Foundation? That's absurd. They have done everything for us.”
“Have they?" Michelle said. “Have they? They abandoned us for their mistake. They are content to sit on their stockpile of anomalous objects, to contain and not to know, to do what they have done for eternity while the world crumbles into dust behind them. They think that they will be immortal if they do this, but they're wrong. Look into the future again, Arjun.”
Didn't he see?
There was one branch that led away from the inevitable nihilism. It was a branch of conflict and violence and betrayal, of isolation and exile, but—
“When the O5 expels some of their own, we will be given aid,” Michelle said. “And with that aid, we can spark hope.”
There was only one way out. Arjun began to shake.
“It can't be,” he said. “This can't be the only possibility.”
“Do you disbelieve your own sight?”
“For God's sake, the Foundation's all we have! There is nothing else for us! No birthplace, no home, no family, no history, no identity! We were made to serve and without service—“
Arjun flinched as Michelle drew up against him. “There will be no more service for us! In a day the Foundation will make the illusion a reality, and we will be true outcasts. God knows what happens after that. We are being cast out as we speak, Arjun.”
Slowly, the boundaries of Arjun's being crumbled around him. The past was dying and the future glowed red and angry before his eyes. The present whispered omens of destruction into his ears. When the boundaries fell, he realized—he could do anything now.
“Fine,” he whispered.
“Fine?” Zhi Xin said. “Oh, goddammit. Neither of you get it. There is no way out. There is nothing to understand. You are just digging yourselves deeper and deeper into the den of that fucking thing.”
Michelle's jaw twitched as she ground her teeth together. “I take it that means you don't agree with my proposal, then.”
“Look, you moron. Imagine I get a toddler to scribble all over a floor. If you know a goddamn thing, you can see it's all nonsense. But if you're…an ant and if you see the tiniest, tiniest part of this four-year-old's bullshit, it's a straight line! It makes sense! There is order in all things! That is us. We are the ant.”
Arjun remembered the night of the day when they had received the assignment to create the Insurgency. The future was filled with uncertainty, and something dark swirled in Arjun's heart. He had said to Zhi Xin that the Foundation was all he had—he didn't even know why he knew his own name. He had stared into his hands and watched fear take hold of them.
Zhi Xin had smiled. She had said, “O5 can go fuck themselves,” and Arjun had felt a tiny bit of his fear dissolve.
He had always trusted her.
“Xin, please,” Arjun said. “This is our only way out.”
Zhi Xin laughed. “I'm not sending myself on an idiot's quest. I've spent the last twenty years doing that already.”
“Then leave!” Michelle said. “Go out into the wilderness. Don't you understand that neither we nor the Foundation will find your existence tolerable? The Foundation won't take you and you won't have us?”
Arjun took a half-step towards Zhi Xin. “Xin, aren't we—aren't we your friends?”
Without saying anything, Zhi Xin turned around and left. Arjun felt himself shiver as she went.
“None of the others know,” Michelle said. “What Zhi Xin just did shows that we can't tell them. We'll have to let the engine take them.”
Arjun nodded mutely.
Was this what it was like to be cast out? To be barred entry into the homes of the warm and comfortable? Somewhere, the O5 Council sat in its fortress of stone and continued orchestrating the mass alienation of the human race from reality. Arjun didn't even know if he cared about the end anymore. Who cared if the human race lived a lie for the rest of time? Who cared if they died the whimpering death? At least he would have been warm.
But he still could not bring himself to follow Zhi Xin out that door.
In the center of the room, eight cylinders began to whir.

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