Contains themes of suicide and suicidal ideation.
I
I hear the sound of chains being dragged along an asphalt road.
The sun's hot on my face, and I can't open my eyes without blinding myself. I'm arched uncomfortably over something that digs into my back. I feel it shift and rise and fall beneath me, its breathing heavy and unstable. It's a man. A man is carrying me.
I try to turn, but something cold and hard tightens around my neck and keeps me still. My broken hands rise to my throat and I pull at the metal collar. Using all of my strength, I'm barely able to give myself enough room to breathe before it crushes back down. The man mutters something incoherent. Something about high branches.
My lips are cracked and caked with blood. Whenever I try to steal a breath, I feel needles stabbing into my throat. But still I keep trying. I turn myself around, and again I am forced back into place. The man is yelling now. I know what he's saying, but my mind can't quite place the words together into anything coherent. The pieces just scatter away.
Questions. I need to ask him questions. Dozens come to mind, but I only have the strength to sift through a few. Every second I spend debating, my throat screams louder and louder. You're going to die, it says. I am going to die.
“Wuh…”
The man stops. I try to speak through the pain, but each time I clench my teeth together, it increases tenfold. Hooks form in my throat that drag my voice down to a whisper.
“W-Water,” I finally say.
He's silent for too long before replying, “You're not going to need it.”
He has a painful voice.
Minutes crawl by, bringing along more pain. My body slowly realizes that it's not going to be getting water, and my thirst soon disappears. There's no sweat on my brow and no tears in my eyes. I can feel the grooves on the roof of my mouth with my tongue. Sometimes, a shadow falls onto my face and I'm given a reprieve from the sunlight before being plunged back into it a second later.
The man leans forward. I roll off onto the ground.
I spit out a loud "Fuck!" as my body nearly breaks in half. I kneel on my hands and knees as the shock wears away. The world is buzzing; the wind is violent.
Grass meets my fingers. There's a soft sizzle as I am comforted by the cool earth. I feel the ground rocking back and forth from the breeze like it's a living thing. A part of me wants to believe that's true. It wants the earth to swallow me, to force my body to become a part of it. Then all of the heat would be gone. There's a tug and the chain clinks against the collar that now hangs loosely around my neck. I examine it with my hands.
It's a thick ring of old metal — there's no lock. It's impossible to tell whether I had just woken up with it one day or I had been wearing it for years but never realized.
I feel around to the back. The chain is made of something softer. If I pressed hard enough, I might be able to break it. I squeeze, but the chain fights back, slicing into me. My arms droop down. I'm too weak. My body is disfigured and starved like a dying dog, its legs broken. Even my eyes have trouble remembering to stay open.
The grass is like dry fur sprouting out of the ground. The sunlight cuts through the impossibly tall trees. Bits of asphalt and concrete pepper the ground. I'm next to a road that extends far off into the distance. This is where I'm going to die. I will be buried beneath this concrete and my bones will rattle every time a car drives through.
There's a tug, and I fall onto my stomach. Another painful bout of coughing. I look up at him, chain spooled gently in his palm. My muscles are so weak I can only crawl towards him. "You…" I mutter. "Who…"
In an act that had to be retaliation, the man pulls the chain again, hard. More coughing. More pain. There's blood in my mouth now.
"Don't worry about who I am." He examines a nearby tree. "It doesn't matter. You won't see me after this. But I'll be many things to you while you're still here. Maybe a listener, if you can withstand it." He heaves back and chucks the spool up. I hear it snag onto a few branches before returning obediently back to his hand. He pulls on it once or twice, then he turns to me.
"But for now, I am going to be the man that murders you."
"Y-You're not…"
The collar tightens. I don't even have time to think before I'm wrenched up from the ground. My spine strains itself as I'm hoisted up so high my feet can't touch the ground. The man tugs down and my face contorts in pain. My limbs draw into my chest like a goddamn child. I force them back out. I will die like a real man.
"Don't worry about the branches breaking. The trees here can hold things twice as heavy as you. Don't be afraid of this. Fear only makes it hurt more." The man tugs again and I fly. Panic chews into my leg. "Your body will try to save itself. Don't worry, that's a natural response. You'll fight it, you're strong."
I rise higher and higher. The trees turn into honey-brown sticks and the leaves melt together into a large green wave. I can barely see the man, but I know he's looking at me, seeing whether I will try and fight my death. My hands see the cue and fly to the collar. They try with every last fiber of strength to tear it off, to escape the inevitable. But even they seem to notice how pathetic the attempts are.
"It always feels longer than it actually is," the man yells. "You'll feel the worst pain of your life for a few seconds, then the world will go dark. It's probably dimming by now, isn't it?"
I can't feel my body anymore. The man was right: I am terrified. The initial excitement and panic leaves, and I'm just stuck in the aftermath. The world feels hollow. My head feels hollow. Something tells me that the universe wanted this to happen. It wanted me to struggle and to humiliate myself and to give up.
Clef was wrong. Humanity does have a meaning in the universe. We are meant to be murdered.
There are birds chirping in the distance. One rests on a branch right in front of me, and caws. The sound echoes in my mind — back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The world disappears as I spiral downward to somewhere beneath me. I feel the wind on my face, an ever-so-soft wind caressing my face.
II
“Please state your name and employee ID.”
I am seated in a shadowy room. There's a dingy light overhead. It's so bright I can't see the ceiling behind it, like it's just a floating sphere above me. In the corners of the room, where the darkest shadows lie, is movement. Monsters twitch and distort and crawl along the walls, staring at me with a fearful hunger in their eyes. The burning light is the only thing that protects me. If one of them were to step inside, they wouldn't be able to withstand the pain. Their flesh would be seared to an oily black by the light. The pain reminds me that I am a human being, that I can withstand the light and they can't. Now the only threat facing me is the other human being sitting before me.
I can't capture an image of her face. She's sitting right there, but there's nothing remarkable about her. She could have been replaced with any civilian off the street and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Is there even a difference at all between her and everyone else? There has to be. She's working at the SCP Foundation and they're not. But that difference is so subtle that I don't care to separate her from everyone else. She still bleeds human blood. She still breathes human air.
"Excuse me, sir," she snaps. "I need your name and employee identification number."
I swallow. "Williams. Huxley Williams, with an 'X'."
"I know." She flicks at something on her neck. "Employee ID?"
I spit out a set of numbers of letters that I had long committed to muscle memory. She types them into the computer that's resting on the table before her. Blue light shines onto her face. I pick at some dead skin as I wait out the short peace before the storm.
"So why are you here today?" The woman crosses her arms and tries to stare into my eyes. I avert them downwards.
"I, um, I want to have my background expunged. Or at least my employee summary, so that people can only see if it they need to," I say. The words were formed a long time ago.
"So you want to have your background declared as sensitive information?"
I nod.
She turns back to the computer, tossing an off glance at me. "There's barely any information here. No date or place of birth, no living relatives. The only record here I have is of you passing a recruitment course."
I take her words as a joke, but my laugh only intensified her stare. "Yeah, I guess you could say that."
"So what's your issue with your background?"
Strings of anxiety grow in my stomach. "What?"
"I need a reason why you want to expunge your background."
"Um… personal reasons."
"I need something more than that."
"What? Why do I have to tell you? Can't I just say that I don't want people to know and be done with it?"
The woman sighs. The strings begin to climb up the walls of my esophagus. "No. I need a specific, official reason. Just tell me so I can sign off of it."
Fuck.
I grab my pants and squeeze my knees. There are thousands of reason why she could have asked that question. Most of them are meaningless, just empty tunnels that will lead me nowhere. But my mind still follows each and every one. Whenever it stumbles into an empty conclusion, it convinces itself that the next tunnel will surely have the answer. I know I won't find one, though. I have to speak.
I open my mouth, but nothing leaves. She can't know. It doesn't matter if I give her ten-million bullshit reasons, she can't know why I'm doing this. Nobody can. I guess that's the same thought every other guilty person has when they're trying to do this. Am I just another guilty person? I thrash myself for the question. Of course I'm like everybody else, I'm made of the same flesh and blood as them. And since I'm like everybody else, she must know the next thing I'm about to say is a lie. Does she even care?
No, she doesn't. She has no power over me and no influence over the people that do. It doesn't matter if she likes me or not, she still sleeps in the same part of the ship that I do. Even if she had the authority to kill me, why should she care? She said it herself, she sees hundreds of people a day. There must be others like me. I'll let myself fade into the machine until she won't have the energy to try and find me again.
Despite me telling myself that over and over, I can't say the words. My mouth is dry, my tongue is cramped. Seconds tick by. I had to say something.
So I began, "I'm, um… I don't like talking to other people. I don't talk to my coworkers. People tell that one day, I'll start liking the people next to me, but I've been working here for a decade now and I know that's not true. I don't have friends at work. I sleep at my Site, and I don't have anyone to come home to. There are one or two people that I'm associates with. But I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm not the type of person that needs those things from people. I like it when people don't know much about me. And I don't want them to know my background. I just want to be left alone."
I let out a sigh that had been stuck inside of my for years. The woman nods and types away. Happiness flows through my veins like a drug. I have to bite my lip to keep myself from smiling. I can already feel myself slipping out of her grasp into the cracks of the omnipresent death machine. It was just enough truth to keep her fed, but not enough to leave her wanting more.
One of my legs jumps from the electricity surging through my muscles. I press down on it, hard.
"Excited, huh?" she says. She's not even looking at my legs.
"N-No, I'm just…" The gears in my head keep running. "It's been a while since I've got something like that off my chest. It's good. Definitely, definitely good." I smile to sell the words.
"Hmph." I can't tell whether she's satisfied or disappointed. But that doesn't matter to me now. She had found her chance to seize the conversation and she didn't take it, and now she was powerless. I can feel the fear draining out of me. "Huxley, you're different from a lot of people that come here. Do you know that?"
I straighten myself. "What do you mean?"
The woman keeps her eyes on the computer. "Most people would have been too scared from the hanging to make it this long. Even fewer try to play along, and none have… devoted themselves to it as much as you have. It scares me a little, honestly. You're smiling right now, but I remember just ten or fifteen minutes ago, you were terrified of me. Are you not afraid anymore or are you just burying it and hoping it goes away?"
She stands, her chair screeching as it scrapes across the floor. She picks up the computer and walks around the table.
"Wait," I interrupt. She turns, but I can't meet her gaze. "What does any of that mean? What's going on?"
She scoffs and continues her exit. My hands flies out and snatches the sleeve of her coat. I'm dangerously closer to the shadows now. I can only make out her silhouette. I say, "Hey! You can't just leave me here."
“Huxley, stop." She pulls back, and my grip on her coat is broken. “Do you want to know why I called you different? Because everyone else realized what was happening and stopped playing games with me. They stopped acting like stubborn children. Don't sit here acting like you weren't just hanged. Don't act like you enjoy playing along."
I pause. “What… what are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I'm talking about, Huxley.”
Then she turns away. Then she leaves. And I am alone.
I am seated in a shadowy room. The lamp still blazes above me, but it doesn't protect me anymore. I wonder if it ever did. I can't see any monsters out in the dark. It's just me, a delusional thing that thinks that its greater than anything else. The light irritates my skin a little.
Is this what death is? Is it this interview and this dark room? The idea won't leave my mind, even when I know how pointless speculating is. There's no point to trying to find a winning move when there isn't a game being played. That was how it was with Emma, wasn't it? There was never a game, there was never a fight. It was all just paranoia.
It was just me. A stubborn child in a shadowy room terrifying myself with imaginary monsters.
III
HUXLEY.
“Mmph.”
OPEN YOUR EYES, HUXLEY.
“I don't care. I just want to sleep.”
…
“…”
…NO.
My eyes shoot open.
I am sleeping on a dirty mattress, a blanket wrapped around my naked body. It's stiff and scratchy like a sheet of metal, and it presses down hard on my chest. Not that I mind — it's the only thing protecting my face from the cold air. My brain must have placed me inside of a seedy hotel room. Or an apartment in a bad neighborhood, I can't tell the difference.
I can hear cars roaring by like they do in big cities. There are no stars tonight, but the streets are on fire. A kaleidoscopic wave of headlights shines through my window, and crashes onto me. Everything held a depressing glow to it, like they just wanted to be left in the dark. I feel twinges of pain all over. I groan and turn to my side.
AWAKE, HUXLEY.
My muscles tense. A shiver shoot through my legs and spine as I kick away the blanket and expose myself to the world. The air latches onto me like a leech, sucking away my body heat. It's pathetic. I am destroyed by things that don't even affect normal people. I can't even get out of bed without collapsing from the weight of my own body. But that voice in my head keeps ordering me to; it keeps forcing me to embarrass myself.
"Fuck off," I call out. The voice does the opposite, burrowing itself deeper inside my skull. I feel it wriggle under my skin and take control. I slowly lose control of my legs, my arms, my chest, until I can't tell if I even have anything left. My body convulses, trying to fight its influence, but it's pointless. I was never fully occupied in my mind. There was always space for everybody else.
I force my eyes shut, trying to get it to stop. It pushes further instead. I feel an ice-cold animal climb onto my chest and dig its claws into my stomach. My lungs can barely take in air. It growls, a low ringing sound. I'm just restless, I tell myself. This must be a fever dream or something caused by my insomnia. I need to buy more sleeping medication.
STOP MAKING EXCUSES.
My gasp is stifled as the animal grips around my throat and squeezes hard. My body feels paralyzed, my arms are almost lifeless on the bed. The voice pins me down to the bed. It has complete control over me. Still, my body tries to reject its rule. It thrashes around as the animal — now a monster — freezes my brain and burns down my mental defenses.
"F-Fuck you!"
My body instantly utters an apology as it crushes my throat completely. My lungs start convulsing, begging to take in anything. An icy hand manifests on my chest, another on my leg, more on my wrists and face and stomach. Each one pulses, sending painful psychic shocks throughout my body. They infect me with uncomfortable thoughts that I can't control.
One grabs my leg. I grit and teeth and try to block out the thoughts, but they quickly overpower me. It moves its way up my thigh, leaving a trail of unfeeling behind it. A large black stain spreads across my leg onto my crotch. Fuck. I start panicking. The hands seize my fear, coiling themselves up further. My neck, my chest, my waist, my face, my eyes. My entire body is trapped.
My soul tells me to stop. It pleads with me to give up my fight and let go. I need to go, it screams, I need to go anywhere but here. I refuse to let it leave. The voice stabs holes in my mental walls and forces itself inside. It twists my thoughts with its words. It distorts everything around it.
And once my defenses are in ruins on the ground, the hands tear me apart.
One pulls out the last few strands of hair on my head. One forces itself down my throat. One wraps its bony fingers around the base of my penis and digs its fingernails inside. Pain pools in a red puddle on the bedsheets as it cuts through the veins. I feel it fall off. It moves lower, prying off my testicles. Warmth flows away from me, and all I see is bloody red. I smile when it's finished. I don't deserve children. Nothing like me does.
I realize now what all of this is for. The world — no, reality itself is just correcting a mistake. Did I forget who I am? I am a subtherium. I am scum. I am that which must be the destroyed.
STOP IT, HUXLEY. YOU'RE DOING THIS TO YOURSELF.
“I don't… care.” My life spills out onto the mattress. I can already feel myself degrading into a corpse, maggots bursting out of my flesh and worms making home in my deformed skeleton.
STOP. LOOK AT ME.
“You don't give a damn about me. I don't… I don't…”
I NEED TO SEE. YOU HAVE TO LET ME INSIDE.
“I don't want you to see. I want you to kill me.” The hands grow tighter. I can see the world fading to black.
THAT'S A LIE, HUXLEY. YOU CAN BREATHE. YOU JUST HAVE TO DO IT.
I can't. I'm too weak. I was always too weak.
IF I'M HERE, THAT MEANS YOU'RE STRONG. THAT MEANS YOU CAN SURVIVE THIS.
The devil lies.
HUXLEY…
I can't live.
…
HUXLEY. PLEASE.
…
…
…
I gasp.
My eyes shoot open, and finally I am able to see. The bedsheets are still clinging to my body. The fan is still creaking above me, and the cars are still blaring in the distance. I am completely alone in this room. Everything is fine. Or more accurately, I am fine. I'm fine for now, at least.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and examine myself. My body is fully intact; there are no black patches of warm blood. The pain has eased only a little. I was still breathing with distorted lungs and looking with malformed eyes. The bedsheet felt like it was rocking back and forth, like I was sleeping on top of a great animal that could at any moment chose to devour me. I can still feel it breathing on my neck.
HUXLEY… I—
"Don't act surprised." I grin. "Don't congratulate me. This isn't something to be proud of, and I still want you gone. But I don't think I can do that by just…"
IGNORING ME?
I nod. It isn't because I hadn't found any more words, but because I didn't have the strength to express the feeling that was forcing itself into my heart. It starts to beat like a drum in my chest. With my relief comes a deep, agonizing shame. I must be insane. I must a goddamn idiot to keep chasing the delusion that he will still survive this.
I take a deep breath.
"Fine. I don't care anymore," I say. "Come in."
IV
"No, no, no, no, no. I'm sorry, I can't. I really can't. Can we just go back? I'll let you murder me if it makes everything alright. Can you do that? Just make everything okay again. Give me this one little thing and I won't fight you again."
NO.
I run. The world bends around me, lengthening and swirling into a lifeless beach. Gray sand clings to my feet and similarly-colored seaweed is strewn across the ground. There was an intense banging sound. Hundreds of tiny holes appeared in the walls as they snapped away from the floor and the ceiling, crumbling beneath their own weight into cliffs and mountains that soon settled into the distance. I run, but the voice follows me. It materializes — it forces itself to become real. With ghostly hands, it steals itself a name, a body, a whole identity.
The waves are growing more violent. They beat into the sand, the remnants pooling around my feet. But even those are enough to cause him to stumble. I have to fight to stay upright. Thunder strikes somewhere close and my ears blow out into static for a few seconds. My hands fly to the sides of my head as an intense light flashes before me and I collapse.
I turn my head, my teeth grinding against each other. Far off in the distance, deep in the ocean, I see what the voice has become. It is a monster, a leviathan that rises up through the sky and sits in the clouds like a king. Its head is buried and mist, and enormous tentacles descend to the sea. They carefully examine the world like serpents stalking their prey. One plunges into the ocean, creating another tidal wave that will eventually collapse into me. It dives through the water, rising out suddenly a few hundred meters later and shooting back up to the sky.
Its body seems to transcend beyond what I can see. The space around it twists and blurs as more tentacles descend to the earth. They whip across the water, slowly approaching the beach where I am slowly crumbling. I try to stand, but suddenly a choir of voices scream in my head, tearing through my soul and keeping me pinned to the ground.
The only thing I could do was watch it come closer.
WHAT IS HURTING YOU, HUXLEY?
It would take me more years than I could imagine to think of an answer to that question, so I just point to the leviathan. I point to the voice.
WERE YOU NOT HURTING BEFORE?
I don't want the voice to be here. I want it to leave. I want everything to leave for just a second.
YOU'RE IN CONTROL IN YOUR MIND. IF I AM HERE, THAT'S BECAUSE YOU WANT ME HERE.
The leviathan wails. It screams something to me, something tha under any under circumstance I would understand. But I don't know what it's trying to say. I can't think, and it takes the rest of my mental energy to realize that I can't think. Every calculation takes a lifetime. I felt myself falling something beneath the ground. My limbs are numb, and I can't smile or frown.
Every thought in my mind pushes me closer to brain death. They shove me into a deep chasm in my mind where the walls are always spinning and the floors are never solid. I try to climb back out, but cement falls on top of me, pushing me back down. Illegal thoughts swarm my mind, dragging me deeper and deeper. I hear a roaring voice far below me.
It shouts at me, "Yes, you're right! There is no happiness here! There is no joy! You must obliterate the sadness; you must murder the dark. Kill it! Kill it until there is nothing left but light!"
The walls collapse at the voice's command.
I am surrounded by dark blues and purple, by rocks and seaweed, by monsters and the things those monsters fear. Waves flow through me — and even though I'm holding my mouth shut, I can feel myself drowning. The voices are just a whisper now. The colors and the caverns leave. Everything leaves.
I'm rocking back and forth, but my body isn't moving. I float in a place that grows more alive by the second. Soon, I feel its arms around me and I can hear it breathing slowly, steadily on my neck. Its jaw unhinges as it slowly devours me, finally bringing me to somewhere physical.
Suddenly, voices.
"Ritualizing this introduces a whole new can of worms. No, it's dumping a barrel-full of them into a lake the size of your sink. We would have a virtually one-in-a-million shot of even keeping this thing alive," one says. It is a man, his voice high-pitched as if he were whining out every word.
"We've only got six or seven minutes before it's braindead. We either use a ritual or we let it die," another voice responds. Her voice is younger, and somehow feels more real than the man's.
No, it doesn't. She's not speaking. She isn't even real.
WHY DID YOU HIDE THIS?
"Even if we do it your way, what chances does this thing have of surviving? It's not exactly the strongest entity we've found today. Why should we risk our lives for something that's going to keel over in a few years either way?"
"Because we're here to save whatever we can find. We don't get to decide who get saved. All of these things deserve a life."
"That is not true and you damn well know it."
YOU REMEMBER IT SO WELL. HOW OFTEN DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS?
I don't think about it. This is just a fantasy that runs its course through my subconscious every few days. The words are bits and pieces of conversation I heard at the camp. The people were never here. This conversation is meaningless.
The woman groans. "Yes, of course I know that. But the point is that we have the opportunity to save one and you're choosing to let it die."
"Yes! To save something more valuable!"
EVERY WORD, EVERY INFLECTION IN TONE. I'M IMPRESSED.
I feel the presence of somebody else. I know exactly who it is, but I refuse to let myself remember his name. That will make it too personal. He's sitting on a stool next to my head, looking down at my face. That is all he focuses on for a moment, my pale, underdeveloped face that is dwarfed by the mountain of flesh that's attached to it. He taps his finger on the surgical table, sending tiny shockwaves across my body.
"We don't have time. It's FATHER's decision."
He simply says, "I'll operate on it. Alone." I can't forget his voice. It always sounded on edge, as if he could raise it to a yell at any moment.
"No. That's absolutely absurd, FATHER," the man counters. "Even if we go with her plan, we can't risk you on something this… small. Put me on it."
"I am the only one on this ship that knows the Sarkic rituals. I will perform this surgery."
"But if something happens—"
"If I die, then there will be a new captain. You'll make do, won't you?"
A beat passes as both parties consider their next move. FATHER breathes heavily. Panic is slowly wearing down my walls, and my mind is preparing to fight it. Eventually, the man lets out a sigh.
"Fine. I can't stop you. But it's going to die whether you'd like it to or not. Not amount of magic can change what it is." There's footsteps, then the sound of a door opening and closing.
I feel FATHER's hot breath on my forehead. It sticks to my skin. The sensation is enough to make me squirm, but my body remains still, paralyzed. There's a heavy weight on my chest that's suffocating me. He couldn't concentrate. A million thoughts must have been going through his bed at that moment. And out of all of those ideas, he picked the worst decision possible.
DON'T DIVERT.
FATHER lowers his head next to mine. I can feel the emotions bouncing around in his head, desperate to bridge the gap between him and me. He begins uttering words that I can't decipher. It was a jumble of prayers from a language that I now know had been declared dead decades ago. He speaks with forcefulness, as if there is an invisible gun to his head.
A bridge begins forming between his mind and mine. I can feel his thoughts collide with each other and spill over the side, falling into my body and bringing me new life. I realize that I can breathe.
FATHER allows me to peer into his soul. I see his memories. Women and children dance around me. They are soon replaced with muddy waters tinged with red stains and the bodies of things that should not be real. There are pillars of flesh in a vast ocean and, a little further ahead, rivers that bleed life and lust. There is a beach where something not-quite-dead lies in agony. FATHER stares down at it, a rope in one hand and a gun in the other. Somebody behind him says to shoot the damn thing and get it over with, but he refuses. He lowers the rope.
That was when the light came.
My mind burst into blue flame. My thoughts, my memories, and my emotions were all obliterated. Hundreds of craters instantly appeared on my skull. The bridge collapsed and everything that I knew about FATHER spilled out onto the table. I felt my soul burn up in my chest and I screamed. I was dying. It wasn't a physical death, but one that ran much deeper. It was the death of everything that made me want to be. It was a stern look from a stranger at the office. It was the ramblings of a disappointed friend. It was the screaming fits of a poisoned mind. It was chants and prayers and utter shock and denial because no, things like me didn't exist anymore.
HUXLEY.
The fire climbed up the last remaining threads between my mind and FATHER's, setting his skull ablaze. I felt his life pour out through his eyes. I saw him crying. I saw him smiling. I saw him imagining his own funeral. Nobody was there. He didn't blame them. Nobody would want to stand and stare at a pool of blood in the ground.
CAN YOU SEE ME, HUXLEY?
His body slumped over. There was a snap as the last remnants of his skull split off of his spine and his brain dribbled onto my stomach. I knew he was dead before I get a chance to see. As he wheezed out his final breath, I gasped for air.
HUXLEY!
I don't know much of what happened after that. It's been decades, but my mind has only allowed me to remember a few details. One of the crewmates barged in. I ate something that wasn't regurgitated from the maw of a demon, and I slept in something that wasn't soaked with seawater. I didn't know how to speak, but even without them, I knew what I had done. I was a thief. I had stolen life from somebody that deserved it more. His thoughts still haunt me. They beg for me to let them go, to let them rejoin him in whatever afterlife he was sent to.
I fought them for a while, before I realized that I was lying to myself. Every single one of them was correct.
SO YOU DESERVE TO DIE BECAUSE SOMEBODY SACRIFIED THEMSELVES FOR YOU?
"He didn't sacrifice anything! FATHER didn't want to die," I spit at the voice. It doesn't have to know about this. I still have power over my mind; if I wanted to, I can convince it that this entire thing is an elaborate lie.
BUT YOU WON'T, BECAUSE IT'S NOT A LIE.
"What?" The bitterness inside of me suddenly vanishes. There isn't even a goodbye note. "Damn. I forgot you could see into my thoughts. It doesn't matter anymore. FATHER's dead, and he's not going to be forgiving me anytime soon."
HUXLEY, WHY DO YOU—
"I don't know. If you're going to ask me why I think I deserve to… you know. I don't know. Maybe it'll bring some justice or balance back to the universe. It'll put that man's soul to rest. Or maybe I just want to give the rest of what I have to the SCP Foundation. They're everything I have left."
I WASN'T GOING TO ASK THAT.
"Then why are you still talking? You got what you wanted."
LOOK AT ME.
"What?"
I'M RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, BUT YOU CAN'T SEE ME. YOU NEED TO LOOK. CLOSER, DEEPER. LOOK INTO MY BODY. LOOK INTO MY HEART. ENVISION ME. MAKE ME SOMETHING MORE THAN A VOICE, HUXLEY. MAKE ME REAL.
I turn away as my eyes tear up. For some reason, a simple request is enough to break something in me. I need to see it. I need to see something more than just a collection of noises in my head. I picture it in my mind: skin, muscles, organs, thoughts, feelings. I know it's finished when I hear it gasping for air. It takes me a few moments to build up the courage to turn and look at it. The voice lies on the ground, gasping for air.
V
Wave after wave of ocean water slams into the near-vertical rockface. It's the only thing protecting me from the sea. I walk along a small trail, the cold wind flowing across my face. It's calmer now, as if it's tired of trying to assault me. A white lab coat hangs off of my shoulders.
A man follows me. He asks, "How long until we get there?" His voice is as low as an old man's, but as powerless as a child's.
"Soon," I reply. He nods and look out to the waves.
The sun stretches upward, blending with the clouds and the pale blue sky. It had rained last night, and most of the heat had been smothered. Fog envelopes everything. Only a few beams of light are able to pass through, enough to warm me but not enough to make themselves known. It's the best kind of heat.
Soon we make it to our destination: a small outcrop where the rocks smooth into solid, waist-high walls that taper off towards the edge but don't quite meet, creating a small gap one can easily slip through. I didn't want to stop here at first, but something inside me kept my feet from walking any further. The man and I stand as far away from each other as possible. I try to keep myself from looking at him, and he tries not to tap his foot in fear.
"When do you plan on starting?" he asks me. My legs start burning, so I sit cross-legged on the ground.
"Whenever you want to," I respond. "You're the one that wants answers, don't you? You're the interviewer, I'm the subtherium, so start acting like it."
He shuffles around. I smirk at his inexperience.
I lean over the edge, my vision catching the man's face getting more anxious the closer I get. Below the hole is a bubbling pit of water, separated from the main body. From here, it looks safe to dive into, but as I look closer I see dozens of short stalagmites that jut out a few centimeters above the water. They're strong enough to break a person before forcing their mangled skeleton out to be swallowed by the sea.
Out of some need to spite him, I push myself close enough to where I can dangle my legs over, tempting that animalistic side of my mind to choose to throw me over. That finally gets his mouth open. "Wouldn't it be… unfortunate for you to die after all of this effort?"
"I don't plan on it." He lets out a long-held breath. I say, "I like sitting here. I like looking at the ocean. Sometimes if I stare for long enough, my eyes go blurry and it looks like the water is waving back at me."
The man doesn't respond; he just stares at the ground. I realize now why he's so frightened. Giving him a physical form made him more real, but it also made him vulnerable. He no longer had control over me. He had to experience the same things that I did. If I want to, I can force him to walk through an endless blizzard just for fun. It's too big of a risk to take for him not to want something.
Minutes pass before I lose my patience and say, "You can leave me, can't you?"
"What do you mean?"
"This is like a dream. Me, you, this whole world is inside my head. And that means that I could get rid of you if I really wanted to. Or if I can't, then I can refuse to play along. I can get rid of everything else. I can shut down this reality until you decide to leave me alone, can't I?" I turn to the man. I examine his face. It's as plain and unmemorable as the first time I had seen it. He flushes pink from my stare and tilts his face downward.
"I'm not the man you see here," he says. "I'm something that you cannot fully understand. Everyone I've met has called me a god, but that's not what I am. I am not a divine being. I am ugly and unpolished. I could unveil my true form to you — I could implant an emotion or a vision into your mind, but you wouldn't be able to handle it. You haven't embraced apathy like the others. It would drive you insane."
"You're a subtherium."
He laughs. "You say that like it's an insult."
"It's meant to be. That's why they changed the word, don't you remember? That's why they don't call things like you 'SCPs' anymore. It's because you're not good to even warrant containment and protection. You deserve death."
"You're projecting, Huxley."
"Does it matter if I'm right?"
The wind blows sharply across my ears as I wait for a response. The sun creeps further along its path, the fog slowly clearing. I can feel ground growing warmer by the second.
The man says, "I want you to come with me. I want to show you what other people think of you. What people actually think of you—"
"Shut up. You don't know anything about how I think. I know how you work; I've read your file. You just want me to give up my mind. You want me to kill myself and give my body up for your survival, you goddamn parasite." My voice begins to tremble by the end. I instinctively pull back a little.
"I want you to stop living in this fantasy that the people around you want you to die. You've been clinging onto it for your whole life, Huxley. I've seen how deep this poisonous root goes, and I want to see how the world really is."
"This is how the world really is!"
The words come out as a scream. I didn't expect it, but once it happens I understand why on a primal level. I don't care enough to try and explain it to myself. I just wipe my eyes clean.
"You're stubborn," the man says. "I'm not surprised. So are a lot of people. You probably think that you're the only one that has those thoughts, but you're wrong. I've heard your exact words hundreds of times before. And I know that you're lying to me, Huxley. You don't give a damn about keeping your identity. You don't care about your individuality. You've spent every second of every day of your life trying to destroy yourself."
I turn away, but the man comes closer. My throat starts to swell. He says, "You don't want to keep your life. You just want to lose it in the right way. You're not fighting to prove that you deserve to live — you're fighting for who gets to lynch you first."
"…Stop." I return fire, but there are no more bullets in my mouth. I want him to flinch at least, but he simply stands there like an immovable statue. My desire to fight is slowly strangled out of me. I don't want to argue anymore. I don't want to keep pushing everything away and hoping that it all dies somewhere where I don't have to look at it.
I want to hear myself say the words.
"You know," I begin, still trembling, "I'm not an idiot. Every time I wake up I remember what I am. I know that I'm something that everyone around me wants to destroy. It never leaves me, it gnaws at me constantly. It doesn't matter if I'm interviewing someone or talking with Emma or just passing through the halls. It keeps reminding me over and over again: they want to destroy you, they want to destroy you." I suddenly get the urge to stand, to walk away from the conversation. The man pulls closer, and my body locks up in fear.
"But sometimes, there are these… these moments where I forget that for a few seconds. My mind tricks itself into thinking that I might be human. I start speaking like the person in front of me can't see me and can't tell that I'm not. When I realize it's happening, that feeling goes away and I usually end up spending months thinking about it."
I can't handle this. My body forces its way past the man and begins trekking down the trail, which soon begins to slope downward towards a hidden beach in the distance. I can hear the man's footsteps behind me. My eyes are locked on the line where the ocean meets the sand.
"I-I just want to live like that. I want people to see me as something normal. I don't want to keep having those bastards stare at me and suspect that I'm a fucking monster. All of this pointless lying and being scared to death that they're going to find out and slit your throat while you're sleeping. I don't care anymore. I don't want to… I don't want to…"
The waves smash into my legs. I fall on my back as the water rushes back into the sea. It's impossible to move, so I look up at the blurry sky. The sun is well into setting now. It shoots out orange and yellow streams that meld into the clouds. It's a sight that I know will only last for a few minutes.
"I don't want to die."
The man is silent for a few unbearable seconds. Finally, he swallows and says, "Who do you think is going to murder you?"
"…I-It's…"
It's everybody. It's every face that I have seen and every soul that I have talked to. It's the suspects that I have to interrogate and the coworkers that I have to pretend to be friends with. I am an alien in this world, and aliens will never be accepted. It doesn't matter how much I tell people that things will get better, I'm just lying to myself. It doesn't get better. The SCP Foundation will never stop chasing me. They will never stop trying to lynch me.
And I will never stop trying to hand them the rope.
VI
Huxley's eyes drift open to the sound of the sea. The air smells like white salt. Flakes of sand falls onto his chest, causing dead patches of skin to form under his eyes. He can't tell whether he has been laying there for a few hours or an entire lifetime. It is a miracle that he did not freeze to death.
His stomach aches. Memories of last night come in brief, terrifying flashes. Dark waters, alien figures, and a light that slowly, slowly fades away. He rolls from his back to his stomach. Seawater falls out of his mouth. It takes him a few minutes to realize that he's still alive. Then, there's a great amount of relief.
He is still here, through everything.
Huxley pushes himself to his hands and knees. His spine arches like an old, rusted chain, and he bites his lip to keep himself from screaming. He hates the sound. The idea of his voice stealing so much space in the air makes him want to grind his teeth until there's nothing left. But he appreciates it. His voice reminds him that he's still alive. It reminds him that he exists.
He pushes those thoughts away, for now. Rocks scrape his knees as he begins dragging himself across the beach. The wind flows along his back as he slowly regains his strength. Soon, he finds himself at his feet, on the edge of a forest. The trees shudder, terrified to move in any direction. The ground is thick with roots.
Huxley forces himself to tread through the woods. His feet complain, but he doesn't care. They don't understand what he needs to do. He digs his hands into trees to keep himself from collapsing. Embarrassment nags at him the entire time. Imagine how low of a person he must be to continue to do this, to live a little longer rather than dying in the sand.
He turns to his left and sees a small hill. Like a stupid animal to a bright light, Huxley lets go of the tree and slowly wanders to it. As he climbs, his body lowers to the ground, animalistic. His mind is blank. His thoughts are focused. He waits for something to whip him for acting so inhuman, but it doesn't come. That mental voice sits quietly.
Huxley is at the top now. He looks out ahead.
There is rocky desert for miles, occasionally offset by patches of plainland and small bundles of trees. They're grouped together tightly like herds, protecting each other from everything else. But even at this distance, Huxley can tell that they are starting to decay. There are dots of brown in the leaves.
Sunlight caresses his skin, careful not to burn it. It feels… comforting, he thinks to himself. The sun had just rose above the mountains, coating everything in white. Where had this sun been the last few days? Did it finally build up the courage to appear, alone, in front of Huxley? Or was it always there, he just couldn't see it?
Huxley doesn't know the answer. In a way, he can't. So he chooses instead to close his eyes and breathe. There's no salt or wind on the top of the hill, just the air. The loving air, the forgiving air. It hugs him, nearly lifting him off of his feet. He takes a step forward, accepting its embrace. Then, he opens his eyes and screams.
The ground obliterates his body.

Post-Foundation
<< Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 >>


Sqwraauuk-BLAM
thud
Barf
"How many is that?"
"Eighty-one."
"Well shoot, 'thought I'd've hit ninety by now."
"Keep at it. If one stays alive long enough to lay an egg normally, we'll be overrun. Agent Scott, any luck?"
"MTF is eight hours away. Eight!"
Crickle crackle crack
"I swear, if I ever find out what idiot thought it'd be a good idea to ship one of these bastards for cross-examination with a BUCKET OF-"
Sqwraauuk-BLAM
thud
Barf
"Eighty-two."
"-Christ. We've been here for how long? An hour and a half?"
"Couldn't rightly tell yer. Doc?"
"Hour and twenty-two minutes. Average of around fifty seconds gestation time."
"Hooh. If we have to keep this up for another eight hours-"
"If I have to keep it up for eight hours."
"-Don't make me put you on Keter duty, jumpsuit."
"You don't have that authority, Agent Scott. And D-10334 has been performing admirably."
Crickle crackle crack
"Ain't so bad. There's kind of a rhythm to it, see-"
Sqwraauuk-BLAM
thud
Barf
"-Like so. Gets easy after a bit."
"Ok, fine. Like I was saying, do we have enough bullets to last us that long?"
"We're in a well-stocked armory, and this is the first action this outpost has seen in a while. We should have enough. Maybe."
"Maybe?!? And figures that the 'first action in a while' would happen when there's only the three of us here. What do we do when we run out of ammo?"
Crickle crackle crack
"Well, I reckon any ol' blunt object with enough heft oughta do it. Might have to take turns though."
"You're sure you don't want to swap? Agent Scott or I would be glad to take a shift."
Sqwraauuk-BLAM
thud
Barf
"Naw, jes like I said, I'm in the rhythm."
"Ok. Sambre, we should start thinking of other solutions before we inevitably have to start bludgeoning these things with a chair. Any ideas? Can we crack the eggs?"
"Not without liquid nitrogen and a hydraulic press."
"Damn."
"…"
"…"
Crickle crackle crack
"…Damn. Shouldn't have skipped breakfast. Anyone have a granola bar or something?"
"I mean, uh, it's not like we're gonna run out of chi-"
"No."
"Definitely not. I don't have to read the documentation to tell you you shouldn't eat the Keter-class."
"Well, excuse me for-shit!"
Sqwraauuk! Arrkk-BLAMBLAM
thud
Barf
"Jeez, what was that?"
"Don't distract me while I'm genocidin' men-chicken."
"Ok. Sorry. Sheesh."
"S'alright. Anyways, this thing's a Keter?"
"…Yes. Are you surprised?"
"Well, if all it takes is one feller with a pistol to keep it at bay…"
"There's normally more than one at a time. And ammunition is a finite resource. Speaking of which, you're due for a reload."
"Oh. Right. Thanks Doc."
Click
Crickle crackle crack
click-SNAP
Sqwraauuk-BLAM
thud
Barf
"Just in time. Hey, how about I grab a gun too? So one late reload doesn't doom us all?"
"…Agent Scott, you mean you weren't already armed?"
"…I, uh, it slipped my mind. Sorry?"
"There is nothing in this room but us, carcasses of mutated poultry and weaponry. How did it not occur to you to arm yourself?"
"Look, this is a stressful situation. And by the way, what are we going to do if the bodies crowd us in? They're small because we get them quick, but they've already blocked off the door."
"While we're waiting, you could always busy yourself by attempting to clear them out. The biofuel reactor could run for a week on this."
"Ugh, forget I asked."
Crickle crackle crack
"What number is this one, again?"
"That's classified above your level, D-"
Sqwraauuk-BLAM
thud
Barf
"-10334."
"It's 3199."
"Scott!"
"Look, he's killed enough of them that we could add him to the containment procedures. What'll knowing the number do?"
"It's against regulations."
"So was shipping this thing out to Kansas, but some dumb bastard still did that and here we are!"
"We're in Kansas?"
"…Don't get any ideas."
"Hell no. First thing I did on turnin' eighteen was get the hell outta this state. Not gonna try and crawl back into it. 'Sides, more than a li'l preoccupied."
Crickle crackle crack
"Do y'reckon I should be standin' or something? Seems a mite lax, sittin' down like this."
"No sense in tiring yourself out. Besides, it's not as if the anomalies present a challenging target. They barely have time to-"
Sqwraauuk-BLAM
thud
Barf
"-crawl from the egg."
"Feels a tad unfair, but then again I don't fancy dyin' today."
"Same here."
"…"
"…"
"…"
Crickle crackle crack
Sqwraauuk-BLAM
thud
Barf
"…How long until reinforcements, again?"


Huxley never enjoyed the nighttime. The cold, the wind, it all felt hostile to him. There seemed to always be a stalker in the trees, one that was ready to pounce on Huxley the second he let his guard down. But despite all of the fear it brought, Huxley preferred it to daytime. In the light, he could see everyone, but everyone could also see him. He could watch them recoil in fear as they looked at his broken body. At night, everything was blanketed with heavy shadows. If he was quiet, nobody would know he was there.
That was why the soldiers kept to the shadows. They embraced the night, they forced it to do their bidding. They abused that natural fear, toying with their enemies like an animal. The idea made Huxley smile.
Was he an animal now? He didn't have the will to think as Emma silently pushed him along an almost invisible trail that led around the back of the settlement. Soldiers surrounded them. Their long rifles were pointed in every direction. Huxley suppressed a laugh. He couldn't fight the feeling that these defenses were pointless. They were killing existential horrors with a piece of steel it took a machine half an hour to make. Why did they need to go through this process of appearing weak when they weren't?
One of the soldiers near the front of the pack — a familiar old man with that managed to retain his dark hair, maybe a captain — pointed a fist at the ground. The group silently came to a stop. The man looked back at Emma. There was a look in his eye, but Huxley couldn't tell what it meant. His mind was racing and yet it couldn't come up with a single thought.
"I'll take him," Emma whispered. He felt a familiar jolt in his spine as Emma began dragging him back. The soldiers soon disappeared into the trees. Emma and Huxley were alone.
He turned. "Wait, where are we going?"
Emma ignored his accusatory glances as she pushed him further away from safety. They were nearing the main entrance now. His wheelchair was getting louder and louder. The Sarkics must have heard them by now. They absolutely must have. Huxley could already feel their gazes etching themselves into his neck. He tugged at her sleeve.
"What the hell are you doing? Why are we going in the open?"
Again, Emma was silent. A black fire stirred in the back of Huxley's throat as they approached the wall. In the corners of his eyes, the world started to change. The trees seemed to bend, the wind stretched, and terrors crawled out of the shadows.
"Emma…" Huxley dug his nails into Emma's wrist. It wasn't enough to hurt her, but it was enough to get her attention. "Why aren't we with the soldiers? There… um, there could be animals here."
"There aren't any animals here," Emma replied coolly. "If there was, they would've eaten the meat from the walls."
"It's still dangerous—"
"Huxley, tell me something. Do you remember anything we talked about an hour ago. We talked with a woman back at the base. She outlined the entire plan. Did you remember any of that?"
"Um…" Huxley looked down. He searched through his memory, but it was jammed and swollen. His brain was exhausted. It couldn't even begin to remember what had happened.
"You didn't." She sighed. "We're leaving the soldiers behind because we don't want to give the impression that we're going to attack. If they think that, they'll kill us and Commander Enrique."
Huxley drew his arms closer. How was it so cold? How was he still awake? "Yeah, that makes sense." It didn't.
They made it. Huxley recognized the rotten smell that infested the air. Emma stopped and made her way around the wall alone. Huxley wanted to call out to her that it wasn't safe, but when he tried, his tongue rolled into the back of his throat, gagging him.
Emma presented her hand as if to touch the wall. Nothing happened. She was probably hoping that it would fall like it did for the other subtheriums. The thought made Huxley cringe. The word itself was enough to cause every nerve in his body to spike at once. He clenched his fists in order to keep his eyes straight. Neurons fired, ideas formed, suspicion grew. That conversation that seemed like it had doomed him now felt like a distant fantasy.
But it was real. It had happened. Emma knew the one thing that could break Huxley entirely. She could tease it out for years, forcing him under her servitude. What was she waiting for? Dozens of opportunities to strike had been presented to her. All it took was for her to tap one of the soldier's on the shoulder and whisper that one phrase. Then there would be gunshots and a dismembered monster.
Emma paced back and forth, eyes trained on the ground. Her acting was bulletproof. She even stopped and snorted in frustration a few times. Still, Huxley knew what was on her mind. His lips burned with shame. The words were fresh in his mind. When he had spoken them, it felt like committing a sin. He felt like he had murdered somebody in cold blood, but he couldn't find the victim, no matter how hard he searched. None of it mattered.
"It's Huxley!" His throat shouted without him realizing it. Emma snapped towards him. More words tumbled out of his mouth before he had time to close it. "It's Huxley and Emma! We're the people you spoke to earlier! We want to open a line for negotiation!"
There was silence. Emma stared at him, fully prepared now to murder him herself. Then there was a snap and a rustle of leaves.
"Are you… armed?"
The voice came from behind the wall. It spoke with the calm and the shallowness of an old man. Huxley looked to Emma to answer, but she was silent. He said, "No… we're not. We don't want to attack you. We just want to talk."
"I understand. Are you here for Lieutenant Commander Enrique?"
"Yes, we are. We want to…"
The words stopped coming. A chill snaked itself down Huxley's spine. He froze. Something was watching him. An undetectable shape, but one that absolutely existed. He peered out to the woods. After a minute of searching, he caught a flicker of movement. He saw it climbing over a dead tree.
The FATHER.
It was stark naked, its skin was a metallic white like metal, its face was riddled with spikes, horns, tusks, teeth, jawbones, and antlers. Blood dripped from its mouth onto the ground. There were long scars along both of its elongated arms. It scrambled towards Huxley.
"Emma!"
"We want to see if we can negotiate for his safe release!" Emma yelled as if he hadn't said anything at all.
Another snap. He only had time to close his eyes and wait for the FATHER to tackle him and take a bite out of his throat. After a few seconds though, he opened them. There was no trace of the FATHER: no malformed shape in the dark, no monstrous growl, no misshaped trees. All he found was a quiet forest that was illuminated by a few soft white beams. It was a hallucination. No, it was a dream. It was a tiny moment where Huxley had fallen out of consciousness and met what was waiting for him when he would go to sleep.
If he got a chance to sleep.
Emma rested her hands on her hips as she waited for a response from the voice over the wall. Eventually, a small hole began to form. Flesh separated and bones snapped as the hole spiraled out into a doorway.
"Come in. Now," the voice commanded. Inside there was a hundred tiny orange lights staring at the two of them. Those warm dots were so mesmerizing. It was like looking into a waterfall of light that twisted and turned with the breeze. They called for Huxley.
There were soft footsteps as a young boy approached the doorway, his face wrinkled and cracked. His eyes held that same orange glow. It was youthful and it was free. Its gaze almost caused an eruption of emotion in Huxley's chest, but he refused to let it grow. The boy held out its hand, beckoning. Huxley's wheelchair rolled forward. Invisible hooks were sinking into his arms, reeling him closer, closer, closer.
"Wait!" Emma's voice broke the spell. "We're not going in there without some protection."
The boy said, "If we wished to kill you, we would have done so already."
"Nice wording. But we're not just worried about you killing us. We don't want to end up like Enrique, either."
The boy smiled. It wasn't clear whether it was real or forced. The fire in his eyes grew hotter, almost breaching the surface. "Of course. And you won't, so long as you don't harm us."
"Why are your eyes orange!?" Huxley piped up. Emma held up a hand, but he ignored it. "I'm sorry. Why are your eyes orange?"
The boy smiled. "It only happens when we see somebody we l—"
"Stop!" Emma's voice startled even the trees. "Huxley, just be quiet for a moment." She stepped between the two, cutting off Huxley's view of those eyes.
A deep wound formed in his stomach. A voice in his head jabbed at him to look again, to peer into that boy's eyes. There was warmth there. There was safety there — a kind of acceptance that was quickly dying within him.
Huxley tried to push himself forward, but his wheelchair refused to move. He looked down to see that one of the tires had gotten stuck in a small groove. Uttering a quiet profanity, he leaned to the opposite side. It wouldn't budge. He started to panic. He had to see the boy. He had to see his — its eyes.
He gave up and threw himself out of the chair entirely. He stumbled for a meter or two before grasping onto Emma for support. "We can't Emma," he said. "I thought about it. You can't. It's like a game, Emma. We have to stop… playing." His legs gave out and Emma, a severely confused look on her face, held him up like a child.
"What?" Her gaze burned him. Her eyes were black holes and her irises were watch towers that fired waves of light at him. It pierced his skin, it rocked his body back and forth. "Hey. Huxley! Huxley! Are you alright?"
"Don't touch me! Yes! I'm fine!" Huxley tried unsuccessfully to break from her grasp. "Listen, I know you're nervous about getting killed, but that's what's gonna get us killed. Okay? We can't talk to them like suspects because they're not! We're talking to real… you know. Real subtheriums. Things that know when you're not being honest with them."
"Huxley…" The watchtowers in her eyes grew dim.
Huxley cackled. The image was hilarious. He wanted it to be a short laugh, but it soon expanded longer and longer until he started to get embarrassed with how long he had been laughing. She had given up her hand without even realizing it. Damnit, he had tried to stop playing the game. He knew every thought that was inside her head. He was the overseer. He was the captain. The game was over. He was the victor.
"See? I don't have a gun!" Huxley pulled all of his pockets inside-out. Excitement overflowed into mania. His legs stopped hurting. "You're safe! We can talk and be honest. That's what I'm going to do. Be honest. No more fucking games."
"Huxley!" Emma yanked him back. Huxley bit into her finger and tried to tear it off. She yelped and flung him to the ground. He instantly saw a thought enter her mind. How much of a beast he must look to her right now. "What the fuck is wrong with you!?" She glanced out to the woods, out to where the soldiers were hiding. They were too far away.
"I hate you! You liar! Stop speaking to me like that. I'm not a criminal! I'm not a criminal!" He scrambled towards the boy, who was now backing away slowly. "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You all share a mind, right? Talk to the boy, the boy that I spoke to today. He understands. Speak to him."
Emma grinded her teeth before reaching out again. Huxley was still under her care, whether he liked it or not. The boy was slowly backing away. The way it moved was strange. Emma realized what it was doing. It wasn't backpedaling out of fear. It wanted Huxley to chase it. And he was too far gone to escape this monster's gaze.
"Huxley!" she roared.
She grabbed the back of Huxley's neck and wrenched it towards her. She held him clear off the ground before rushing back to the entrance. She barely had time to stop herself before slamming into a wall. There was no doorway. There was no exit.
She swore through gritted teeth. Huxley continued muttering things to himself, about how he hated her and how he wasn't a criminal. He was like a doll in her hands as she frantically punched the wall. There had to be a fault. There had to be something that could be broken. After a few moments, she abandoned that naïve assumption.
"Fucking…" Huxley was quiet now. The moonlight gave shape to the eyes in the distance. Hundreds of them emerged from their homes and temples. Their faces were blank. "Huxley, what did I…" She looked down at the man that was swinging from her grip, unmoving.
Horror consumed her face. His skin was almost transparent, like he was already a ghost. She put her ear to his chest. He was breathing, barely. His eyes were open, but there was something dangerously wrong with him. He didn't breathe, he gulped for air; his heart didn't beat, it vibrated wildly in his chest.
Her next actions played out like a slideshow in her head. She loosed her grip. Huxley landed on the ground. She crouched over him. A low drone played in her ears, making her feel like she was moments away from waking up from this nightmare. It never did, though. She attempted to resuscitate. The monsters approached. She attempted to resuscitate. The monsters were closer. She attempted to save him. She failed.
Emma sat there, a dying man in her arms, utterly alone. She thought she was crying. She might have even spoken a few words to him, her last words. But none of that registered in her mind. It was all swallowed by that monotonous drone in her ears. She was not meant to be here. She was meant to be at Site-53 putting on a cheesy smile and taking postgraduates on the same predetermined tour of her facility. The eyes were all around her now. They swallowed her vision. Emma felt herself disappearing.

It was warm in here.
That was the first thought that bypassed the static. It took a minute for Emma to adjust her eyes to the dim interior of the temple. She was still breathing. She was still thinking. That meant that she was still alive.
She shook herself awake. Emma's hands were bound to the leg of a pew by something wet and warm. She tried not to think about what it could be. Squinting into the darkness, she made out the slumped form of Huxley. His knees were pulled up to his chest like he was catatonic. Quiet snores were rumbling in his chest. She sighed.
In the corner of the room were two figures: large humanoids. Their heads were too big. They pulsed and squeezed like tumors. She looked away before her eyes could make out any more details. Peering closer, she could make out the camouflage patterns next to a different pew. There were soldiers here. They were slouched against each other, all under the same spell as Huxley.
She turned her attention back to her partner. "Hey… hey, Huxley," she whispered. "Hey, are you awake?"
He groaned in response. One of his eyes slid half-open.
"Okay." At least he was awake. That relief left soon. "What the hell happened back there? We were supposed to stay outside and talk, not walk right into their arms. Why would you do something like that?"
"They… lied to me."
"Of course they were going to lie to you, Huxley. We're the fucking…" She took in some deep breaths. "We're the SCP Foundation. They don't like us, Huxley. Why do you think we needed the soldiers?"
"You're doing it again… the voice…"
Emma restrained herself from breaking his leg in half. "Okay, fine. What do you want me to do? You said that I should be direct and straight-forward. Then you said that I should stop being so bitchy. Then you said that I should stop being so calm. This is ridiculous. When I give you the simplest order, you can't follow it. When I try to be nice to you, you say you hate me. So what should I do, Huxley? What do you want me to say?"
"I want to sleep!" Huxley cried out. Emma whipped him and put a finger to her lips. "I want to sleep… I'll do anything, I don't care. I just need to…" He sobbed into his shirt.
"Stop, Huxley."
"Don't look at me…"
Emma felt an immense amount of pity for the man before her. His body was shivering and his knees were wobbling from the force of his tears. His voice whined like a bird. It was all so… human. She had forced herself to forget about it for a while, but she had to recognize who she was talking to — what she was talking to. He was something inhuman, and he would always be inhuman.
She looked back to the entities. One of them had shifted in their stance. It was staring at them. A silent expletive left her lips.
"Hey, stop. They're gonna—"
The church doors burst open. An old man in long robes marched inside. It glanced at one of the entities and after a brief moment of silent communication, it began to follow the man. They made their way to Emma. The man didn't speak when it strolled past Emma and ignored her premature apology. It didn't speak when it squatted down next to Huxley. It only let out a single grunt as it examined him.
"He's just tired," Emma said. "He won't cause trouble. I'm watching over him."
The man ignored her. It tapped Huxley on the head. "Wake up," it said. "Wake up."
"Go… away…" Huxley mumbled.
The man stood. "You. Get up." Huxley was still. The man reached down and reached behind Huxley to his restraints. It emerged with a thick rope of intestine. Emma resisted the urge to vomit.
The man grabbed Huxley by his shirt and lifted him until he was dangling in the air. Huxley gritted his teeth. He scratched at the man. He didn't leave a scratch. The man gripped tighter before slamming Huxley against the wall. Emma saw the edges of his face growing blue.
"Stop! He can't breathe like that!" The man glared at the entity for a moment. Huxley tried to bite into the man's hand, but only managed to wrangle his teeth around its thumb. The man roared in pain, slamming Huxley against the wall again and again. His hands drooped to his sides.
The man turned back to the entity. "Get the bloodline. He's weak and he knows more than the others." The entity turned and approached the soldiers.
"You won't be able to get anything out of him if he's dead!" Emma's voice was choked with saliva and tears.
The entity picked up a lifeless old man. There was a solidified mass of flesh on his face. Emma could see blood running through its veins and arteries. It was like a leech, sucking the life out of the man. The veins combined into a single large cord at the top that led to somewhere beneath the building. There was one on every soldier.
The entity placed its hand on the mask, and the veins slowly receded. Emma could now see the man's face — Commander Enrique's face. It was cold and deflated. The entity let go and the commander hit the floor, dead. The entity marched back towards them, each earth-shaking step bringing more tears to Emma's eyes.
"Stop…" she croaked. "He'll die from that, you idiot!"
Emma tugged at her restraints. She dug her heels into the floor. She tried to lift the pew entirely. Nothing worked. The only thing she could do was watch helplessly as Huxley was slowly murdered by the varmint in front of her. She was powerless — and that feeling made her want to scream.
The man took one look at Huxley's face and let him fall to the ground. The interviewer took in a few deep, grateful breaths. Tears were falling from his eyes, but Emma could see something fiery within him. She saw a fiery, red hot rage.
Huxley lunged at the man, biting into his arm and nearly tearing off his hand. The man wailed with pain, trying to force Huxley off of it. Huxley trashed at the man's face with his arms, tearing at the man's eyes, nose, and throat. His fingernails tore into the eyes flesh like claws. He tried to jab a finger into its eyes, but his legs failed him. He collapsed to the floor, exhaustion rendering him useless. But as he fell, Emma noticed something fly out of his pocket and land on the floor with a soft thud.
It was a plastic bag filled with purple dust.
Huxley dived on top of it. The man dove after him, pinning his legs and torso to the ground. Huxley reached out and tried to grab it. The man stomped its heel down on his wrist. Huxley screamed like he was burning in hell. He scratched at the floor, splinters stabbing into his fingers. He pushed against anything he could as he dragged himself across the floor. Like a rabid dog with a small child, he bit the bag with all of the force his jaw could muster. He forced it down his throat. Emma and the man were both screaming at him to stop, to listen, to give up. It was all too late.
Huxley shriveled down into a fetal position. His pupils became tiny dots that were aimed squarely at Emma. Even as the man wrapped its hands around his neck, Huxley stared pitifully at Emma.
Then, ever so slowly, his eyes began to close.

Swallow. Swallow. Swallow. Swallow. Breathe.
Hurt. Pain everywhere. Can't feel my legs, my arms, my face. Disappearing.
I see you. Your face, your eyes, your tears. Are you weeping for me? Nobody weeps for a stranger. But maybe you're weeping for a dying man.
I am not a dying man. I am an abomination.
I hate you. You fucking bastard. You monster, you liar. I hate you. I hope they kill you. I hope they kill me. I'm falling.
I hate you. I hate you so fucking much.
Please leave. I'm so tired. Please. Please just let me sleep.
Help me.

Post-Foundation
<< Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 >>


Site-01 was designed to be perfect.
The multiverse had become vast, its various Foundations only loosely aligned. They were ill-prepared to deal with events of cosmic significance. So a unification plan was outlined: a single council, a single command, a cascading and federated tree descending from the centre to the periphery. It was going to be perfect.
Site-01 - the final, definitive Site-01 - was the epitome of that plan. A vast sphere, set in darkness between Sol and Orchard, that would function as a single shared reference point. Cuttings from the Lamplight lure were taken and reproduced on a vast scale across its thousand-mile radius, granting stability and stasis.
It was a city, suspended in unreality, where all the hustle and bustle of the worlds could be unified. The Yellowstone bunkers of every Foundation were dug up and their time-altering machines transported, plugged in and rerouted into an enormous clock, keeping everyone in sync, able to plan and alter the flow of events at will.
The engineers didn't fully understand them - they didn't need to. But a few of them felt nervous as they looked up at them. Pasts that were locked away were suspended inside their vaults. Things that could never be recovered. A sense of the unnaturalness of it all pervaded their quarters and mess halls, their eateries and drug parlours. Some of them swore they could hear voices at night.
But what could go wrong? Vast halls of stone and sand, the stuff of reality, were constructed across the sphere. It was perfectly stable, designed with a thousand safeguards. The Foundation knew what could happen if Site-01 failed, and they were determined to make it impossible. The odds of anything happening were astronomical. They were not hubristic or arrogant. They would be careful.
Their mistake was to think anything lasted forever.

There were five of them, with Irene in command. They all knew Irene. She was one of the most experienced multiversal agents. They'd come to trust her, her practicality, her severity. Her hair was short, in a pixie cut, and her eyes flashed a deep, dark brown.
Simon was there, his dreamy smile obscured by his helmet visor. He was probably counting all the ways things could go wrong, in order to reassure himself. He was, in his own way, probably the sanest of all of them.
Fatima was brooding, as usual. A runaway from Andalus, she had joined the Foundation at only 19. Seven years in their service had toughened her up, but when she got good and drunk, the stories would start spilling out of her. She wanted to return, deep down, but couldn't face her family. So she waxed on and on about the lights of Cordoba, and the Madinat al-Zahara, seat of the Eternal Republic. It all sounded so glorious, a land of whitewashed stone.
Then there was Alberto, always ready with a smile and a kind word. He'd come from somewhere dark and dangerous, a slum in San Francisco, that black hole of a city which had long ago absorbed California into its maw. One of Sol's many pit-towns that the Foundation had yet to reclaim. He clawed his way up through shit and dread to reach the surface, welcomed by the omnipresent rescuers that crowded around its edge.
And then there was her. She ought to use her name, but she didn't want to. Names pinned you down. Names gave you definition, prevented change. You had an essence if you had a name, a sense of permanency, and that wasn't her style.
But it was still there, within her. No matter how many times she was resurrected, no matter how long she aged, you couldn't excise your own past. It was always there.
"Listen up." Irene interrupted her reverie with a glare. "The radiation from this thing is lethal. We need to be in-and-out in under two hours, or it'll start getting weird. Don't expect a resurrection in the belly of this thing." She rubbed her nose, scrunching her eyes momentarily.
"We'll be touching down here." She pointed to a spot on the edge of the map, which looked like an enormous hourglass. Except, here and there, the inconsistencies boiled and grew, flailing into nothingness, deforming and reforming over and over again.

She put a foot gingerly on the metal platform. It was a piece of debris, floating in space, with a shining Harkhretian light keeping it afloat and real.
You couldn't just destroy something as large as Site-01. It was too big to be swallowed or sucked away. What apparently happened was a freak malfunction in one of the spatial distributors, causing a chain reaction that, by an enormous set of coincidences, happened at the one exact second that five hundred of the failsafes were momentarily inactive due to a tiny, once-in-ten-millenia sync-up of programme resets.
Everyone knew it wasn't a coincidence. But, as the new Reclamation Division kept reminding everyone, you couldn't actually rule the possibility out.
The entire site had collapsed in on itself. Once space had failed, ballooning this way and that, time also began to collapse. Everything began to bend around the central power node, and then expand outwards, coiling away in two immense cones, or bulbs. The shape of an hourglass.
Everyone assumed that the inhabitants had been killed instantly, like everywhere else, but the new Administrator hadn't been so sure. There were… signals, if you would, that kept bouncing out of the hourglass. Everyone wrote these off as random data, decaying patterns from ancient machinery. But then, all across Orchard, the whispers started. And they wouldn't stop.
Whispers of things that had never happened at all.
She moved forward, carefully. Irene had landed on a second platform; the others, slightly below. Simon waved up at her, grinning. "Nothing like a good suicide mission," came his voice across the cortex.
"This isn't funny, Simon," snapped Irene. "We don't know how the cortex is going to react in here. This really could be a suicide mission. So whatever you do, be careful."
Simon shook his head, and turned towards the huge wall in front of them. A handful of other platforms and ruins led to a huge gash in the centre. Machinery - automated repair systems - could be seen, hard at work, desperately trying to patch up the walls. It was the only thing they understood.
She sighed, and jumped.

Inside was an open wound. Sparks flew out of the sides of walls, leaping through what remained of the marble veneer. Fatima was walking beside her; they were en route to meeting up with the others in an atrium two miles ahead.
"You're Asturian?"
She started at the question. Fatima had been almost silent for the whole journey - hell, for the whole time she'd known her. And then she wants to make small talk by asking that?
She didn't answer. She didn't want to. The second she answered "yes", the entire history of Cordoba and Asturias, the endless wars, the Iron Wall, the long diplomatic efforts towards a rapproachment - everything would be there, and whichever way you dealt with it, you still had to deal with it.
Fatima shrugged at her silence. "Hey, I'm not judging."
She couldn't even remember Asturias very well. It had only been five or six years since she'd last been there, but the pace of change was indomitable. Oviedo had turned into a vast city of glittering lights. The cathedrals of her youth were shadowed by immense structures of steel and glass, monorails flying through the lower atmosphere, making so many connections that you may as well have shaded the whole place in, a mass of grey concrete.
"Should be just around the next corner."
The two of them moved around the bend, and stopped. Irene and Alberto weren't there. Instead, there was a man in a white coat, looking at a pocket watch.
She crept closer. "Hello, sir? Can you hear me?"
The man stared at the pocket watch, swore, and then walked forward. He hadn't seen or heard her. He reached the opposite wall, and looked up. An expression of terror took over his features. He turned, screaming, and started to run-
- and snapped back to his original position, looking at a pocket watch. He swore, then walked forward. He hadn't seen or heard her.
"A loop…" Fatima sighed. "So no survivors, then. No imperfections in - in whoever's plan this was."
"I don't know…" She moved closer to the man, who was running again, the same look of contorted fear. "Something's survived. Even if it's not a person."

They met up a few miles ahead. They all swore they had reached the right place at the right time, but that nobody else was there.
"Time trouble," said Irene. "Alright. We figured as much. Given what you two saw, it's likely we'll encounter more. We'd better stick together, or God alone knows when we'll end up."
The five of them began to advance. The place was a labyrinth. It had not been designed for light and airy conversations, but to overwhelm the mind, create a sense of awe. Huge columns of steel, endless staircases and avenues large enough to have wind systems. They were the size of ants in the face of a machine.
"But this isn't right," said Alberto at one point. "We've been walking for - well, I don't know how long, but we should have got into at least some of the inner workings by now. There weren't that many halls."
"Yep," said Irene. "Which means it's more than one system that's failed."
It was like an Escher print. The marble changed colour, white and brown and grey. Chandelier after chandelier loomed overhead, until an improbable staircase took them somewhere else, and then somewhere else. None of the rooms had any meaning, as far as she could tell.
The map had long since stopped working, but their scanners still told them their position. They were moving closer and closer to the centre, to the focal point of the hourglass, but they were still a long way off. It was claustrophobic. It felt like they were moving over the same patch of land again and again, different each time, there only on sufferance until the station knew what to make of them.

They sat by a fountain, the twelfth fountain they'd encountered that day. Or had it been a day? It couldn't have been, or the radiation would have killed them. Alberto and Irene started to eat. Fatima went off in a corner; Simon started poring over the map. She headed over to him.
"I thought this might have been some O5's trick at first," he said, pointing to a point in the middle of the lower bulb. "Change the rooms up over and over again, stop anyone from getting in by making them walking through a thousand pointless chambers. But now…"
He sighed. "I think it's unravelling at the seams. You remember the repair systems, when we first came in? I think they're fixing things, but without any plan. Just automatically changing the rooms to a certain specification - "grand diplomatic entryway", or something - over and over and over again."
"Like a cancer," she said. He looked at her oddly.
"I think you're right." Neither had been aware of Irene sneaking up behind them, and both jumped. "In which case, we're never going to get anywhere like this."
She went to her pack, and pulled out a thin metal tube. Alberto whistled. "Is that a portable arc blinker?"
"Yep. Reliable multiversal teleportation, stretching for up to two small universes. The latest technology we were - well, the latest from before it all started…"
She extended the rod, clicking it into place, and tapped a couple of points on the side. A faint glow surrounded it.
"This might not work, but I don't see how else we can get out of here. Nothing temporal or spatial should be able to interrupt it - works on quite a different wavelength. But remember, do not let-"
A spark flew off the blinker. There was a flash, and then they were gone.

And she woke up in a dark room.
She started. That wasn't meant to happen. That wasn't meant to happen at all. She'd done this a hundred times, and now this gang of rookies fucks it up? Alberto was untested, true, but Fatima was an old hat at this, and as for that other girl -
She shook her head. No. Those weren't her thoughts. Those were someone else's.
Her night vision kicked in. Looked like a small storage space - yes, there was a door. She hesitated a moment, not knowing why, and pushed it open.
There she was, looking up in horror, being gunned down by a MTF agent. She saw her face grow wide, the bullets slice through her, the agent lifting his helmet in horror and saying "Oh shit, no, no, I didn't - I didn't mean to - "
The vision disappeared. She was in a dark metal corridor - no marble here. A column had smashed across the floor, and sparks were flying everywhere. In the distance was a - was that a human figure?
She ran towards it. No time to digest anything - just to move from one moment to the next. Yes - a person. And it was breathing. Crushed under a column half a metre thick. She could smell distant smoke.
It was a man, tall, in a lab coat. She swore as she tried to lift the column - no use. Even in the suit, she could only do so much. "You awake?", she grunted, depserately trying to heave. "Help will be - well, maybe not here soon, but - "
The man rasped. "Where - where is Mother?"
She blinked. "What?"
"Where is… her eyes…"
Wrinkles started to erupt on his skin. His hair turned grey, thinned, and fell out. The skin became tight, pale, mottled, crawled off his body and left him a skeleton, dead and ready to be buried.
She shuddered, and dropped the column. She moved forward, taking care not to touch the body. After a while, she looked back, and saw, in its place, a child silently screaming at her. Its eyes were wide and bloody, and it was holding a pocket watch.
She ran. The corridors were much the same. Red alarms whirred on the wall, backwards and forwards, trapped in the same moment. How long had it been? When would the radiation come? She wondered if it still mattered.
A door - yes, a door! A wooden, ornate thing, at the end of the corridor. She ran to it, throwing it open -

- and was in a courtyard. Seagulls were perching on arcades. Around her were columns, vaults, carved walls - familiar walls.
The Madinat al-Zahara. Cordoba.
She walked forward. When had she last been here? Asturians weren't allowed beyond the wall - the closest she'd been as a child was the border-town of Burgos, in the far south of her country. But as a Foundation agent, in a different time and place, well…
There was no Cordoba in Sol. Oh, there was a city, but it was Asturian. Or Spanish, as they called themselves. A united - or near enough - Hispania. The idea was a long-distant fairytale on Orchard. On Sol, the Madinat was a small tourist attraction, not the sprawling palace-city she had dreamt of, merging with Cordoba and half the surrounding countryside.
This was the real thing, though, not a alternate imitation. Condors, shipped from the western colonies, circled beneath levitation orchards - she'd read about this, an art installation set up years back. Part of the Republic's attempt to patronise new artists for the capital buildings. Yes, she knew that. But she'd never seen it.
The courtyard was light, the sun shining high. How had she come here? But she knew the answer even as the question sprang up. This place deconstructed you, and then tried to put you back together again.
She found Fatima's body spread-eagled on a high parapet. Her brain - what remained of it - had been plugged into the stone through copper wires. She almost screamed, but an iron-hot part of herself gripped on tight. Don't, it said. It'll only make it worse.
Breathing heavily, she reached for the wires, and pulled.

She was falling, falling through grey matter. She saw Alberto's body, and wasn't surprised. It had already been unplugged. Was this San Francisco? The pit certainly went on forever, but this one didn't have the permanency she'd heard about.
Alberto hadn't talked about it when you plied him with booze. He talked about it in uncertain and hopeless situations, because he'd only talk about it when you absolutely had to. He described the huts, straddling the walls of the thing. There were bridges spanning the pit, frail imitations of an ur-bridge, long ago, with gates that were spun from gold.
And now he was dead, his brains all over the air, ripped wire dangling from them.
If Alberto had been unplugged as well, then Irene or Simon must still be alive. She hoped that was what that meant. She tried moving, but to no avail. So she sat back and watched things fall past her.
There was an MTF agent - a different one - shooting an older her in the head. He swore, falling to his knees, gibbering. And there was another one, shooting at her as an elderly woman, screaming as her stick fell to the ground.
A hundred of her own deaths flew past her, each one pointless, each one the same. Was it inevitable? Was she always going to be shot in friendly fire? Or… no, this was stuff that had been locked away. It wasn't the future, but a past, an ending. Something definite.
The Foundation, dragging machines containing all the inconsistencies in pasts that, now, had never happened. Drawing them from all across the multiverse. They'd arrayed them all here, and then it'd all gone wrong. So new pasts were created, or drenched up, over and over again, the ghosts of what had come before.
And then the repair machines had started to work. Replicating what they thought the correct timeline was, over and over and over again. Arbitrarily and purposelessly picking from the range on offer. Trying to fix Fatima by remaking the images in her head.
The cracks were showing in the edges of the pit. It would dissolve soon, and her with it. She sighed, and stretched her hands, and remembered…

She remembered the trains, waking up to find her Foundation gone, feeling everything and nothing all at once. She remembered the sense of being untethered, and floating free.
She remembered childhood, and let it go. She remembered the orange groves of her parents' farm, and let them go. She could exist without the past, without the pain of it. No need for context any more, when all the timelines in the world went dancing past.
She remembered history, Cordoba and Asturias, and let it go. Let it spill into the aether, into that white light cracking all around her, seeping through the walls. Banish it. Dispel it. Would she have any substance at all? Did it matter? Isn't that what it meant to be fr-
"Nieves!"
The sound of her name burst through her. She jolted upright, looking around. Irene was there, hanging onto a platform, powered by a Harkhretian light. Her eyes were fierces and her arm outstretched.
"Nieves, hang on!"
The name burst through her again. Nieves. Nieves. She was Nieves.
She remembered being twelve, and her brother teasing her. "Look, your name is snow! Look at the snow!", he'd said, running through the winter scene. He'd pointed at the trees. "Keeping it down! Keeping it solid!" She'd hated that. She wasn't keeping anybody down.
She reached up, grabbed Irene's outstretched arm and let herself be hauled onto the platform. Irene held her down and grinned.
"Gotta be careful here. You can lose yourself so easily."

They were back on dry land, a hundred miles away from the centre. Simon was there, holding up a small glowing tablet.
"I think I have it. We're close enough now. One signal direct to the centre, and then…"
And then it would be fixed. The repair systems would shut down; the temporal machines would deactivate. The site would revert, a dead, empty sphere. Solid and static, harming nobody, consuming nothing.
Irene nodded. "Good. Then we'd better go."
Simon frowned. "But what about-"
But he saw Nieves' expression, and thought better of it. He licked his lips and began typing quickly.
Nieves walked a little further away. They were in what had once been a hangar. Dead ships were burning there. She suspected they'd been burning for months, the fire fast and slow all at once.
How long would it have been in the outside world? Would it matter? Her body hadn't aged, and time was - well, she couldn't remember what time was. That was a saying, wasn't it? Something her grandmother had taught her?
Time is what makes the clocks go round. It just tricks us into thinking it's clockwork.
Nieves thought for a moment, and decided that was nonsense. She walked to the edge of the hangar, and looked up at the stars.
How many worlds were there? How many had been explored, how many charted? What did it even mean to chart something like that? Did it have to be a simplification?
They called to her, reached out to her, to Nieves Del Rio. She knew that every train, every planet, every piece of dust contained a piece of her, of the cathedrals of Oviedo. Of her brother. Of her hand, pale and thin, and of her dark and ruddy hair.
"Hey." Irene had snuck up on her again. She jumped, and then she smiled.
"You have to stop doing that."
Irene grinned, but only briefly. Fatima and Alberto hung in the air, unseen and unspoken. "It's time."
They trekked back to Simon, who was just finishing his signal off. "OK," he said. "That'll do it."
Irene set up the arc blinker. This time, nothing could go wrong. Too close to the edge. This time, this time, she was certain.
Nieves just smiled, grabbed onto the thin metal rod, and felt the wind go past.

On the West-Bound Passenger Train

Foundation of Nomads

Multiplying Time Alleyways in the 1960s