Ramifications
Foundation Command-02, Washington, D.C.
Thursday, 22 December 1988, 0755 hours local time
The early morning sun illuminated the large lobby as Timothy Harper strode into the the Foundation's Command-02 Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Though it could not compare to Overwatch HQ, its proximity to one of the world's most powerful capitals ensured it was one of the Foundation's main decision-making nexuses. It was a relatively unremarkable seven-story limestone office building like so many others in the city. Faceless, nameless drones in the vast bureaucracy flitted in and out of the building, not unlike the other buildings in the Federal Triangle.
After passing speedily through the obligatory security checkpoint, Harper browsed the headlines of his paper as he made his way to his tiny office on the third floor. A plane bombing in the UK was the leading story. Nasty business, international terrorism, Harper thought. Not his area of concern, though. Probably. He was one of the Foundation's top counterintelligence investigators. Pushing fifty, his black hair was streaked with gray from many late nights spent on the job. The job nearly cost him his family as well: though a drunk driver had taken away his family ten years ago Christmas Day, he discovered going through his late wife's papers that she was planning to file for divorce and seek custody of the children. With his family's death, he'd thrown himself into his work, finally accepting a promotion as Section Chief, followed a couple years later by a further promotion to his present job of Roving Special Investigator.
"Morning, Troy," Harper grunted. He and Troy Muir, a former intelligence case officer invalided out of field operations when he lost his right leg, shared the cramped office. "Where's Monica?" he asked, referring to Monica Daniel, the grad student from GWU who was interning in the CI Directorate. Always on the lookout for talent, the Foundation was more than happy to pay for someone's education, assuming they passed a thorough background check, signed a four hundred page non-disclosure agreement, and agreed to work three years for every year of schooling the Foundation funded.
"Errand to the Ethics Committee Clerk's Office, I think." His one-legged office-mate looked up. "Tim, they want you on the seventh floor ASAP," Muir reported with a frown.
"Any idea which way the wind was blowing?" Harper asked. A summons to the seventh floor, domain of the directors and overseers, was rarely a happy prospect.
"They didn't say," Muir replied. Harper nodded, and left.
Harper was met on the seventh floor by a security officer. Only those with Level 5 security clearance were permitted on the floor without an escort. The guard led him to a darkened conference room and ushered him in. A severe dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties stood alone, looking out the heavily-tinted window at the Capital Building. Harper recognized her as O5-7, one of the Overseers. Though none of the Overseers had an assigned specialization, it was Harper's understanding that Seven tended to take particular interest in the Foundation's intelligence matters. He'd seen her speaking with Director McDonnell before, but had never actually met her himself.
"Mr. Harper," Seven said quietly in greeting, not turning around. "Leave us." The security guard excused himself.
"Ma'am," Harper said.
"The Foundation is under attack, Mr. Harper," the Overseer stated, her back still to him. "Two nights ago, acting on an anonymous tip, under Counterintelligence Director McDonnell's personal supervision, MTF Xi-13 raided a warehouse outside London. They recovered a large number of classified documents relating to the Foundation and several groups-of-interest. Some of these documents apparently suggested the existence of a plot to assassinate several members of the O5 Council, including myself."
"I assume plans are in place to handle the situation, ma'am?" Harper asked, hiding his alarm.
"There are plans in place, yes, Mr. Harper. The Foundation has plans for everything," Seven replied. "More concerning than the apparent plot is the implication of these documents. According to Director McDonnell's initial report, the Foundation documents found indicated the breach was caused by someone with at least Level 4 clearance, if not Level 5. The penetrations of the GOC, Serpent's Hand, Chaos Insurgency, IRG, Factory, Prometheus Labs, Wondertainment, Church of the Broken God, and MC&D appear to all comparably high level."
At this revelation, Harper's eyes widened. Somebody had top level penetrations of nearly every major player behind the Veil, including the Foundation, and this was the first they were finding out about it? Nobody was that good.
As if sensing his thoughts despite having her back turned to him, Seven continued, "I hardly believe it myself, Mr. Harper, but as you no doubt realize, we cannot dismiss the possibility of such a turn of events out of hand simply because it is unlikely or unpleasant. After all, this organization deals with the impossible and the unthinkable every day. The Council decided to hold an emergency meeting where Director McDonnell could present the documents personally. Unfortunately, this is no longer possible. Last night, Overseer Five and his bodyguard, Counterintelligence Director McDonnell, and two American intelligence officers who have assisted our Middle Eastern operations were killed when an on-board explosion brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland. McDonnell had the original copies of the seized documents in a diplomatic pouch. Moments later, a Foundation document repository in Manchester was bombed. That document repository held the only existing copies of the seized documents. Our recovery teams report no evidence that either version of the documents survived."
"Which both lends credence to the reality of this penetration's threat, and suggests the plotters were responsible for the attacks," Harper observed. He felt like someone had punched him in the gut - McDonnell had been an old friend, someone he could trust in a business where trust was the scarcest of commodities, but there would be time for grieving later.
"The surviving members of the Council drew the same conclusion, Mr. Harper," Seven nodded, finally turning to face him. Her narrowed eyes flashed dangerously over high cheekbones. To call the Overseer angry would have been no small understatement. "We have already taken measures to ensure our personal protection. The other Overseers believe this will be sufficient; I disagree. I have convinced them we need to investigate this apparent conspiracy, fully but also quietly. If the conspirators believe they are about to be discovered, it is not at all unreasonable for them to either go to ground and disappear, or decide to cut their losses and attempt even more direct action. Right now, the Council has no idea what the ultimate goal of the conspirators is. This makes them even more dangerous in the Council's eyes. And while you and I both have enough experience in the intelligence hall of mirrors to take that in stride, most of my fellow Overseers are scared. They are mainly former scientists and uncomfortable when dealing with the uncertainties of political intrigue." Seven moved to the conference table separating them. She slid a folder across the table to him. "This is everything we know about the security breach, the two direct attacks, and the conspiracy as a whole," she observed. This was less than encouraging: it amounted to perhaps a half dozen sheets of paper. "You will be conducting the investigation. The Council has voted to temporarily grant you Level 5 clearance," she declared, handing him a new black identification card, "and you will report to me personally. Keep the cards close to the vest on this one - potentially anyone could be involved."
"Moscow Rule number three, ma'am," Harper observed with a wry smile. Everyone is potentially under opposition control. "If I may, why are you trusting me with this? I know I'm not a conspirator, but you don't."
"You're one of the best see-eye guys we have, Mr. Harper, and you have been cleared for the highest security clearance known to mankind. The possibility that you are involved is remote, and in any case I expect regular and detailed reports of all your findings. If I find out you're withholding things from me, I will bring the full force of the resources at my disposal upon you. You will spend the remainder of your days in the deepest, darkest, least pleasant hole I can find," the Foundation Overseer stated calmly. Then she flashed a smile that was clearly meant to be disarming but instead made the hair on Harper's neck stand on end. "But I don't expect that to be a problem, Mr. Harper."
"No, ma'am," Harper said.
"Excellent! If there is anything you need, let me know," Seven beamed. "You may brief in Mr. Muir and Ms. Daniel if you believe their assistance would be helpful, but do keep the cards close to the vest."
"Of course," Harper replied.
"Thank you. That will be all," she said. Harper wasted no time leaving the room.

"That's all we have," Harper finished the run-down, putting the folder down on his desk and looking across at Muir and Monica.
"Hm," Muir grunted. "For a moment there, Tim, I thought we were going to have trouble with this one." He pulled out his reading glasses and started thumbing through the folder.
Monica failed at hiding her alarm. "Do we always have so little to go on?" she asked. "How do we even know where to start?"
Harper started thinking aloud. "Let's start with something simple. What organizations did McDonnell's preliminary report suggest were penetrated?"
Monica read off the relevant sheet of paper, "Looks like the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution; Baasch Engineering Corporation; the Chaos Insurgency; the Church of the Broken God; the Factory; the Foundation; the Global Occult Coalition; Huntington Arms, Inc.; Marshall, Carter, and Dark; Prometheus Labs; the Serpent's Hand; Saito Mining Industries; Wallace Security Enterprises; Dr. Wondertainment; and various branches of the American, British, Chinese, French, German, and Soviet governments. That's all based on documents recovered in the warehouse raid." She looked up, "How the hell did someone manage to penetrate essentially all the major commercial, political, and paranormal groups without somebody noticing? How is this the first we've heard of it?"
Harper lit a cigarette. "Well," he said thoughtfully, "just because they had documents - even top level documents - related to all those organizations doesn't mean they managed have moles in all of them. And even if they do have moles with access to such sensitive materials, that doesn't mean the moles are in a position to do much beyond steal documents. Monica, what's your security clearance?"
The graduate student blinked, "Foundation, or US government?"
"Both," replied Harper, taking a puff on his cigarette.
"Level 3 and TS," she replied, looking slightly confused. "But I'm just an intern."
"And yet you have access to some truly sensitive information," Muir observed, not taking his eyes off the document he was reading. "Such as this investigation."
"Precisely," Harper continued. "These are, for the most part, groups employing hundreds to tens of thousands of people. It only takes one traitor."
"So how do we know what the opposition wants?" asked Monica.
Harper smiled, "We don't - yet. But one does not simply invest the resources necessary to penetrate so many powerful organizations on a whim. We shall find out soon enough."
Monica frowned. "This still doesn't give us a starting point."
"Perhaps this does," Muir said. He began quoting the page he was reading: "'According to Foundation personnel embedded within the Scottish constabulary, the explosion is consistent with detonation of a small but powerful explosive device. Preliminary chemical testing of explosive residue suggests the use of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) and cyclotrimethylene trinitramine (RDX), two of the primary ingredients in Semtex-H. However, the size and location of the original explosion relative to the quantities of PETN and RDX found, coupled with the complete incineration of both the diplomatic pouch carried by Robert McDonnell and McDonnell himself, suggests Semtex was not, in fact, the explosive used. It is recommended Foundation investigative staff examine the possibility of SCP objects or other as-yet uncontained anomalies as the source of the explosion."
"Just what we needed, Troy," Harper said. "Monica, go down to Central Records and have them pull all the files on anomalous objects and entities capable of causing explosions. Be sure to include the ones presently in containment; we can't rule out a theft."
"On it," she said, leaving.
Harper turned to Muir, "Any indications on the explosion in Manchester?"
Muir nodded, "Looks like that actually was Semtex. The police have linked it chemically to several attacks by the Irish Republican Army."
"The IRA? Could it really just be a coincidence?" Harper frowned, lighting a fresh cigarette.
Muir shook his head. "No way," he said. "The match was far too easy - it was an older batch with a composition more useful for demolition than killing. Great if you want to destroy papers in a safe, but not as useful for inflicting human casualties. It also doesn't match their usual MO, since Carnegie was prominently Catholic. I suspect we were just meant to believe they did it."
"Interesting," Harper said, taking a long blow on his cigarette. "Very interesting."

« Prologue | HUB | Part II »


Night Raid
Park Royal industrial district, London, UK
Tuesday, 20 December 1988, 2334 hours local time
Sitting in his car a block from the target, Director McDonnell lit his pipe. He hated waiting, but securing buildings was the job for younger fellows. He'd only accepted the promotion to head of the Foundation's Counterintelligence Directorate the year before so he could have more time to spend with his granddaughters. In forty years working for the Foundation, he'd missed too many of his own children's birthdays; with Christmas just days away he was looking forward to seeing the entire family in his large house in Edinburgh. Of course, that would require his not being called away on work. Here he was on the week before Christmas in a cold, abandoned street following up on an untraceable and anomalous tip made to his direct line about "some documents which might interest Foundation Counterintelligence."
The radio on the dash crackled. "Right, this is Xi-One-Three-Lead to all units. Stand by to breach target in Three. Two. One. Go! Go! Go!" A muffled thump rang through the darkness as the mobile task force blew their way into the target: an old warehouse in the run-down outskirts of London's industrial district. For a long two minutes, the night was still and quiet. Then the radio crackled again, "Target is clear. Director, you're going to want to see this."
"On my way," replied McDonnell. He left his car and strode up the street to the warehouse.
A young chap dressed head to toe in the black tactical clothing adopted by police and special forces worldwide greeted him. "This way, Director," he said, gesturing inside.
"American?" the Director asked, noting the young man's accent.
"Yes, sir. Agent Lombardi," the American said, walking McDonnell through the long and mostly empty warehouse. A few crates were stacked along the walls, but they didn't so much take up space as make it seem all the much more cavernous.
"New to the Foundation, I take it?" McDonnell inquired, making smalltalk.
The young agent blinked, "Yes, sir."
"Well, Agent Price will take good care of you," the Director of Foundation Counterintelligence said as they reached the warehouse's office. "Speak of the devil! Burt!"
"Director," Agent Burt Price saluted, looking up from a table piled high with documents. Several black-clad figures were poring over the pages.
"What's all this?" asked McDonnell, gesturing at the table.
"We have a security breach," Price replied, handing over several sheets of paper from the table. McDonnell thumbed through them. The first was a testing log for some zucchini that grew nearly instantly, printed on Foundation letterhead. The second, also on Foundation letterhead, was documentation on a slightly worn high school yearbook from 1976. The third was in Russian, with a KGB seal in the corner. "The first one there is SCP-506, and the second one is SCP-1833. My Russian's a bit rusty, but the third one is something about an old lady able to 'hear' nearby radio transmissions. I've never heard of that one," Price said.
Taking a puff on his pipe, McDonnell shook his head, "Neither have I, old chap. Neither have I." He furrowed his brow and picked up another paper. It was part of a budget for the Global Occult Coalition's previous fiscal year. "Is there any sort of method to this madness?"
Price laughed, "Not that I can tell. And this will keep the chaps at Site 11 busy for a week or two. What I do know is that someone has top level access to the Foundation, GOC, Marshall, Carter, and Dark—"
"Prometheus Labs and the Factory, according to this, sirs," one agent said.
"Found something here on Wondertainment's distribution network," another added.
"List of IRG operations in Latin America," a third noted, holding up a sheet.
McDonnell nodded, "I get the idea. Persons unknown managed to obtain a sizable quantity of classified information from some of the most secretive organizations on the planet. Definitely bad news, but hardly a crisis, I should say."
"Uh, I wouldn't place a wager on that, sirs," one of the other agents interrupted, "you should read this."
"What is it, Harding?" asked Price, taking the proffered page. His jaw dropped as he read the page. "Shit." He handed the paper to McDonnell.
Reading the paper, McDonnell swore loudly in his native Gaelic. It was a detailed schedule of the whereabouts and security precautions of all thirteen of the Foundation's Overseers during the last week in December 1988. In other words, the week which would start in a mere five days. A scribbled note at the bottom stated 'Ideal timing for action on the twenty-sixth at 0300 Zulu.' A second page with fair quality photos of the Overseers was stapled to the first; O5-5, O5-6, O5-7, and O5-8 were all circled in red ink.
McDonnell was intelligent enough to realize that he didn't know exactly what was planned, but he certainly had some guesses. He turned to Price, "Alright, Price. Bag it all and bring it in. As of this moment, everything related to this is Level 5, need to know access only. I want copies of these documents stored at our site in Manchester; have the originals delivered to my office." The wheels in McDonnell's head were already turning. He'd use his contacts in Whitehall to arrange for a diplomatic courier bag to carry the documents on a transatlantic flight. The papers would go to the analysts at Site 11 so they could stir the tea leaves, while he could give his report personally to the O5 Council at Overwatch HQ. And, with any luck, he'd be back home for Christmas.

Interlude
"They found the warehouse. McDonnell is taking the evidence to Overwatch HQ tonight."
"There will be copies."
"Those are stored in the Manchester annex. They will be taken care of."
"Good. Everything is going according to plan."

Explosions
Scottish airspace
Wednesday, 21 December 1988, 1858 hours local time
At just before seven o'clock the following evening, Director McDonnell was sitting in Clipper Class on the Pan Am flight with a diplomatic pouch in the next seat, handcuffed to his wrist. The cabin had a number of Foundation personnel: O5-5 was sitting the next seat forward next to his bodyguard, while McDonnell's deputy was seated behind him. He also recognized a couple of American intelligence officials and two fellows who looked to be their bodyguards. McDonnell cracked the first of his stack of novels. It would be a long flight to JFK, and the pouch meant he couldn't sleep through it.
At exactly 19:02:46.9, an explosion punched a large hole in the left side of the fuselage. McDonnell and his diplomatic pouch were instantly incinerated. Shock waves from the blast ricocheted through the aircraft, meeting pulses still coming from the explosion itself. Due to a quirk of fluid dynamics, these shock waves, technically called "Mach stem shock waves", traveled twenty-five percent faster than the waves from the explosion itself, and with twice the power thereof. As these shock waves pulsed through plane, a section of the 747's roof a few feet above the explosion's source was peeled away as if by a giant hand. The force of the explosion smashed through the bulkhead wall separating the forward cargo hold and the cockpit, shaking the flight-control cables. This shaking caused the front section of the fuselage to roll, pitch, and yaw. The entire front section of the aircraft, with the flight deck and first class cabin, separated from the rest of the plane and flew upwards and to starboard. There, it collided and sheered away the number three engine. No longer under any control, the aircraft (or what was left of it) went into a steep dive. The plane continued to disintegrate as it plummeted 9,400 meters through the night, crashing into the Scottish town of Lockerbie two minutes later.
Unnoticed and flying without a transponder, an unmarked Cessna flew past the wreckage. Though maintaining radio silence, the Cessna's pilot would report his observations as soon as he landed.

Office of Solicitors, Carnegie & Potter, Manchester, UK
Wednesday, 21 December 1988, 1904 hours local time
Over two hundred kilometers away in Manchester, the four story office building of Solicitors, Carnegie and Potter was empty, save three night shift security staff and two caretakers. Though Carnegie and Potter were indeed two well-respected solicitors, they mostly handled litigation related to the Foundation's activities in the United Kingdom. Their office was also one of the Foundation's secure document repositories. In the building's safe sat what were now the only remaining copies of the documents recovered from the warehouse by Xi-13.
A nondescript package a meter on each side sat in the building's receiving room. Because of its late arrival, and the fact that was not labeled with the codewords for Euclid or Keter objects, it hadn't been processed; the security guard who had signed for the parcel knew the staff would handle it in the morning. All the employees were properly briefed on handling unusual parcel deliveries at odd hours, as well as the appropriate code phrases for various hazards. This package was labeled as reams of blank legal paper (hence the weight) for the offices with the proper supply authentication phrases. In all, it was a thoroughly mundane delivery for a building which often received items which were anything but.
The contents were not reams of blank legal paper (though had the guard opened the package for inspection, two layers deep of paper reams sat atop the true contents). Most of the package's cubic meter of volume was taken up by Semtex, supplied by two very helpful members of the Irish Republican Army now feeding the fish in the Irish Sea. Like squirrels with their nuts, Irishmen were always hording arms and explosives for the day when they would rise up to drive the English from their island. Or that was the plan of some of the more radical countrymen, at least. The revolutionary struggle that had continued for over seventy years showed little sign of concluding in a manner agreeable to the IRA. Over time, many of the caches of weapons and bombs were forgotten about as their owners retired from their struggle or were arrested or killed by the British military and police forces. So, for someone with the right contacts and sufficient ruthlessness, it was not difficult to acquire large quantities of high explosives with no clear connection to the user, assuming that someone did not mind incurring the wrath of a fairly nasty terrorist organization with a good memory. IRA reprisals did not concern the men who had appropriated that organization's Semtex.
A brief radio signal reached a radio-receiver attached to the plastic explosive's detonator. In an instant, the cube of high explosive detonated at a velocity of over eight thousand meters per second. The explosion tore through the building, reducing the military-spec architecture to as much gravel. All five people died with merciful haste as the shock wave overtook them. The fireball, burning at temperatures sufficient to melt the structure's steel skeleton, turned the building's safe into a crematorium for the secured materials within. Hundreds of thousands of pages of classified Foundation documents, including the copies of the documents from the warehouse, were reduced to cinders by the inferno. Within less than ten seconds, the parts of the office building not strewn across the area by the explosion itself crumpled inward into a mound of twisted, charred rubble.
The local police and fire department arrived on the scene within ten minutes, just missing a nondescript sedan with an unremarkable driver leaving the area. With his radio detonator hidden away under the vehicle's dash, he stopped at a telephone booth a few blocks from the scene to report that his end of the operation had occurred without incident.

« Prologue | HUB | Part I »


Oh, um… hello. You're… you're probably wondering why I'm in your office, aren't you? Sorry, I've made a bit of a mess with all these papers— er, don't worry, I'll clean up before I go. Yes, I… I do know that that isn't your greatest concern, I was just making a little joke. Sorry. No, no, don't shout for help. I'm not going to hurt you— no, that's probably a poor choice of phrase. I should say “I won't do anything.” Yes, that's much less threatening. Close the door, will you? It's getting a little draughty. Of course, you could call for help anyway, but what would a little girl like me do to a big strong fella' like you, hmm?
Thank you. Alright, Dr… Rye, is it? Yes I— oh, that. I wouldn't be worried. If it helps, your name is the only thing I know. Well, that, and your work on… “SCP-080”, I think you call it. That's the whole reason I'm here. It's very interesting, you know? Not like a normal bogeyman at all, yet that's what it's clearly supposed to be. I mean—what? Oh, yes. Well, of course they exist. Why do you think so many unconnected children, all who've never heard of such a thing, always fixate on the term?
Look, do you understand how gods work? No? Wonderful. Alright, I'll put this in simple terms: bogeymen are figments of the collective child imagination. Yes. Yes, I did say figments. It doesn't make them any less real, but they're still made-up. They're arrogant sods too, but I couldn't care. Pretty shamelessly self-promoting, at least the ones I've met. They get off on fear.
…anyway, what was I saying? Ah, yes. Well, I've gone through all the literature – Howe's Commentary on Domestic Bogeymen, Peri's notes, Arcaon's Letters on the Subject of Household Gods – and you know what? This, this “080” is completely inconsistent with traditional form. Usually, such entities have physical shape, and they're friendly, child-specific fellows; not to mention quite definitely male. Definitely indeed. Why, I've had a few experiences that even fertility gods couldn't… sorry.
Listen, I've even gone over these supplementary documents: studies of fae, trolls and whatnot, analyses of child psychology and behaviour patterns, Grimms' tales, Clifford the Big Red Dog. Near enough— yes, I think it's important. I mean, it serves a wonderfully direct work on the thought processes of children… no, that one was just because I was bored. That one because I like stories about horses. Still helped, though.
I suppose I am kidding. Need I say that children are odd? They'd have to be, to create such things. Off the adults run, making deities to boil people's blood and strike down heretics and whatnot, yet children, through the same method, bring happy little monsters to life – with them wanting only terror from innocent waking nightmares. Yes, happy. They have to be. They have the mindset of a human aged ten when born. But then socialisation comes into effect and they mature quite quickly. After all, other beings don't usually stand for that annoying juvenility. Self-righteousness is by far an improvement.
The young conceive of basic things, since they don't have the ego to raise themselves above it. The dark, the predators, death: simple fears, without malice. Well, without complex malice. Not at all like their elders. No, fear is something different for them… for us. Er, not us specifically, actually. We both have a good deal of things to fear – which brings me back to the subject at hand. This thing, something which adults shouldn't experience anymore…
It's not unnatural, no. “Too natural”… hmm, I suppose that's a way of putting it. It still speaks to a certain primal thing, fear itself. Though it does it in the wrong way, since sleep is the bane of a good bogeyman. They aren't born from dreams, dreams are a different matter. Dreams can still terrify, but they can't please or birth bogeymen. In fact, they provide an escape for the child, a deprivation to the entity. Oh yes, you have children scream and cry in their sleep, but I'm told it's rather unsatisfying for the created monster. Besides, it typically results from something more perverse, something which bogeymen tend not to do with. If they did, they wouldn't be bogeymen. They'd be horrors.
Good god, you've certainly got me talking! My point was, I've looked at everything that could give me some insight into the creation of this SCP-080, considered the matter tirelessly, and not one thing would imply that it should exist. Not one! This thing couldn't even be a Thosk, far too inorganic… I'm rambling on again, aren't I? Sorry.
What I'm trying to say is that this little curiosity, despite what you know or suspect, despite how it may seem, most certainly isn't a bogeyman. Good god, I don't what this is, as fascinatingly curious as I find the matter, but it's just not. No, this is something else entirely. I really can't investigate more, I'm ashamed to admit; although I'd still like to know where it came from.
Don't call me that. Please, I know you're a nice fellow, but just… please. In fact, I'm about to leave, so we may as well keep things professional, Doctor - Mrs. Therianthus is my title. That is, Lyta Eykos Therianthus, scholar. It's been a pleasure.


« Pt. 2: The Lycon Crevice

Around the room were scattered a variety of crayons, toys, and other such things as general mess. The child sat in the middle amid it all, doing something for some reason, which was about as much as he knew. There, in the room that was in fact nowhere and at no specific when, he had set about… making something. It may or may not have been with his own hands, if he even had hands. Maybe they were his own, or someone else's. Perhaps hands were involved in no way, being a rather arbitrary object to be involved in anything.
There he sat, cross-legged on the floor, thinking as he always did, about nothing substantial. His thoughts were valueless and dull, those that children normally thought, exacerbated by the fact that he had been in this room literally forever since a few years ago. There was nothing exciting here: the toys and clothes which littered the room, the utensils, the necessities normally found in a child's room, the empty space and the bodies. There were a number of bodies, that much could be certainly ascertained, but it was by no means definite. This was, in fact, the place where all the bodies of those who ever lived here piled up, and the exact amount of people who lived here was not yet determined. But that was boring, possibly the most boring thing in the room.
The crayons might capture more interest. Oh, there were so many colours: red ones and pink ones and orange ones and white ones and black ones and a few that didn't reflect visible light, not to mention the one or two that object or abstract-coloured ones. The necessary tools of such a craftsman as this man- well, I do say man. Man is perhaps inappropriate, despite his age. He was and always will be a child, as grown as he may be, until the next one came to continue the cycle. That's why he was here. To continue this recurring little function of the world's, this little nuance formed from a slight fracture of reality.
The child, or god if you refuse to hold sanctity in such a position, was certainly a curiosity. For one, he was, among being here, still a young boy at some point elsewhere, in addition to being one of the remains about him. This was another of those places which held little respect for physical convention.
The name was perhaps the most important part of the whole affair, unless one chose to draw a distinction between it and the children it was given to. Always repeating, always the same, the name was certainly significant. So strange, then, that this boy should forget it. The note was nice, but it should have been purely supplementary, not necessary at all. Oh well. It's not as if that was the most glaring error.
As the boy drew out the words, he did so with satisfaction, that which he'd felt when the gifts had arrived at his door. Indeed, as the fanciful vision of that puerile joy skipped merrily on his mind, he was allowed, for a little while, to recall that wonderful time, a time which he could revisit now only vicariously. He knew, as the boy held the toy, that he'd feel that splendorous feeling he could vaguely recall. He thought of this in rather simpler terms of course.
And so it continued. Eric set about, indefectibly, working on the next project. All to accomplish absolutely nothing. No-one cared about him, really.


« Pt. 1: The Colourful Doctor

The entity crawled out of the cavern's opening, pulling its bloated body forward. It had extracted itself soon enough, finally being free as the crevice behind it vanished and moved on. The creature knew its purpose as anything knows its purpose: it had been given the opportunity to form. It could both find its form useful for existence and prosper; or, it could find itself inappropriate and incompatible, and die. This was a standard affair, really, for a world in which life grows and proliferates in the forgotten corners of the universe like a rot on bread when given the opportunity. And so the organism set out to, as organisms usually do, create a humble little niche in which it could live.
The creature raised itself upon its legs, walking on and finding itself on the edge of a mountainous forest, upon a widespread, stone surface. A watcher might have found it vaguely muscoid in appearance, with its wings a clever derivative of the typical insectoid structure. Four primary wings attached to the centre of its back, surrounded by smaller, broader protrusions which would allow it to adjust its direction – from the veins extended small, flat growths, serving as feathers do, particularly exaggerated around its lower, peripheral appendages. It is through this apparatus that the organism lifted itself from the ground into a meandering, hovering flight, before landing on a rocky outcrop, settling itself comfortably into a collection of ridges in the approximate shape of a human hand.
There it sat, scouting the environment. To the east was the start of a forest, to the southwest a long grassland – the north being largely obscured by a close waterfall feeding into a river running south. As it lay there, this creature decided its next action, and the instinct which prompted it was developed. It set off, flying towards the forest in search of prey; whatever variety it may find.
Aimlessly it glided, stopping occasionally on the ground or a tree-branch when it became too exerted. After some time, it came to land above a pack of grey wolves in the busy process of eating. Its eyes lingered on the alpha male, who was gorging himself on the carcass of a deer as the six lesser wolves loitered around the edge of their small territory. The watching fly stared, before raising itself from its elevated position and gliding into position over the lead – then, still unnoticed except perhaps mildly by the hungry, waiting beasts, it folded its wings and dropped on to his back.
Within seconds, the little patch of land was a-flurry with action: those yet to eat, with their senses sharpened by hunger, drew the fly into their full attention and brought themselves into a defensive posture; the alpha female, closest to the predated male, snarled and whipped around from her chosen chunk of carcass, her sight drawn to this alien black thing which presented as clear a threat to her as any carnivore can comprehend of; the male on which the creature had landed, briefly startled – but only, and I must stress this, briefly, for any apex predator so easily sent into shock does not enjoy the luxuries of being alive for long – bit round with his teeth flared at this unseen attacker.
The creature itself, strangely for the source of so much excitement, was largely calm. It wrapped four of its legs, strong and thick limbs at the anterior and rear of its body, around the abdomen of the beast below it, with its less pronounced and fragile midlegs trailing uselessly to his sides. A seventh appendage, attached to the base between its head and thorax, rather similar to a butterfly tongue, reached out and curled itself around the wolf's neck. He, as he flailed about in his panic, felt a slight irritation as the fly's mouthpart dug into his back. The insect's gnawing was a futile attempt, it seemed, as the its crudely formed, soft teeth were only poorly derived from the traditional proboscis, proving – while apt for the process of feeding – useless for any form of offensive weapon. As it burrowed into the furry, flustering carnivore, it failed to do anything but nibble slightly at the tissue around his spine. Ultimately, however, that didn't matter.
There was some struggle from the circling inferiors after this, but for all their efforts, the fly kept its hold on the alpha's back. Deeper into the forest this victim escaped, his malicious rider kicking at him as a man might kick at a particularly stubborn horse. After a while of this, the wolf tripped. His left foot had, in the prompted madness, kicked out randomly against an upturned root. Lying pitifully and feeling vulnerable despite his progressing calm as he became used to the organism which had taken up residence on his back, he attempted to stand again before his neck twitched the right – ever-so-slightly, yet noticeably. He stood, hesitated, then launched forward, curving to the right uncontrollably.
After a while the wolf came to a standing stop. Indeed, he would have doubtlessly began to make peace with his unseen parasite had the wounds along his body not been so very sharp; instead, he stood pathetically trying to quell his tortured moaning.
Suddenly, as the frenzied hormones in his system tired, a piercing cold crept into the alpha's body. A whelp rose in his throat as he collapsed. For several minutes he lay on the forest bed, convulsing as his suffering grew worse until, ultimately, the last remnants of movement faded and finally stopped. For a short time, the clearing that the wolf had carelessly blundered into was quiet, before the creature lifted itself from his back, skittered to his belly and sunk in its mouth. Successfully tearing open the soft skin, it proceeded to – for the first time – gorge itself. The cold meat would likely have caused it to shiver if it weren't so numb to temperature extremes, one of the many flaws of its development: as was the slow rate of eating, that deviant proboscis of its proving unsuited to chewing the remains it was being used to consume.
It is entirely possible that these aforementioned flaws would have eventually resulted in the organism's death and the prevention of its species as a result – that is, depending on whatever dietary requirements it had, and how regularly it needed to eat. While it was not affected by its own property directly, second-hand exposure could cause what had affected so many others to repeat, that this example would fail to speciate in whatever strange and illogical way a single member of a sexually reproducing organism managed to. In the past others would simply appear nearby once the original individual had established itself, along with evidence of their having existed for longer.
Fortunately all this was not a concern, since the remaining wolves tracked down the creature a short while later and killed it.
That may have been rather abrupt. It really doesn't matter, since what happened then isn't as interesting as what happened next: it was, after all, a simple matter of the somewhat stealthy alpha female wolf pouncing on the fly and biting down on its torso hard enough to leave it dead before fleeing from the area.
With its abdomen now damaged so, the creature began the slow, gradual process of decay – its wings and midlegs, as a result of their fragility, were lost entirely, the rest of it decomposing in a rather strange manner. As the bacteria swarmed on its surface, its chitinous exoskeleton softened into a fibrous, flesh-coloured layer; its interior, as a whole, was changed into a simple, white, fuzzy fluff altering its body into this permanent, semi-inorganic structure. It lay there for a while, inedible, unappealing, small and undisturbed, for god knows how long.

The merchant was returning from the traditional trading journey into Edinburgh, with enough wealth to support him for the coming days – provided his habits didn't get the best of him again. He was making the journey on foot, given the expense of using carriages for such a common trip as well as the surprising deficit of local bandits. Besides, his home was only a short meander through the woods, and rumours of roaming predators failed to frighten a sceptic such as him – he was far too confident in success of the success of the recent mass wolfhunts.
As he was walking that path he'd so often walked, a sight caught his eye. Veiled in the brush and the foliage was… something. Something small. The man, curious, decided to delay his walking a little to investigate. As he approached this thing, it became clear what it was: humanoid, a rounded head, cloth… it was a doll. A little rough yes and he found it difficult to explain why it was laying there- but then… ah, it occurred to him! Perhaps it was lost through the window of a passing coach, presumably one carrying a young girl of upper class. Seemed reasonable enough. The doll laying on the floor below him reminded the man of something: his youngest daughter, who he'd always had a certain… special affection for, had been asking recently for such a thing. Being a kind father, he had, of course, considered those for sale in town – all too expensive, or otherwise forgotten as the man distracted himself with other, more personal pursuits. For weeks she'd been asking, and he'd never managed to get anything for her. But now, now the opportunity – a perfect opportunity – presented itself. Decisively, he lowered his hand and picked up the toy, placing it in his coat pocket for the rest of the journey.
As he strolled back, he couldn't help but be proud of himself, perhaps irrationally, for finding it. Truly, he thought to himself, she'll certainly enjoy it. What a wonderful father you are.

Pt. 3: The Cyclical Child »


The toymaker sat back from his work. The fruit of his labour, that which all of his tireless effort had been focused to produce, lay before him. He did not know why he'd built such a thing: why he, a humble businessman, had been called to craft such a wonder. The inspiration had struck him without warning, without apparent cause, without a parent thought: it had jumped fully formed into his mind, a form, a function.
It was truly a wondrous work, he thought. Of all his constructions, even those he applied weeks of labour to, never quite matched the vision he had in mind. They always had some deviation or flaw, but not this. No, this work was truly perfect. A simple toy, a simple, marvellous toy. The children would enjoy it – that he knew with certainty. And in its perfection, he also knew, it gained a certain new quality. Something additional: a reward, a gift, exactly what it was didn't matter. But he knew, again he knew with satisfaction that it was there, this extension of the plaything, this quality, that the children he lived to entertain would enjoy.
The toymaker reflected upon all of his other work. His petty manufactures, it occurred to him, became only the background of his career – no, his life – compared to this. Well, not quite. This was certainly a quaint piece, far more interesting than his other, mundane constructions, but hardly so important. A simple doll could not be the greatest accomplishment of his forty-so years – could it?
He stopped. These thoughts were not his. It was… it was as if someone was influencing him, influencing his thoughts so directly. Perhaps the doll… but no. No, he was getting away from himself. The clarity struck him: his life to now had been worthless. It seemed such a simple explanation. This doll, this doll was truly an amazement, so much so that-
His ramblingly ponderous thoughts were cut short by a violent coughing fit. He was ill. He'd been ill since this whole affair had started, but that didn't matter. He was going to die of course, but everyone dies, and a peasant's life is shorter than anyone else's – what could one expect? He'd finished it, and now it existed, so petty mortality and the trivial matter of death ceased being of much consequence. He began to life, but the coughing overcame him again.
There was a knock at the door. He turned, and slowly rose from the chair in his studio. He grabbed his cane and hobbled towards the door, a grin starting on his face. In such a situation, one falls back on old superstitions. As such, you can imagine the man's surprise when he opened the front door of his shop expecting some black-cloaked, decayed thing: or, at least, some form of intimidating, grandiose entity.
“Hello!” said the brightly dressed man through his permanent smile. He was certainly vibrant, wearing a semi-tasteful combination of all forms of colour. His violet cloak billowed behind him in the wind.
The toymaker stared. Though it was night, the stranger at his door glowed with a certain ethereal luminescence. His presence drew the eye, creating a rather jarring effect in the dark.
“May I come in?” the stranger grinned through his closed teeth. The toymaker, through a compulsion that was all too familiar, nodded. To his credit, the man entered with some grandeur: all of his colours certainly created some drama. The stranger stepped in, looking around the toy shop; then, with purpose, he walked into the workshop. The toymaker followed, silently. He felt the illness now. It left him weak, weary. Now that his work was finally done, he realised, there was nothing left to distract him from his ailment.
The peculiar man wasted no time. He lifted an aqua coloured sack and reached for the doll with thick, magenta gloves, quickly throwing it in. He turned to the toymaker, who stood pathetically trying to cry out. The colourful man stopped and tilted his head, smiling with yellowed teeth.
“It's good to see you've finished it! Don't worry – even though it's my first time, I think I know what I'm doing! Thanks for all your help!” He smiled again, before turning to leave. The toymaker, with one last convulsion of energy, reached out a hand to stop him. The man looked down, gripped the toymaker's hand and slowly raised his head, smiling.

Pt. 2: The Lycon Crevice »


March 11th, 2015.
Siberia was not nice this time of year. Anders Forsman wondered if Siberia was ever really nice at any time of the year. Either way, this wasn't his normal neck of the woods. The Siberian tundra was the kind of place you shipped low performance Insurgency officers to try and whip them into shape. But apparently one of those washouts had stumbled upon something big before the hoarders had a chance to nab it from them. So the Insurgency had decided that he would be the one to go verify that it was as big a hazard as they claimed it to be. Forsman personally thought that it was a cluster of bullshit coming from some attention whore officers. He'd see that it wasn't as jazzy as they had made it out to be, and some of them would probably be shot. Bing bang done.
The convoy was beginning to slow down, and at the head of the pack Forsman could almost make out the silhouette of a big tower. He opened his car door and was hit by a block of freezing air. Pulling up his parka, he began trudging down toward the silhouette of a tower, hazy from all the snow in the air. It was the thing the washouts claimed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Orville walked up next to him. Orville was another one of the guys the big chiefs had sent down to look at this thing. He was great at explaining to overexcited officers that the magic flying bobble-head they had found did not require an Apozem recovery protocol. Forsman nodded to him as they walked toward their mutual destination.
It was a big fucker. That was the first thing that occurred to Forsman as they got closer. There were the signs of excavation protocols being enacted even at this distance from the site. He saw kids digging holes through solid permafrost. Locals, probably recruited recently. As they went on, the digging became more and more organized. It went from freezing teens digging haphazard holes to professional engineers yakking about controlled demolition with the tremble of heavy machinery permanently in the background. The excavated area itself was at least three hundred and fifty meters across. Not meters, thought Forsman, yards. They didn't use meters anymore.
The hole itself was too deep to see anything, but the officers in charge were more than happy to blather about all their theories on what the object really was. "Maybe it is some ruins that came from ancient civilizations!" was one of the more popular theories. Another one that was brought out almost as often was that it was an extraterrestrial vehicle. Most of them hadn't seen the thing for themselves, and had no idea what it actually was. But that didn't stop every officer Forsman interviewed from spouting off their own kettle of bullshit.
"Now lieutenant," Forsman would say, as he pretended to look at the important documents on his clipboard, "When did you first become aware of this object?"
The lieutenant would reply that they had found it "Pokin' out of a big ditch. Some of the people that used to live in the next town over went wild over it after it grew right into an insurance office."
Things would go on like that, with Forsman asking what had happened to the property (Demolished), townsfolk ("Evacuated"), and how things at the excavation site were going (they always said it was excellent).
And then he would have to ask about their theories on what the object could be. And he would sit and listen as the man seated in front of him listed off speculative bullshit, sometimes with clever theories they had come up with all on their own. The theories usually ran the gamut of things that he had heard a million times before. Aliens, ancients, conspiracy blah blah blah. The only one who wasn't completely up his own ass was a junior officer who had been in the dig site. He was the only officer Forsman knew of who had seen the thing. His name was Jasper.
Jasper told him that the thing looked like a tree connected to a bunch of big roots, all made of some kind of metal substance. When one of his men tried to touch it, they'd been snarled in by millions of fibers growing out of the thing that pulled him in. They had stopped underground excavation after that, and begun trying to dig it out from the surface. Jasper told him that it looked like the thing went a long way into the dirt. It was the only useful information Forsman had gotten all day.

Forsman looked at his accumulated data and shook his head. It was just a textbook case of overeager officers taking something big and scary to be more dangerous than it actually was. All it seemed to be was a big fibrous root in the ground. Strange, certainly, and definitely warranted the Insurgency's attention, but it wasn't doing anything particularly dangerous. Such a shame. He had had hope that maybe this wouldn't be bullshit, that they may have actually found something important before the Foundation could add it to their collections. But…well…that was a fanciful thought. Realistically, he would probably never be important enough to do anything other than these backwater assignments. At least he didn't have to live here.
He shut down the terminal, and a piercing whine began blaring. He covered his ears and ducked. After a second, he realized it was the alarm. The intercom crackled and fizzed, and then spat out a static-riddled announcement.
"ALL SECURITY PERSONNEL ARE TO REPORT TO EXCAVATION SITE PRIME IMMEDIATELY, OBJECT NASAW HAS BEEN ACTIVATED, REPEAT, OBJECT NASAW-" the bulletin sputtered, and then went silent. Forsman got up and grabbed his gun. The door handle stuck for a second, but he was still out in the corridor within moments. The corridor itself was in pandemonium. Men and women in secondhand uniforms ran in every direction, and the feeling of panic was heavy in the air. Forsman noticed Orville calmly walking toward the exit. He pushed his way past a security agent fumbling with a gun and walked beside him.
Their conversation was short.
"Any idea what's going on?"
"None at all."
"Heading out."
"Of course. You?"
"Of course."
They hit the exit doors and looked up.
The tower was no longer at the center of the excavation site. Or, rather, it was in the same relative place, but the excavation site was gone. The tower was several hundred feet in the air. Several hundred tendrils, the root structures, trailed down to the earth. They ripped tremendous amounts of earth apart as they were liberated from their underground resting place. It looked like a flower being pinched and lifted into the sky, and they were the bugs being smashed by the uplifting roots.
As the tower grew higher, the ground around them started to break. The trails of the roots drew closer to their location. Forsman looked to his right to ask Orville what to do. He realized Orville was gone. In his place, there was a big mesh root, ornately woven and glimmering in the winter sun. Forsman turned around to go back into the base, radio command about what had happened. And he would've been able to, had the door not been blocked by a large root, also ornate, with intricately carved patterns. Forsman would have turned to try and run, but he tripped on a root. As he watched it crawl up his leg, he didn't feel any pain. He looked over at the dig site, saw roots spreading, making new towers to put themselves out of the ground. Some might call it a shame. He thought it was beautiful.
It was the last thought he ever had.


September 21, 1997
Jack Bright strongly considered a change in career. Science wasn't working out. Too much contact with other human beings, for one. Lack of respectable, cackle-worthy science was another reason.
Third, and most importantly, was the distressingly high number of eviscerations, decapitations, immolations, castrations and all other sorts of mean, nasty, horrible things that happened in his general vicinity over the past fifteen minutes.
A head gone astray in its search for a body exploded on the wall next to Jack like a rotten melon, splattering him with gory pulp.
So far he had narrowed his choices down to: basement dweller, professional hobo, and male prostitute.
Concrete dust rained down on his head. He managed to stifle a sneeze.
Cadaver was also looking highly likely. He was already good at playing dead, why not try the actual thing?
The gurgling in the background petered out, followed by a body hitting the floor and an indifferent grunt from the one who tossed it.
Go to Germany, they said.
Meet with the Coalition, they said.
It'll be fine, they said.
They know how to deal with the occult, they said.
They said this, they said that…ah fuck.
Seconds dripped by like a particularly painful flow of molasses. Jack's strained ears picked up heavy breathing, a few pacing footsteps. Able was still there.
He had been expecting it, but it still sounded incredibly wrong to his ears. A ukulele did not belong in the middle of a secret ex-Nazi bunker, much less a secret ex-Nazi bunker being currently torn to pieces by a Neolithic war god. Neither did a voice that Jack could not stop comparing to Mark Hamill's interpretation of the Joker.
“You know, I've been considering taking up a hobby. Knitting seems like a good option. Or maybe fly-fishing. Skiing…nah, I hate snow. Also, your mother was a whore.”
BOOM
Jack leapt to his feet and began to run unsteadily towards the double exit doors, ears ringing. There was no such thing as a better distraction than Ukulele. The man himself was standing there in the doorway, holding an anti-tank rifle. His head was that of a red panda with an eyepatch. He nodded and grinned as Jack sprinted past him and down the hallway.
Four months in that cult compound, all on a hunch. Then you have some guy claiming he'd discovered a way to immortality, and life turns into a heist movie trying to swipe a philosopher's stone.
Jack felt at his labcoat pocket. The lump of the pendant wasn't there. The adrenaline pumping through his brain told him that it was no big deal. He could pick it up later. Avoiding a grotesque and messy death, that was a big deal.
All he was going to do was drop it off. That's all he was going to do. Drop it off with someone who knew what to do with it, let it be their problem, and then head out and have a beer. Or two. Most likely more than two. Enjoy a nice little vacation in Europe while he was at it. He deserved it. But no…
“Hey there. How's it going?”
Ukulele jogged backwards nonchalantly next to him. His head was a television, displaying the words “Ceci n'est-pas une televisione" in alternating teal and maroon letters. The gun was slung lazily over his shoulder.
“Mint?” he held out a little metal tin.
Jack shook his head.
“Oh. Then you might want to hold on to this. You dropped it.”
Red flashed in the air. Jack caught the amulet, not bothering to question how or why.
Exactly three steps later an obsidian throwing spear impaled Jack through the gut. His body dropped to the floor, amulet firmly grasped in his fist. Ukulele stopped backpedalling, shook his fishbowl, and snapped the mint tin shut.
“Now why would you do that? Look at those shoes he was wearing. Those were nice shoes. Now they don't have nice feet to fill them. Think of the shoes, Able.”
Able, now standing twenty feet or so away from Ukulele, grunted. A sizeable chunk of his chest had been torn open enough to see through to the other side. His breathing was a mix of a one-lunged wheeze and the gargle of a man choking on his own blood.
He stood where he was. No tensing of the body to leap, no weapon in his hand. He just stood there.
“Trezae shanis shanar, chy. Avskani?” he croaked.
Ukulele stroked the fringe of tentacles at his chin.
“Nope. Nope nope nope, I'm no good at canasta, so that's right out."
"Xadr, chy. Zepiniki ca…
Ukulele held up a hand.
"Shshshshshhhhhh. I've heard enough. While you make some fine points, I think I should warn you that I am terribly clumsy, and so chainsaw juggling would just end up awful for everyone involved."
Ukulele closed the gap. Able continued to do nothing but watch.
"This is a stumper, to be sure. Can't find a good hobby. Makin' me bummed, dude." He spread his arms. "Hug?"
With that, he hit the detonator for the claymore mine strapped to his chest.
—
"He blew himself up for fun. For fun, Ben. Something needs to be done here. He's getting more unstable."
"Are you sure you're not overreacting, Sophia? So he blew himself up. He can regenerate. He's also designed to have insanity and murder to be his only two character traits."
"I trust my gut more than Adam at this point."
"Okay, you tell me. What are we going to do to take down the Chesire Cat and Mad Hatter's LSD-fueled lovechild? Without getting ourselves slaughtered in a matter of seconds."
"Not by ourselves. We have enough items to work with. We might stand a chance if we go about this with our heads on straight."
"What, kill, capture, lock him up?"
"Just something. Something's going to go wrong, I know it."
—
Date: 9/25/97
To: Site 19 Senior Staff
From: Dr. Adam Pathos Crow
Subject: The state of Dr. Bright.
Dear friends:
As many of you have heard, Dr. Bright was reported as killed during a containment breach at our Coalition sister facility on the 21st. I am happy to announce that this is not true: Dr. Bright was found alive by Coalition recovery agents amidst the wreckage this morning, shaken but overall unharmed.
Dr. Bright's condition is still sensitive due to exposure to anomalous items of unknown properties during the breach. However, I hope to have him back among us as soon as the situation permits it.
In sincerity,
-Adam
—
September 30, 1997
Dr. Glass scanned over his clipboard one more time. Yes, the photo he had was that of Dr. Jack Bright: male, mid-thirties, untrimmed brown hair, beard, a general appearance of scruffy un-washed-ness and a scowl.
The person sitting on the other side of his desk was none of those things, save the scowl: female, late twenties, decent tan, short lightish hair, scar on the left cheek. Her arms were crossed in a sullen expression of resentment, identical to Jack's common poise and positioning. An amulet centered with a sizeable ruby hung from a gold chain around her neck. According to the paperwork he had been given, this was Steffi Fuchs, a field agent of the Global Occult Coalition of middling achievement.
Dr. Glass sighed and opened up his yellow legal pad to a fresh page. Something told him that he'd be taking a lot of notes.
“Okay, Jack, let's start at the beginning. What were you doing when you became a woman?"


I'm not really sure how I wound up in the water. The rush of currents and crunch of impact after impact as I was dragged along the rocks by the merciless current drove everything else from my mind. Thinking back, I don't remember how I wound up in that particular section of rapids at all, much less how I was separated from my kayak.
The thing no one really tells you about whitewater currents is how loud they are. Even as I was dragged along, bouncing from rock to rock like some strange sad cross between a pinball and a pinata, I managed to marvel at the rush and roar of the water all around me. For some reason, I'd always expected drowning to be silent.
Forgive the cliche, but what must have been seconds felt like an eternity. I distinctly remember having time to regret having worn my nice watch as it shattered against the stones, and to wonder how I was going to replace it. I spent what felt like hours careening down the rapids, until a particularly hard boulder impacted my head and time stopped entirely.
When I woke up, I was lying in a few inches of water in absolute darkness.
I sat up, rubbing my bleeding head, and fumbled in my pocket for the box of waterproof matches I always carried on my outdoorsy excursions. Incredibly, the current hadn't managed to tear them away from me. Hands shaking, I managed to open the box and extract a match. I struck it.
Before my eyes could adjust to the glare, it was extinguished.
"I'm sorry."
The voice was hoarse and soft, like a tenor with a terrible cold.
"Fire uses oxygen. We've got a limited supply of that. Welcome to hell."
Later, I learned that my companion in the darkness was a fellow lost kayaker who'd been washed down into the same underwater cave some time before. He wouldn't tell me what he'd had to eat beyond "I ran out.", and something in his voice told me I didn't want to know. Navigating the cave by feel, I'd come across the remains of a two man canoe.
He'd been digging for a while. With a grunt, I joined him. The tunnel was narrow but long, stretching mostly upward except for where it had to curve below a particularly tenacious boulder or seam. "Three more days, I think." he told me, in one of the rare moments we spoke. "Think you can hold out that long?" And he laughed, then, for a long time.
So we dug. Without a watch, I had no way to tell how much time was passing, but his guess was more or less correct. Eventually, he paused. "I'm going to go, er… yeah. I'll be back."
He dragged himself back down the tunnel without another word. A few seconds later, I burst through topsoil into light.
Blinded by the glare, I lay there for a few minutes, soaking up the warmth and light, before realizing I could hear no sound of my companion. I called out, but heard no answer. So I widened the hole, letting light down into the tunnel, and farther into the cave. Silence was the only answer.
I clambered down the tunnel, surprisingly short in the daylight, and looked around the cave. There, in the corner, next to the crushed canoe and a pile of gnawed human bones, lay a dessicated corpse, months dead, with a shovel in its hand.
I ran. When rescuers found me, lost and gibbering in the woods, it had been four days since I went missing.


“Ms. Catherine, I understand you may be shocked, but I must insist you try your hardest to remember.”
She looked down at the stark white hospital gown she was wearing, the texture felt rough against the skin that was not wrapped up in gauze or absorbent patches. Even those were not exactly comfortable, and the man sitting beside the bed with the wide plastic smile put every hair of hers on edge. She disliked hospitals, the ward she sat in was almost blindingly white and sterile. The few occupants were her, the interviewer, and four other victims of the attack.
“Ms. Catherine?”
“I said that this guy leapt out from the hedge and tried to bite off my tit,” Catherine repeated, resisting the temptation to rub her wounded chest and arms. Even thinking about it made it hurt. “I heard something break a bit earlier, but I just thought someone had knocked over one of those big flower vase things in the park.”
“Did this man look drugged, or ill?” The interviewer leaned in, still smiling. “Or did he seem perfectly normal besides the aggression? Did you say anything that would have offended someone?”
Catherine moved further over to the side of the bed. “He looked really red and he was sweating. I think he was homeless.” She took a deep breath, trying to remember each detail of the man. “He had a beard and his nails were extremely long.” Her eyes moved over to her arms, all bandaged up from where the man had ripped into her. “He also was not wearing any shoes.” She nodded, laying back onto the stiff pillow. She wriggled slightly, trying to remove the pressure on her chest from the bandages. With most of her chest and waist covered, she really did not want to think about how bad the wounds looked, and was even more thankful she could barely feel them.
“I see,” the interviewer said, the smile never leaving his face, “so perhaps he was just mentally ill-“
“George!” Someone called from across the room. “We need to talk.”
The interviewer got up, nodded in the direction of the person who called for him before looking back at Catherine. “I suggest you rest, Ms. Catherine.”
“Will I get to call my parents soon? They're probably worried to death that I got run over or something.”
“Tomorrow, Ms. Catherine. Tonight I believe you should rest, we have testing we need to do in the morning,” he said while getting up, then walking away at a brisk pace. Catherine watched as he quickly made his way to the door and disappeared behind it.
“…Creep,” she muttered underneath her breath. She could not deny that he had a point though, she was exhausted and her body hurt. Catherine waited for sleep to come, the sound of a hospital bed being moved the herald of a dreamless slumber.
-
-
-
Catherine woke up in a panic, nearly rolling off the bed. Her chest felt like it was in a tight vise, squeezing out her organs. She twisted and squirmed on the bed in an effort to loosen the hardened bandages, instead there was a cracking noise, and as she rolled over again the cold touch of air ran over her exposed wounds before the itchy hospital gown covered them.
“Oh shit.” She sat up, the pieces of bandaging falling off behind her or into her lap. Catherine reached into her gown to pull out the hardened gauze and looked over them for a moment. They were soaked in reddish brown, with crusted yellow green making faint outlines where she assumed the edges of the bites and scratches to be. She looked up first, at the empty ward, then leaned down to sniff the bandages. They were scentless, not even a slight metallic whiff of blood.
Goosebumps formed over her as the soft hum of air conditioning began, the cold breeze running over her exposed back. “Where's my shirt?” she wondered out loud. With no doctors around to tell her to stay in bed, she quickly got out of it, hunching over to brace herself for a pain which never came. She stood straight up then, feeling the flesh on her chest stretch as she moved.
Catherine walked down to the end of the ward, where a few desks and lockers stood. Two of the lockers were opened, one with a post-it note attached complaining about someone named ‘Avery' not cleaning it up properly. It did not seem like her own clothing was around. She turned to look at the desks, wondering if there were any keys in them.
The desks had a few papers on them, computers, pen cups, medical charts, emergency flashlights, manila envelopes. Things one might expect. She found several keys in drawers and one bright red stress ball with a crude face drawn onto it. Squeezing it, she began a slow process of finding which keys opened which locker. After eight lockers had been opened, she finally found one with some clothing in it. A piece of paper taped to the inside of the locker noted that it belonged to a woman named Doctor Elizabeth Schumacher.
“Sorry Elizabeth,” Catherine mumbled as she pulled out the blouse, underwear, and skirt. She was mildly disappointed to not find any shoes. She then looked down at the hospital gown, the cool breeze still hitting her exposed backside. She gripped the flimsy feeling material, wondering how horrible the exposed flesh will look underneath. She could not feel it, perhaps the damage had been less than she thought, but she braced herself for an ugly sight anyway as she pulled off the hospital gown and let it fall to her cold feet.
Underneath were large patches of reddened flesh, cracked dry lines of pus lining some of them. Her left breast was lopsided looking with a chunk of it still missing. Catherine frowned and poked the tender flesh there, and bit her lip in the sudden flare of pain. “That wasn't the smartest thing to do.” She groaned, cradling it.
Getting over the pain, she quickly pulled on the slightly loose clothing, buttoning up the blouse and zipping up the skirt. She looked over at the heavy double doors, then at the two rows of empty hospital beds. The lack of a window in the white room, the quiet air as the air conditioner turned off.
“This isn't a hospital,” she realized, looking back to the doors, the revelation taking a few moments to fully dawn on her. If she was not in a hospital, where was she? Where did the other patients go? Why were the grievous injuries healed? Needles felt like they were digging into her heart, a fearful confusion burrowing deep inside. Frowning, she walked over to them and pushed them open quickly, sending a shaft of light into a dark hall. She poked her head out, seeing nothing but dim lighting from a few small bulbs down the corridor. Catherine took a few steps out and suddenly found herself on her back, her head cracking against the tiles as she slipped.
Sitting up, she rubbed her head and looked down at her other hand. It was cold, and as the doors closed a sliver of light crossed over her hand, illuminating the red.


May 10, 1997
A black moon under a hill of snow.
His brother had been born first, but the younger was the stronger of the two. The omen had been marked, but its mark was not for a babe at the breast. Destiny was fit for a man.
A scene of two boys wielding spears, each fighting a ferocious animal.
Two boys became two men. Manhood brings a mark, which brings a name, which begins a destiny.
A figure of man, dressed in furs, holding a spear. A woman, fat and healthy, stands beside him, as do five childlike forms. Another, smaller man stands to the side, with feathered staff and headdress.
He did not have the clays of the River now, not the rich red nor the earthy brown nor the smooth grey. Nor did he have the deep black of the charcoal of a fire over which the sacred stories were told. He had nothing but blood and spit and pus and bone.
It was enough.
More monstrous animals, each with a red slash across the belly.
The storytellers and elders whispered of the brothers' feats, how the warrior smote the beast and the shaman healed the sick and drove out evil spirits. They spoke of their great destiny…
The smaller man stripped of his headdress, walking away from a faceless crowd. The larger man points in direction.
But destiny is a heavy weight: Slip, and it will crush you…
The woman, dead, smeared with the blood of childbirth, the deformed infant in her arms.
And destiny takes what it will from those it does not destroy.
A spread of grey land, a swathe of black sky, a tiny white figure in the center.
You took nothing into the cave. Took not your spear, nor knife, nor fire, nor sight, nor hearing. The dead allowed only the soul to pass.
A figure in shadows, bone white face and blood-red hands.
For the spear will break and hides will rot and fire will dim. All things die. Only the soul may be tested.
A pale, ghostly figure, plump and long-haired. A child holds on to one hand.
And in time rewarded…
The same figures, smeared out.
But destiny is fickle with its rewards.
The light of the entrance to a cave.
The test was passed. Life, power, and loneliness were the reward.
The figure alone, surrounded by darkened trees.
Seasons were born and died.
He did not.
The figure standing on a hill, many figures surrounding him. Another woman, many children, many others, all fed and strong.
Death turns to life again. It continues.
Bloody red fire.
And again all things die. He did not.
The figure stripped of his hides, bloody and beaten, surrounded by tall, cloaked figures with the skulls of animals. Chains bound his arms and legs.
He could not die, so he watched.
The man marked with crests that were not his, standing in a river of blood, the dead around him thick as the fallen leaves of autumn.
He could not die, so he lived a slave. A tool.
A cold, black monolith. A tomb in chains.
Tools are stored when they are not used, and disposed when they have worn out their usefulness.
Able, son of Ablaln, Chief of the Mountain and the River, He Who Returned from the Land of Death, Wanderer of a Thousand Winters, the Smiting Blade, The Sleeping God, scowled with bared teeth at the last of the paintings. A name echoed through his mind, to the very depths of his soul, boiling up hatred a thousand times over, hate that burned, consumed, that left nothing but more of the same. Hatred against them. The invaders. The slaughterers. The slavemasters. The filth. The Daevas.
When a man has nothing left to lose, then his soul may be stripped from him.
Able roared, slamming his fists into the wall. By all means, they should have crumbled under his blows, were they normal stone. His fistfalls thudded dully through the cube, not a crack appearing.
No…the walls of this prison were not to be broken by the tantrums of a child. Able ceased his barrage, panting. The echoes froze and faded.
Why had he brought those memories to bear? Had he not buried them ages ago? Had he not torn down the walls of Daevon with his own hands? Had he not ripped the high priest in twain and destroyed their foul idols? Had he not sent them screaming to their black gods as their most twisted sorcerers sacrificed themselves to lock him away a final time? They were dead, dead and gone, and he had bathed in enough blood to forget himself in his madness. Why?
The answer came to him.
Able stood up straight to his full eight feet. He knew now. He knew why he remembered. It was all happening again. He reached down to the rent torso he had been using as palette a last time. His hand wet with viscera, he painted one more figure on the cold, uncaring walls of his prison: A man with a smile, but no true face.
A man made a weapon at the call of masters beyond.
They were the same.
They were kin.