Howard knew he should be afraid.
He knew any place where they insisted on calling you by a number was a place you didn't want to be. He knew that a lab coat gave a man the idea that he could do things to people that he normally wouldn't do. He had heard the whispers. He knew that sometimes the men, clad in disposable looking orange jumpsuits, that they took away from the dormitory were sometimes never seen again.
He knew he should have the same hollow, terrified look he saw in the eyes of all the other D-Class. But each time he searched his heart for fear, he never found it. Perhaps it was there somewhere, but it was buried beneath a much stronger feeling.
He was excited.
The world before his incarceration at Site-48 had been one of banal certainties. Up was up. People were people, just greedy animals pushing and shoving to reach the tops of their sad little hills. Money governed the world. The secrets kept were gray: who killed who, who bought who, which politicians were puppets, which corporations were the puppeteers. There was nothing hiding in the dark. There was no veil to be pierced. Death was not a door, just a fade to endless black.
On his first day here, he was escorted to a room that had seemed like any other, but when he entered it he had found himself in a vast darkness, reaching back and up into an eternity. The only light came from a circle of red candles, flickering madly without source of wind. In the center was a little girl in a white dress, wearing pigtails held by ribbons the same murky red as the candles around her. She was staring at him with a fuming gaze and a malevolent expression on her face.
She hovered three feet off the ground. Her eyes were red.
He had been given a line to deliver to her, but it wasn't until prompted by the voice in his earpiece that he remembered to do anything but meet that crimson gaze with gaping awe.
Howard cleared his throat and spoke his line. “We await your prophecy.”
She spoke to him in his father's voice. Not his rich, laughing cadence, but his deathbed voice. Choked with cancer and dread, in those terrible days when the sickness had found its way up his spine and into his brain.
The words didn't matter. He was sure they had recorded them because they never asked. He wouldn't have remembered anyway. Listening had been a migraine, drawing whimpers from his lips and a torrent of blood from his nose. And there had been pictures forced into his head, the fingers of her words driving into the soft of his mind like a boot into mud. Buildings falling. The sky burning. A hundred thousand souls afflicted with boils and plagues. The end. The end of everything.
He shuffled back to the dormitory led by two guards with hands loosely clasped around his biceps. They knew he was beyond running. What they didn't know was that beneath his physical distress, the seed of the excitement he would come to know had found purchase in the soil of his heart.
A demon, he thought, I just met an honest to god motherfucking demon.
Perhaps that wasn't accurate. Maybe she was just some megalomaniac, psychic eight year old with a serious grudge to bear on the human race. It didn't really matter, did it? Whatever she was, he was certain she was real. The veil he never believed was there had been lifted.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Howard thought, and if he hadn't been so drained by the encounter, he probably would have let out a little giggle.
He lay on his bunk feeling as if he had run ten miles, his body limp, but his mind raced. Surely they didn't need this massive facility for just one evil little girl. When they brought him here, they had ushered him through endless gray corridors, down countless floors in a freight elevator, and then through another maze until they reached Dormitory 64. It housed about fifty of his orange clad brethren. Even if this was the last of the dorms, which he doubted very much, that was at least 300 inmates just like him. Far too many to use on one little demon. What else did they keep here? How many other monsters were there? How many other Sites like this existed.
His stomach suddenly cramped and he rushed to the latrine in his cell just in time. As his body released its sick, he still knew was luckier than some of the others. If the rumors were to be believed, and at this point why not, diarrhea and a nosebleed was a birthday party compared to the other options available.
The days passed. They had taken him to his new acquaintance twice more and each time had been the same. The line was spoken, his body and mind was assailed, his weakened form escorted back to his cell to lay limply until the sickness came. The miraculous might have become monotony if not for the growing excitement. He had been tempted to break the script, to ask the little prophetess his own questions, but for all his excitement and curiosity, he was no fool. Disobedience was not tolerated by men who named you a number.
And so Howard sat, watching his fellow D-Class over a meal that was as institutional as the aluminum tin it came in, waiting for his next visit with what he had come to think of as his Little Demon. There was never much conversation in the cafeteria, and if there was it was always in a conspiratorial whisper. Most of the men, like himself, had come from prison and were well accustomed to the culture between inmate and guard. You did your best to let the screws know as little about you as possible. Any information was a weakness to be turned against you. They find out you like fresh air? Expect solitary. They find out you like to jog to pass the time in the yard? Expect the next blow to the knee. The find out you've made a friend or two? Watch how long they let that last.
He found the guards here were different, though. They didn't look to take advantage of your humanity. Rather, they seemed to disregard it entirely. They all looked on you with flat gray eyes, the way someone might regard a piece of furniture: invisible until it had a use. It wasn't like they had to worry about escape attempts or violence. The place defined the word fortress: clearly underground, everything made of concrete and steel, cameras roosting in every possible corner like sleeping bats. And the guards had armor out of some sci-fi war movie, sometimes wearing helmets that obscured their faces behind black, reflective glass. Not quite Stormtroopers, but the comparison could be made, though he doubted there was anything amiss with how they aimed the rifles they carried. His uncle had been a sergeant in the Marines, and every one of these guys made him look a soft as taffy.
If the guards had more interest in the inmates, they may have noticed that he was different than those around him. He didn't hunch over his meal, his posture bent by terror, like a rabbit expecting a hawk to swoop in a flash of talons and feathers. He surveyed the dorm like a man on a lunch break, sitting on a park bench and enjoying the breeze. He had been in prison long enough to know you didn't sit around smiling unless you wanted someone's fist to change the shape of your mouth, but if the guards had looked closer, they might have seen something in his eyes or the corners of his mouth to betray him. And so, relaxed as he was, on the verge of lounging in his seat waiting to visit his Little Demon, he was the first inmate to notice when things suddenly went wrong.
Howard saw when the guards simultaneously stiffen, a few raising their gloved hands to their ear, listening intently as some transmission came over their radio. He saw when half the contingent guarding them moved hurriedly towards the door, the first urgently punching the keypad. When the door hissed upward, he heard a popping sound he knew well from what he thought of, affectionately, as the Bank Caper that ultimately ended with his residence at Site-48. Of course, on that occasion it had been far more intimate, not distant pops but loud bangs and the whine of bullets meant for him, missing their mark. He had sent his own in return, and with better aim. He had no illusions that he was not where he belonged.
The door closed behind the troop and for a few minutes, all was quiet again. A few of the other inmates also looked towards the door, roused from the daze of their imprisonment by the activity. It seemed that would be the extent of the excitement and Howard relaxed a little.
Then the door exploded, showering the nearest two tables with chunks of concrete the size of volley balls.
The hallway was awash in red light and now gunfire hammered the air in the cafeteria. A guard went pelting past the door from the right, followed by a tendril of scarlet brilliance. It winked out a moment later, finding its target past Howard's view. Following it close behind was his Little Demon, glowing feverishly. She drifted past the hole that was once a door. She never spared the inmates a glance, but several of the ribbons of red light flowing from her flew into the room and struck some of the survivors of the initial blast. They were replaced with gleaming skeletons that stood, held by some invisible force. When she had passed, they collapsed in a clatter of bones. The remaining guards in the cafeteria pursued, opening fire that crashed around them like thunder. And then they, too, were gone.
The silence that followed was a physical thing. No one moved. Then an alarm began to bray and their hypnotism was broken. One of the prisoners suddenly leapt from their collective paralysis and fled through the door. He was momentarily followed by a torrent of the rest.
All this Howard watched from his seat, now tense and upright, but unmoving. He waited until but a few stragglers remained and rose from the bench. The fleeing inmates had their choice of left, towards the murderous thing that had floated past them, and right, from which the thing had come. There was no consensus, and so they split into twin orange rivers. The handful that remained busied themselves by cowering beneath tables and in corners. The alarm continued its shrill cries.
He rose and cautiously approached the opening. He should have been afraid. Or gleeful at the prospect of escape. At the very least, some engine of self preservation should have roared to life and made its demands. He felt none of these things.
What he felt was excitement. And purpose.
Maybe none of the others had seen the world remade in his Little Demon's image. The seas of bile. The sky choked with ash. The twisted, festering corpse of a world destroyed. Maybe they hadn't seen what he'd seen, or maybe they didn't care, but he had and he did. When he reached the door, he turned right, towards where the men in white coats had imprisoned his Little Demon.
The hallway was littered with bones. Most of the many doors had suffered the same fate as the one he had passed through, and their gaping holes revealed some workstations, but mostly more endless corridors. This place was even bigger than he had thought. Hopefully his Little Monster hadn't blown the doors off the cells of some of her fellow inhabitants. Occasionally he would see a man in an orange jumpsuit darting down one of these revealed passageways, but his corridor was clear of people. The bones scattered about were probably a strong deterrent. He proceeded onward, doing his best not to disturb the gruesome little piles and trying not to be too hard on himself when he did. The bones' previous owners were well beyond caring.
The hallway was awkward and angular, he assumed by design. It made traveling quickly difficult, surely an extra measure against escape attempts of any kind. His Little Demon had been unhindered, though, sometimes leaving a smoldering hole where a jutting corner had been. Even still, his view forward was often obscured, but he was good with direction, and knew he was going the right way.
But with his line of sight obscured and the endless howl of the alarms, he had no awareness that he was no longer alone until the D-Class crashed into him, hard, running in the other direction. He didn't know the guy's name, but he knew him just the same. It's hard not to remember the tallest, biggest, meanest looking bastard you'd ever seen in your life. 6'6" at least, probably over three hundred pounds, the epitome of criminal muscle. Howard rebounded off him, and then was instantly pulled close as the big moose grabbed his shoulders and began to shake him. He made no demands. His face was blank with idiot, animal terror, barely seeing the man he was throttling. Howard weighed in at a modest 170, and flopped like a doll in the giant's grip. Even still, Howard prided himself as a man who knew how to handle himself and stay cool when things went sideways. Had his head not been whipping back and forth, he might have rolled his eyes.
Some people simply cannot handle themselves in a crisis, he thought, and punched the man square in the throat. He left him gasping on the floor and moved on.
He arrived at his Little Monster's cell without further incident. The wall and the door were rubble. Without her malign presence, the place was no longer a vast, dark cave, but a holding cell not much larger than his. The candles remained in their circle save for one, lying on its side, and all were extinguished. The room adjacent was also blown apart. It was clearly an observation room for keeping an eye on her and avoiding her terrible stare. Flames flickered here and there, and while he assumed a facility such as this would have some sort of fire suppression system, it clearly hadn't shown up to the party. In the center of the room was a desk ringed by three piles of bones. It had avoided most of the damage, though a chunk of concrete sat in its middle like the world's most excessive paperweight. He pushed it aside and scanned the papers scattered over the desk's surface.
Howard believed himself fairly intelligent, but most of what he saw was completely beyond him. Finally, he came upon a document labeled, “Restricted to Level 3 Access Only.” Promising. He broke the seal of the document and flipped through the pages.
Once, long before the Bank Caper, he had purchased a book shelf from Ikea. After reading the assembly instructions three times, he had unceremoniously dumped the fifty or so pieces in his basement for his future self to contend with. For all he knew, it was still there. This document was three times as long and five times more confusing. What the hell is a Keter? He leafed through Testing Logs and Addendum with a growing sense of frustration. He took a breath and started over. Finally, he found what he was looking for.

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-3108-1 is to be housed in a standard Humanoid Containment Unit. At all times, SCP-3108-1 must be encircled by ten lit instances of SCP-3108-2. If at any time an instance of SCP-3108-2 is removed or extinguished, failsafe protocol Epsilon-48a must immediately be enacted.

Failsafe, my ass, Howard thought.
He gathered up an armful of loose papers and rolled them into a makeshift torch. In the far corner of the room, a table that once held testing supplies of some kind had gone from smoldering to merrily burning, letting out an increasingly problematic plume of acrid smoke. He hurried over, lit his torch and dashed into his Little Demon's private quarters.
In his hurry, he almost went ass over tea kettle when he stepped on a femur. He skidded along and managed to keep his balance. The pile of bones was beside the fallen candle. Perhaps she had convinced someone to knock it over. Or maybe the poor bastard had flubbed his one line. He righted the candle and lit it.
The response was immediate. An inhuman screech filled the room, drowning out the constant alarm completely. He felt her racing towards him. He scrambled around the circle and had all but one lit when she flew into the doorway.
She was almost to bright too look at, but he met her red gaze regardless. Had he thought it fuming? Now it was blazing, two twin suns straight from hell burning into the core of him. His head flooded with obsenities, flesh and flame and disease and death. A red tendril ripped out from her, filling his vision. He dropped to his belly and watched it fly over his shoulder and bend back to wrap him in its killing light. He thrust his sputtering torch towards the last candle and knew he was dead.
He lay there a moment before he realized death hadn't come. The candle was lit. His Little Demon floated again in the center of the circle, her usually dead face a snarl of hate. She hammered at him with images. His mother ravaged by unspeakable creatures. His father a mass of tumors yet still somehow alive, writhing in agony. His own corpse squirming with maggots the size of severed fingers. Death. Rot. Despair.
Mewling like a wounded animal, he fled from her on all fours. Once he rounded the corner, free from her otherworldly sight, the pictures stopped, but his mind felt like it had been wrung by clawed hands and soaked in pus. His nose was a river of blood and the sobs that wrenched out of him were harsh and painful. When the weeping subsided, he leaned back against the wall, exhausted. He sat there for what felt like a very long time.
Perhaps he dozed. Maybe his mind just let him escape for a bit. Either way, the three guards, armed with guns that looked like they might destroy a building with a single shot, scared a little scream out of him when they suddenly appeared standing over him, their faces hidden behind the black glass of their helmets. One looked in the room, and gave a little nod. He stepped a distance away and began talking quickly into the headset in his helmet.
“What happened?” demanded the nearest guard. His weapon wasn't trained on Howard, but his posture was still of one in a combat situation. Howard weakly raised his hands and stood on legs that made no promise of holding him up for long.
“I…” he began, and then coughed a bit. The guard stood watching him, inscrutable behind his helmet. Howard took a deep breath and began again.
“I lit the candles. I went into that room and found that report. I'll show you.”
They let him stumble into the observation room to the desk. He leaned against it for support. He picked up the document, and held it out to the guard. The guard glanced at it briefly before snapping it shut.
““You read the report?” The voice was distorted, digitally amplified, and cold.
“Yes,” he turned and glanced towards the wall between him and his Little Demon. It was mostly holes and through it he could see her. She was staring into his eyes, and for the first time since their first encounter, she was smiling. With lips that felt numb he said, “I had to figure…”
And that is when they shot him.


close

Info

X

+ More articles by weizhong

- Hide list

SCPs

SCP-2006

SCP-2950

SCP-2599

SCP-2800

SCP-3200

SCP-4007

SCP-2750

SCP-2201

SCP-2101

SCP-2050

SCP-2440

SCP-2301

SCP-1842

SCP-2012

SCP-1644

SCP-2499

SCP-2775

SCP-2925

SCP-1758

SCP-7030

SCP-972

SCP-314-J

SCP-2625

SCP-2588

SCP-6030

SCP-5725

SCP-2896

SCP-5975

+ All Tales by weizhong

- Hide list

Tales

The Meaning of Fear

Right?

The Tinkerer

After The End

Spirit Dust

Leisure Time

Mission Accomplished

A Broken Tool

The Space Soldier

Of Meetings and Meals

Trip Hammer

Eulogies

All Work and No Play

Another Day On The Job

Unveiling

Conferencing

+ GOI formats by weizhong

- Hide list

SCPs

UIU File: 2017-003

UIU File: 1933-001

+ All coauthored articles featuring weizhong

- Hide list

Page
Authors

Unusual Incidents Unit Hub
Drewbear, CryogenChaos

Project Palisade, 001 Proposal
thedeadlymoose, Drewbear, and Dexanote

TKO
thedeadlymoose and Drewbear

SCP-5050-EX
CityToast

Competitive Teleology
Riemann

SCP-5882
Riemann

The skip was proving to be significantly more difficult to deal with than I had anticipated.
As in, it was actively attempting to carve my face into a nice confetti, and then sprinkle my con-face-tti in the air.
”Heh. ‘con-face-tti.' I'd have to remember that one for next time,” I thought as I dove through the closing containment bay's doors as they slammed shut on an errant tentacle, slicing it off with a squeal of pain from the skip inside.
I slowly got to my feet, and pulled out a notebook from my pocket. Pulling out a pen, I jotted down a quick note.
Anomaly is extremely hostile, do not approach. ‘Con-face-tti expected.'

It all started two months ago. Shit went down. And I mean that in more than the typical Foundation way, where the world is full of bloodthirsty monsters, unspeakable terror, and occasionally tastes like raspberry lemonade razorblades.
I didn't know what was happening at the time. The guards herded me into the holding chamber like a calf being led to slaughter, and I felt roughly the same way. Whatever was happening, I was pretty sure that I'd get the short end of the stick.
Life's like that when you're basically human cannon fodder. Life as a D-class I guess.
For the first hour, I assumed that some breach had happened, and I was being sequestered, as per usual. When the fourth hour hit, I thought that it might be more serious than usual. When the sixth hour hit, and I heard screams coming from outside, I got a little worried. When the eighth hour hit, and the power went out, kicking on the backup generators, I was pretty sure that shit had hit the fan.
For a while, I wasn't sure what to do. Some part of me thought that staying in the chamber until someone came to get us was the right call, because I was fairly sure I'd get shot if I left. Another part of me pointed out that if something this big had happened, they'd probably be coming around to shoot me anyway. “Wrapping up loose ends,” so to speak. Well good for them, hope that stain of plain old murder was worth the bureaucratic efficiency.
In the end, I decided that if I was gonna die, I might as well have a chance to run for it.
After squeezing myself through the vents, I dropped into the hallway, and immediately scanned the area, bracing myself for a hail of gunfire from a waiting guard team. Instead, what greeted me was…carnage.
Everything was bathed in the light of a slowly flashing red alarm. The remains of the guard team that had locked me up was all scattered through the hallway. Yet the typical sights and sounds of a Foundation site busy at work were nowhere to be found, the hallways devoid of all life save for the puddling remains of staff members everywhere. The smell of death was thick and cloying, wafting through my mind and seizing my brain in a chokehold that made me gag.
I picked a pistol off the ground from the severed hand that still clutched it in its rigor mortis fingers, and pocketed it, just in case I needed it. Seriously, what the fuck had happened to this place?
As I walked through the hallways, I only found more signs of violence, but no signs of any answers or life, anomalous or otherwise. No doctors, no usually ever-present guards, not even another D-class. In the middle of one hallway, I picked up an ID card from an important looking corpse, before I finally came upon what I had been looking for: the site director's office.

“Okay, so, note to self, don't fuck with that tentacle-y skip in the future. Thanks, self.”
I slid to the ground, and buried my face in my hands. I wondered if all this time alone was making me crazy.
Back in the day, when there were other D-class around here, we picked up a real sense of gallows humor, except nothing around here was nearly as nice as the gallows. At least gallows had the decency to snap your neck and kill you quickly. If only some of those skips my fellow D-class had to deal with were so kind.
There I go again, I guess.
But there was a point to it. Shitting around about skips was a lot easier than having the stuff drip down your pants every time you realized where you were and what in the hell you were doing. At least that's what we told ourselves.
I picked myself up the ground and dusted myself off, focusing on the task at hand. I checked for any bits of tentacle that might be stuck to me and looking to wriggle underneath my skin or something. After I decided that I was clean enough, I made my way to the site garage, checking to make sure nothing else was going to pop out of its chamber and eat my face.
The site garage was filled with untouched vehicles, all except for one loaded Foundation issue truck, stuffed with supplies and other assorted gear. I pulled out a checklist from my bag and began to run down the list.
‘Feed SCP-3234.' Check. I wrote “con-face-tti” next to the item on the list.
‘Week's worth of supplies.' Check. GI issue MREs for a week, plenty of water, and a first aid kit, just in case.
‘Camping supplies.' Check. Tent, knives, and other tools, all packed up and loaded.
‘Weapons.' Check. I had raided the armory for a pistol, a rifle, and plenty of ammo. Odds are it wouldn't do squat against any skips that I had to come up against, but if there were human targets, that was another story. Plus, they made me feel better about myself.
I got in the truck and checked the map that I had gotten from the site director's office, before turning on the ignition and leaving the garage.
Next stop: Site Omega.

I had passed by the site director's office dozens of times while being escorted from test to test, and I figured that it was as good of a place as any for figuring out what had happened. Every time I had passed by here, there were two armed guards in front of the door.
“Well, there were two guards here at some point.” I mused, looking at the splatters of blood that were on either side of where the door should have been had it not been torn off its hinges and thrown away. Solid steel had buckled and been torn apart by something which I didn't think that I would ever want to encounter.
That reminded me of the fact that I still had no idea what had wrecked this base, and it certainly wasn't anything that I had ever been in testing with, or I'd be like Mr. Puddle and Mr. Human-Shaped-Stain here. Suddenly, I felt very alone and very exposed in the middle of this open hallway, so I quickly ducked inside.
The site director's body was slumped over his desk, looking surprisingly calm compared to most everything else that I had found in the site. A bottle of some kind of pills was open on the desk, along with a note written in a kind of stilted, blocky looking handwriting.
If anyone from the Foundation made it out and is reading this, understand that this could be Dr. Heinrich's theorized “XK-class scenario” that he published a paper on last year. It's so bad that the Phoenix Protocol is in effect. May God save our souls. Good luck to whoever you are.
I didn't have the slightest clue what the hell he was talking about. Scratching my head, I noticed the still-on computer that was on his desk. I moved aside the director's body, and sat down in front of the computer when I was promptly greeted by a faintly lit screen.
“PLACE FINGER ON PAD”
I noticed a small metallic plate in front of the computer on the desk. I put my finger on the plate and immediately drew it back, wincing at the small cut that it had somehow made.
A small bead of my blood lay on the plate, but the computer's screen flickered and changed.
“DNA AND FINGERPRINT SAMPLE IDENTIFY: D-1573.”
“PROCESSING CLEARANCE…”
”ACCESS GRANTED UNDER PHOENIX PROTOCOL”
The screen soon changed to a Foundation Logo background covered in rows and rows of folders. Suddenly, the screen was covered in pop-ups all sharing a common theme.

ALERT FROM SITE BRAVO: SIMULTANEOUS RELEASE OF MULTIPLE KETER CLASS SCP OBJECTS, IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE REQUESTED.

ALERT FROM SITE TANGO: EXTREME LOSS OF LIFE DUE TO RELEASE OF SEVERAL HOSTILE ANOMALIES, IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE REQUESTED.

ALERT FROM SITE EPSILON: CANNOT CONTAIN SUDDEN RELEASE OF HOSTILE ENTITIES, IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE REQUESTED.

AUTOMATED ALERT FROM OVERWATCH COMMAND: PHOENIX PROTOCOL IN EFFECT.

The alerts went on and on, until I clicked through so many that I lost count. I was dumbfounded. How many sites were there? What the hell had happened? Who else was still out there?
My eyes were drawn to one last alert flashing in the bottom right of the screen. I clicked on it, and my heart began to pound as I read the document.

PHOENIX PROTOCOL ENACTED
Note: This is an automated action. The Phoenix Protocol is in effect for the following automatic reasons:
At least 5 hours has passed without any response to Phoenix Alarm system from any site, therefore it is assumed that contact has been lost with >90% of Foundation sites as of the time of this alert.
In addition, contact has been lost with Overwatch Command.
PHOENIX PROTOCOL EXPLANATION:
In the event of systemic collapse in the operational strength of the Foundation to the point where it is assumed that no major site has the ability to effectively contain any SCP objects, along with the crippling of the Overwatch Command, the Phoenix Protocol ensures the survival of the Foundation's key data assets and central purpose.
In the event of the Phoenix Protocol going into effect, all surviving members of the Foundation of any security clearance or status are immediately upgraded to temporary level 5 intelligence clearance regarding SCP anomalies and tasked with coordinating the consolidation of Foundation intelligence and survivors into a force capable of securing critical anomalies that must be contained immediately.
If you are responding to a Phoenix Protocol that is currently in effect, you must follow the following steps in order to ensure the continuation of the Foundation and potentially the human race:

The drive to Site Omega had been long. Even the closest Foundation site to my original one had been hours away. Thankfully, it didn't seem like anyone in the civilian world had noticed anything particularly out of the ordinary yet, but I couldn't vouch for what it'd be like in the upcoming weeks.
I set up my camp a 30 minute walk away from Site Omega, just in case I'd have to be here for a while. I wasn't entirely sure what I'd find in there, and it was better to have a place to fall back to, just in case shit hit the fan again.
I decided that I had enough time to do a quick scoping out of Site Omega before night fell. I picked up my rifle (little more than a security blanket in this situation) and grabbed my bag of medical supplies, tools, and notebooks containing all the info that I could get my hands on about Site Omega and its anomalies. If I was going to do this whole “saving the world” thing, I'd have to make sure I didn't get my dumb ass killed before I could do it.
I walked to the site carefully, rifle ready. Soon, I came upon the site, hidden in the woods and disguised as a military research lab. The whole site was surrounded by trees, most of it being underground and hidden away. The actual entrance to the site was a little bit hidden away, forcing me to drop my rifle and check the map for where exactly it was.
“Freeze. Hands up.”
I froze in place, and slowly raised my hands into the air at the bark of the iron voice behind me.
“Turn around. Slowly, motherfucker.”
I turned around, making sure to do it extra slowly just in case.
I almost laughed when I saw what it was. It was maybe 12 D-class, just like me, though still wearing the jumpsuits that I myself had discarded a week ago. They were melting out of the trees, behind cover, from the bushes, everywhere. Only one of them had a gun, but she seemed to be the lady with the voice who had been yelling at me.
Life seems to have a weird sense of irony, don't it? All these regular Foundation staff dead, but 13 D-class left to pick up the remains.
“Who the hell are you?” The voice barked again, a pistol trained squarely at my head.
“Easy, easy. I'm a friend.” I said, trying to infuse my voice with as much calmness and friendliness as I could.
“Tell us who you are, shithead, and I might not shoot you for trespassing,” the woman said, not moving an inch.
I smiled a bit despite myself, recalling something that I had seen while combing through files on the site director's computer. I grinned at the crowd in front of me and answered.
“I suppose you can call me…the Administrator.”


The dream always starts the same way.
The prison doors slammed closed behind me. For a moment I was locked in a narrow passageway between two buildings— the door to the visitors' entrance behind me, the imposing inner doors of the prison ahead. Above me, I could see fluffy clouds drifting by in the narrow strip of blue sky visible beyond the barbed wire.
The door to the prison buzzed and I showed myself inside.
I passed through five corridors and three sets of doors, waiting each time for the doors behind me to lock then the doors ahead to buzz and open. It was like passing through an airlock.
Finally, I got there. A frowning guard showed me into a featureless, windowless room.
It was a long wait. I shuffled my papers in front of me. Capped and uncapped my pen. Buttoned and unbuttoned the cuffs of my suit jacket. I didn't like to admit to myself that I was nervous.
The door opened and I almost jumped, managing to keep it to just a twitch of my muscles. Still, I probably looked like an idiot. I stood up to cover it.
My client walked into the room and the guard closed the door behind us.
I know his name, of course, but I don't think of it in the dream. Just "my client." He was a young black man with short hair and a round, almost chubby face.
We both sat down at the table and just looked at each other for a minute. It was the first time I'd seen him since he was condemned to death.
"Well," I said. "How are you doing?"
"I've been better."
I smiled politely.
"Listen. I want to talk to you about my options," he said.
He was taking it better than I expected. But how did I know what to expect? It was the first capital murder case I had ever tried. Not that my client knew it.
"You'll appeal the case, of course," I said. "The sentencing, I mean— maybe the trial too. You'll be appointed an appellate lawyer. I can try to ask around, make sure someone good takes the case."
"You won't represent me?"
"I don't do appeals. Anyway, you want someone new. It's standard. You might want to raise the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel— meaning maybe your appeal will be about how I could have done better— and I can't represent you on that, for obvious reasons."
"You did your best," said my client. Always so polite.
"Yeah, well, whatever. You want a new lawyer. And the appeal will take a long time. Years. Other things will come up in the mean time. Most people aren't — most sentences aren't carried out for a long time after the sentence is first issued."
He was twenty-three.
"What if I don't appeal?" he said.
"What? Of course you will. I mean, what other options do you have?"
For a supposedly hardened criminal, he had one of the most open faces I've ever seen; every thought he had instantly expressed itself.
"You do have another option?" I said.
"I'm not supposed to tell you about it."
Time for another refresher on attorney-client privilege. "It doesn't count if you tell me," I said. "I can't tell anyone. Ever. Unless you're planning to hurt someone."
"I'm not planning to hurt someone," he said. Maybe it was more like "I'm not planning."
I waited him out. It only took a couple minutes. "Some government guys came to see me," he said.
"Guys from the government came to see you without me?"
"I don't know, maybe they weren't government. They were wearing suits. And they didn't come during visiting hours, they just showed up. The guards wouldn't tell me who they were. It was in this same room."
I shivered briskly for no reason at all.
"They said they can get me out of here," said my client.
I realized he was telling me about a fantasy. He'd created in his mind a way to cope with his hopeless situation — which was fine as long as it didn't mess up the only real hope he had. He needed to file his appeal.
"How can they do that?" I asked, playing along.
He shrugged. "They seemed pretty sure. They said I just have to work for them for a month. Then they'll set me up with a new identity. They said I won't be missed."
"Work for them doing what?"
"Testing things." He shrugged.
"What kind of things?"
"They didn't say. Just things."
I didn't like that answer. I would have felt better if he'd had some outlandish description at the ready.
"They're coming back in three days," he said. "That's my deadline. They wanted a yes or no right then, but I said I needed a little time. They weren't happy about it. They said they almost never do that."
"They can wait," I snapped. Then I reminded myself that there was no "them."
"So, I might do that instead of appealing," he said. He was trying to sound casual, but as usual he had no control over his expression. He was pretty upset. "I mean, what's the point? Everybody thinks I did it. Even you think I did it. What's the chance some judge is going to believe I'm innocent? Not even one guy on the jury believed me."
Not one guy on the jury believed me, I thought. I couldn't convince them. I said the wrong things. I asked the wrong questions. I made the wrong objections. I had no idea what I was doing. It's my fault you're going to die.
Of course I knew better than to tell him those thoughts. I tried to not even listen to them myself.
We talked a little more. I told him all the many ways appeals could help him, or at least drag out his case until he had the chance to turn thirty before he died. I told him that the number of people executed in the United States is under fifty per year and dropping rapidly. I told him the death penalty is on its way out.
He listened patiently. But it was pretty clear he had made up his mind.
There's no dramatic end to the dream. I drift off into other thoughts, other dreams. But I almost always wake up soon after.
This time, I lie awake a long time in the darkness, thinking.
Of course, you don't forget your first capital murder case. I can still see my client's face in my mind, as fresh as the day I last saw him, though it was many years ago.
But we never had the conversation that I dream about. His prison transport was in an accident on the way back from the courthouse. The driver and the guards survived, but my client was killed instantly. His body was mangled beyond recognition. Poetic justice, the papers said.
That's what I remember. That's what everybody remembers.
In my line of work, you meet a lot of people on the margins of society. A lot of people with mental illness. With paranoia, hallucinations, withdrawals, delusions. I've heard a lot of passionate lectures about a lot of shadowy figures. The Men in Black. The Illuminati. The Masons. The SCP Foundation.
I know none of it is true. But late at night, I wonder why I keep having that dream. I wonder what my client is trying to tell me.
The thing is, I remember him, but I don't remember all my clients. There are cases that I've forgotten about. There are clients whose faces I can't picture.
My clients aren't the kind of people who would raise much alarm if they went missing. If someone, some organization, really was out there, helping itself to them — I wouldn't be able to tell. I certainly wouldn't be able to protect them.
I've spent my career telling myself that one client helped, one sentence reduced, is enough to make a difference. But what happens to them after I help them? Where are they now?
By the standards of my field, I'm successful enough. But at night, unable to sleep because I'll see his face, I feel nothing else but utterly ineffective.


Other works by S D Locke!

SCPs

S. D. Locke's Proposal

SCP-5999

SCP-3280

SCP-783

SCP-2193

SCP-3980

SCP-1661

SCP-2923

SCP-2385

SCP-3963

SCP-4910

SCP-3246

SCPs

Ihp/Locke Proposal

SCP-7676

SCP-012-EX

SCP-5311

SCP-6430

SCP-7932

SCP-7427

SCP-6110

Tales

Not Fade Away

Reap What You Sew

Paradigm Shift

A Reason To Die

And Then I Died IV - Series 2

Tales

Heart and Sol

From Above

GOI Formats

SPC-173

SPC-2935

LTE-2712-Bosch

P'rantortiz the Vile

GOI Formats

▸ More by this Author ◂

{$comments2}

F.A.Q.

{$doesthisfixthebug}

Footsteps. A pair of them are approaching. They reverberate throughout the hallway and into my bare cell, shattering the perfect silence and setting me on edge. There is a loud buzz, close enough this time to feel it in my teeth. The metal latch of the adjoining cell disengages, and its occupant's footsteps joins the pair. Not a word is spoken. Same as the others.
I lean back and fall into my cot as the footsteps fade. I need to relax and calm my nerves. I've got around a half an hour before they're back for me, no sense wasting my time stressing out.
Something-Or-Other Bio Site-12 is nothing like my previous facility. Back at 19; they had a rec room, yard time, a library, the works. Not too different from prison, barring the unfathomable horrors they kept locked up with us.
Here though? Crammed into a dimly lit two-by-five, waiting to be the next unfortunate individual that has to make the walk.
I fish the photograph out of my pocket, and God, could I stare at it all day. Kiran, wearing that beautiful smile and pointing proudly at the sonogram. Little Maira was just as camera shy as her daddy, and had spent the whole appointment dodging the technician's probing. Her hands were held up over her eyes, and Kiran swore up and down that you could see her smiling too.
It'll all be worth it. The things I've heard about…the things I've seen. The world is far darker than she could ever know. The things they keep in these places kill men in ways that take weeks to clean up after. Break their minds and souls. They are the things of nightmares.
The footsteps return. I draw a deep breath of the stale air, and stand. I am ready. A buzz, the grinding metal, and two guards stand at my door. Jet-black visors obscure their faces, and their matching suits cover every inch of skin. The shorter one beckons, and I step out into the hall.
We walk - as the others had - in silence. I won't cower, I won't plead, I won't fight. I know whatever waits for me may not be fast, it may not be short, and I'll probably feel everything. These people though, they understand this darkness. They can stand against it, keep it at bay.
We take a right. A bleach-white door on the left of the hall, stark against the dull concrete, slides open with a near-inaudible hiss. Bright fluorescent light escapes from behind it, and splashes across the passage.
Inside is a single folding table and accompanying chair. Researchers are apparently watching from behind the mirrored glass spanning the opposing wall. The door clicks shut behind me. The guards don't follow.
I take what is presumably my seat, and wait. A pneumatic tube descends from what I had originally thought to be a vent, and deposits a single, brown pill on the table before me.
"Do I take this?" I ask my reflection.
The answer comes from an intercom to my right. "Affirmative. Please ingest the capsule."
I pick it up, slowly examining it, and turn it around in my fingers. This is it. At the very least, I can play my part. Whatever is going to happen, it will further their understanding; so in some small way, I can still help to provide them a future.
I swallow it. A burning sensation erupts in my lungs. I pound the table and gasp for air, receiving none. The lights and colors of the room begin to blur, and I feel numb. I can hardly feel the linoleum as I collapse. Inches away, my family beams at me…
…and in spite of the encroaching darkness, I smile back.

To: O5-12
From: M. Hadriel +1 attachment

Here are the results from D-5542. All twelve subjects were as compliant as their predecessor. We will need a few other personalities and backgrounds, of course, they'd catch on if they were literally surrounded by themselves.
Though, it is a shame we had to use cyanide in lieu of an actual anomaly for the trial run. At any rate, I'd consider this a resounding success. Wouldn't you agree?

To: M. Hadriel
From: O5-12

Absolutely. It looks like you made the perfect choice. We'll need another four hundred produced by the thirtieth. Make sure you get in contact with Klein in RAISA for copies of that photograph.
Good job.


"The D-Castes who are descendants of sinners and heathens! The D-Castes who must repent for their ancestors' sins and heathenry! The D-Castes who will support the Holy Foundation with their bodies!"

Besides the Monasteries of the Holy Foundations and the towns of civilians, the villages of the D-Caste formed the remainder of civilised land. Surrounded by the walled garrisons manned by the Omega Guards, D-Caste men and women lived and bred within their villages.
At the outskirts of the D-Caste village of Gock, four D-Castlings were engaged in a folk game. Three of them were children and they stared intently at the fourth, a teenager close to adulthood. The fourth D-Castling was relatively carefree, watching his three friends intently as they struggled not to blink. But in the end, it was inevitable.
The D-Castling on the furthest left blinked; his eyes made a quick sweep downwards. The fourth D-Castling noticed it, and quickly arm-locked the blinker. The other two D-Castlings did not bother to carry on, and similarly blinked.
"Second Boy D-37428353 has lost again!" The fourth D-Castling declared, his left arm still gripping onto Second Boy D-37428353's head.
"Boy D-48572946, let go of me already!" Second Boy D-37428353 pleaded to the eldest of the lot.
"Yeah, you're so big." Another D-Castling chimed in.
"That's why I get to play the Expunged! If you cannot handle me, they will really expunge you castlings." Boy D-48572946 retorted, finally letting go of Second Boy D-37428353.
"Ca-castlings… y-you're also a castling!" Second Boy D-37428353 protested.
"Not for long. I'm scheduled to be designated tonight!" Boy D-48572946 reminded his peers.
"Castlings, stop taking the Holy Procedures in vain! The Omega Guards have warned you for this already!" a cracked voice yelled furiously.
The three younger D-Castlings cowered behind the most senior among them, Boy D-48572946. A middle-aged D-Caste woman of stocky stature was carrying a basketful of vegetables and some tree bark.
"Mom, we're only preparing for our future service to the Holy Foundation!" Boy D-48572946 shouted towards his distant mother, D-83756246.
"If you kids got time to ape Holy Procedures, help out in the harvest!" D-83756246 grumbled.
"Mom, is that all from the harvest?" Boy D-48572946 asked, pointing at the basket, "And tree bark again?"
"The Holy Foundation needs more sustenance. We'll make do with all that can be allotted to us." D-83756246 said, "And son, come with me. A last chance to speak before tonight."
Boy D-48572946 parted with his friends and walked off with his mother.
"Ah, I can't wait to get out of here. There must be plenty at the Monasteries," Boy D-48572946 remarked. "The food is getting littler by the seasons, and there is the edict that prohibit us from culling our numbers after that incident last winter."
"Son, you know not of the Holy Foundation's ways. Our starvation is the Holy Foundation's love towards us, the D-Caste."
"But we are sinners, mom. We descended from sinners."
D-83756246 paused for a moment and contemplated. She then prepared to utter her response to that.

The hours went by, and it was nighttime in Gock. At the centre of the village, the Orientation Rite was underway. All D-Castes in the village were gathered, singing their folk hymns and dancing the ancient dances of their ancestors. Two D-Caste women tended to a fire, where multiple branding irons were left to be heated up. Occasionally, the women would hurl books to fuel the fire, as it was customary of Gock to use paper to maintain the fire. All the adult D-Castes were in tattered orange jumpsuits, with torn short sleeves and opened at the chest. The Castlings donned a random assortment of loincloths and rags that covered whatever the individual deemed fit.
A platoon of Omega Guards stood at the periphery, with their short swords and crossbows on hand. More Omega Guards stood watch from the battlements of their garrison, viewing the situation from telescopes and their archers on standby. The D-Castes paid the Omega Guards no mind, enjoying themselves without a care.
The crowd of D-Castes surrounded a dais protruding from the ground, and an elderly D-Caste woman in the same tattered orange jumpsuit surveyed the crowd of fellow villagers with eagle-like eyes. To her fellow villagers, she was their spiritual leader. She lived long and represented great wisdom, or whatever the Holy Foundation allowed her to have. She did have a designation, but villagers called her 'Elder' out of respect. The Omega Guards stationed there did not care about what the D-Caste called one of their own, as long they fulfilled the Holy Foundation's directives.
In due time, the Elder judged that all were accounted for. She stepped down from her dais and took out a scroll from the sash that held her robes together.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" The Elder yelled, and the village full of D-Castes halted their merrymaking. The eyes of the D-Castes were on the Elder, who uttered the words from the Nameless Pastor's Orientation to the D-Caste.
"Grace to the Lord Bright and all His Saints and Prophets." The Elder continued, "We are gathered here to celebrate the designation of our Castlings. For those Castlings are now men and women. All that is left is to be designated as men and women."
The Elder's voice grew louder. Meanwhile, the D-Caste women took out the branding irons from the flames and walked towards the dais.
"A designation to make our Castlings men and women, and they will assume the responsibility of men and women! The responsibility to cleanse our lineages of our forefathers' sins! The sins of our ancestors' heathenry! The heathenry of which we redeem ourselves through our labour!"
"The responsibility to cleanse our lineages of our forefathers' sins! The sins of our ancestors' heathenry! The heathenry of which we redeem ourselves through our labour!" The other D-Castes repeated the mantra of their people, a mantra spake of since their ancestors' repentance and submission to the Holy Foundation.
As the villagers' chants died down, the Elder began reading the contents of her scroll.
"Only one Castling for this night! 18 years ago, a male was born to D-48572946 and D-83756246. Tonight, Boy D-48572946 will be designated. No longer will he be a boy of his father. For he shall become a man. Boy D-48572946, step up and claim your designation."
Boy D-48572946 walked up toward the dais, wearing only a loincloth. The crowd of villagers cheered him on, as he laid down on the dais, face-up and spreadeagled. The D-Caste women held the branding irons above his chest and right forearm.
"Boy D-48572946, do you accept the responsibility of a man and take on the same duty as your father, and his father before him, in service to the Holy Foundation?" asked the Elder.
"Yes, Elder." replied Boy D-48572946.
"So be it. In the name of the Lord Bright, designate the D-Caste!" The Elder declared.
The two robed D-Caste women quickly lowered their branding irons; the white-hot metal made contact with his flesh. Boy D-48572946 let out a pain-filled yell, which was drowned out in the cacophony of cheers and applause from the D-Castes. The child's mother — D-83756246 — only covered her mouth at the necessary act, eyes downcast. The Omega Guards remained firm at their station, having seen the oft-repeated Rite many times.
The Elder gave a signal to the two D-Caste women, and they lifted the branding irons. Steam shot from the man's flesh, leaving identical darkened marks on his right wrist and chest. It would henceforth be his designation. No longer was he a boy of another D-Caste, for he would be a D-Caste in his own right. The following designation was branded onto him:

D-34029132

"Henceforth, in the name of the Lord Bright, D-34029132 has been designated!" The Elder declared solemnly.
"D-34029132!" The crowd chanted.
The newly-anointed D-34029123 stood up from the dais and observed his fellow villagers cheering on in congratulations. The Elder draped an orange jumpsuit over D-34029132, and he quickly donned the marker of his adulthood. All this time, the Omega Guards looked on with unchanging faces.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" The Elder yelled again to call for attention, "The Holy Foundation has called for the D-Caste to perform a Trial of Service. The D-Caste who are descendants of sinners and heathens! The D-Caste who must repent for their ancestors' sins and heathenry! The D-Caste who support the Holy Foundation with their body!"
"The D-Castes who are descendants of sinners and heathens! The D-Castes who must repent for their ancestors' sins and heathenry! The D-Castes who will support the Holy Foundation with their bodies!" The crowd of D-Castes repeated the Elder's words, like sheep to a shepherd.
"Who answers the call of the Holy Foundation?" asked the Elder, "The Holy Foundation seeks only one D-Caste from our village."
D-34029132, who was still beside the dais, raised his hand without thought. Some within the crowd let out breaths of relief at the newly-recognised adult's unusual initiative. Teardrops trickled from the eyes of his mother, D-83756246. The Omega Guards marched forward, with D-Castes stepping back reverently before their social betters. D-34029132 smiled at the Omega Guards and walked away under their escort.

Many seasons after, D-34029132 remained in his Trial of Service where he lived out his days in the Overwatch Cathedral. The last leg of his final task was underway, and his body was prepared for it. As per the Holy Doctors' decree, D-34029132 had fasted for countless days until he was but a shell of a man. All of his teeth, fingernails and toenails had been pulled out as well. That was the protocol and mercy of the Holy Doctors, for many succumbed to temptations and culled themselves. For a D-Caste to cull oneself or fellow D-Castes without the approval of the Holy Doctors is a sin.
But D-34029132 was calm, for he was so close to seeing his dearest wish fulfilled. As the Omega Guards tied him down with great chains, a Cardinal Doctor spoke to him.
"Do you know why you have been brought here today, D-34029132?"
"Yes, my lord." As he spoke, the D-Caste recalled one of his mother's last words to him, now but a distant memory:
"Yes, we are sinners. But Lord Bright loves us as well. In the Holy Procedures Lord Bright personally passed down, only the D-Castes may be indwelled by Him."


"Hey, uh, hey Clef?"
"…Yes, Konnie?"
"We really fucked up good this time, didn't we?"
"Shut up and keep your eyes on the statue. I'm almost done cleaning."


Day 1
D-5111 woke with a sudden jolt, and a splitting headache. As she rapidly blinked, her eyes adjusting to the low light of her environment, she took the time to look around. She was dressed in an orange jumpsuit. She was lying on the bottom bunk in what appeared to be some kind of dorm, the room packed with bunks and about 20 other terrified looking women. Already the room was filling with panicked voices, shouting, and crying. The noise made D-5111 realize she had no idea who or where she was.
D-5111 bolted upright, her eyes wide as she began to hyperventilate.
Ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck…
D-5111's mind scrambled as she tried to get her bearings.
Thinkthinkthinkthinkthink
Then, as if a switch had been flipped, a foothold appeared.
Patricia Walker…
She blinked and her breathing slowed.
I'm Patricia Walker…
From that mental starting block several more pieces fell in place.
I'm… 38. I was born in… Eugene… no… Corvallis, Oregon. I've been a Registered Nurse for… 15… 16 years…
Like water cooling to ice, her identity solidified within her mindscape.
I've been married for 18 years… my husband's a pediatrician… I have two children… A teenage son and a young daughter… their names… what are their names…
Patricia closed her eyes and concentrated. Name after name flew past her, but none seemed to fit.
Jason, Johnathan, June, Marco, Emily, Taylor, Billy, Cecil, Darren, Michele, Derek, Eric, Sasha, Jacob, Daniel, Troy…
The PA in the room pinged, ripping Patricia from the stream of names flowing through her mind.
“Attention!” A masculine voice called over the PA. “All D-Class personnel, please report to your dormitory common rooms for orientation.”
In the corner of the room, a door hissed open. One by one, the various women around Patricia cautiously filed out into the adjoining room. Patricia got to her feet, and shuffled along with the herd, ending up in a large room packed with men and women in similar orange jumpsuits.
“Ah, yes,” a voice called from the front of the room, over the din of close to 50 confused people mumbling to one another. Patricia's eyes turned to the front of the room. Standing between two stoic guards was a slender woman with short blond hair. Next to her was a pudgy man in a lab coat, his eyes obscured by thick glasses.
“Your attention, please,” the woman called again, but the murmuring continued to fill the room. Eventually the woman sighed and pulled a small remote like object out of her pocket, and pressed a button.
The room was filled with a high pitched squeal, all eyes turning to the woman, and all falling silent as they covered their ears. The woman gave another sigh.
“That's better,” she said. “Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I'm Morrison, the D-Class warden for this unit. This gentleman beside me is Dr. Tanner, our unit physician. By now you probably all have a lot of concerns and questions. Where am I? How did I get here? What happens next? Bear with me for the next half an hour or so, and I can promise you answers. This is your D-Class orientation.”
Morrison gave a small unenthused smile before she continued.
“Let's start with the simple stuff. Where are you? Right now you are about two kilometers underground in a facility run by a large international research organization dedicated to the preservation of humanity. The research and field work done by this group has saved countless lives the world over, and expanded our understanding in every scientific field. Which brings me to answer why you are here.”
“On occasion, the research done by this organization requires human test subjects, and human interaction with our objects of study. As such, through an impartial lottery, you were all selected and brought here. For the next month each of you will be participating in one or more experiments. At the end of your time, your memory is to be wiped and you'll be returned to where ever we found you. During that time, you will live here under my watch.”
Morrison scanned the crowd before her.
“I run a tight ship in my D-Class unit, but I think you'll find me to be more than accommodating. Together we'll get you through your time, get you out, and get you back to your lives. Am I clear?”
The crowd responded with a choir of yelled questions and shouted demands. Morrison rolled her eyes and pressed the button on her small remote yet again. The crowd fell silent in the face of the high pitched squeal.
“Yeah, we're going to be a little more organized than that, folks,” Morrison replied. “Right now you will each report back to your bunk where you will wait for Dr. Tanner and his aides to perform your orientation physical. After that, my associates will be here to answer your questions in an ORGANIZED fashion, first come first served.”
“And what if I fucking don't!” A man stepped forward from the crowd. He was bald and easily stood two feet taller than Morrison. “You can't keep us here! We're not prisoners, you have no right to…”
One of the guards quickly closed the distance to the man and silenced him with a stun baton. The room fell silent as the guard quickly threw the man over his shoulder and took him away.
“Alright then,” Morrison replied. “Now that we are all on the same page, let's get started.”
The various men and woman, or D-class, as Morrison called them, began to head back to their bunks. Along the way, Patricia turned to look back at Morrison and Dr. Tanner. She was shocked to find the two of them already watching her. Morrison smiled and gave a nod of familiarity.
"Humanity thanks you for your service," Dr. Tanner said, and injected her with small syringe…
A brief mental image flashed across Patricia's consciousness. She blinked, and shook her head. Dr. Tanner and Morrison still were staring. Patricia quickly turned away and hurried back to her bunk.

Day 5:
Patricia sat in the dormitory common room at a table, along with two of her fellow D-Class. The first was a young man in his early twenties with long red hair and a mark on his left eyebrow where there had once been a piercing. His jumpsuit was labeled D-2960, he spoke with lisp, and his name was Derek. The second was a short, stocky woman in her late forties with dark skin, and a shaved head. Her name was Annette, though her jumpsuit was labeled D-3106, and she remained silent, nodding occasionally as if to grant her approval of everything.
On the table before Patricia was a sheet of paper with a string of names written upon it:

Husband: Sid, Sebastian, Sean, Dean, Derek, Rick, Rich, Ray, Roy, Roland, Nolan
Son: Jeff, Jason, Jacob, Jake, Jack, Mack, Michele, Mitch, Morgan
Bradly, Brice, Blake, Bobby, Robby, Ron, Tom, Tucker
Daughter: Cecil, Cierra, Sarah, Sasha, Sandra, Sam, Sally, Sydney
Kaitlyn, Katie, Kara, Lara, Lisa, Lilly, Lana, Leslie
Diane, Anne, Anna, Alana, Alison, Elise, Erica

Patricia chewed on the end of her pen and sighed.
“Still having memory problems, dear?” Annette asked, looking over Patricia's list.
“I just…” Patricia sighed again, “I've finally got my husband's name back, and am narrowing down on my son's… but I just can't zero in on my daughter…”
She put the pen down with a defeated chuckle.
“If she knew I forgot her name she'd never forgive me…”
“You'll get it in time,” Annette replied. “I know you will. Besides, not like you have much else to do in here.”
“Yeah…”
Patricia frowned as she looked at her list. Her memory was like a half finished puzzle. She could tell what the image was, but a lot of the detail was still missing. She could remember how much Nolan loved his job, that putting smiles on the faces of children always put a smile on his, but drew a blank as to what his face looked like. She recalled how he'd call her by pet names, but couldn't remember what those names were. She remembered that her son was in high school, but not the grade he was in. That he was a theatre techie, but not the most recent show he was in. She knew her daughter loved video games, but not her favorite one, that she was into music but not what her favorite band was. Patricia knew that she was a floor nurse, but not the name of the hospital she care gave at.
Her head slid down to rest in her arms. There it remained for close to ten minutes, hiding the fact that tears were forming in her eyes.
The door to the common room then opened, and all eyes turning to watch as three D-class who entered. The one at the front looked rather shell shocked, while the one at the back avoided all eye contact and heading straight to her bunk room. The group that had left for testing that morning had originally consisted of four individuals.
“Oh shit…” Derek whispered. “Jane isn't back… that makes three so far… What the hell are they doing…”
“I'm sure they are fine, sweetie,” Annette replied. “Probably just a few bumps and bruises. Science can be dangerous, I've been told.”
“We're all going to die down here!” Derek returned. “You don't kidnap people and force them to help you if it's just baking soda volcanoes. One by one, we're all dead.”
All eyes in the common room were now on Derek. A guard was approaching to end the disturbance, but stopped when Derek held up a hand to indicate that he would cool it.
“You might as well say goodbye to everyone now, because when your name comes up on the test list you're gone,” Derek whispered and then walked off.
Patricia watched him go with a frown, then looked over to the large testing schedule posted on the far wall. Her and five others were scheduled to participate in two days. Patricia looked back at her notepad.
"Any luck so far?" A security guard asked, a warm smile on his face. Patricia shook her head in reply.
"Shame," the guard said with a shrug. "Keep at it though, I'm sure you'll get there."
Another image flashed through Patricia's mind and vanished. She cringed slightly then opened her eyes. She sighed, picked up her pen, and continued to work on the names.

Day 7:
Patricia sat in a metal folding chair in what could best be described as a special kind of shooting range. Along the length of the range were a series of ten alcoves, in six of these were D-class sitting in chairs. At the far end of the range, out of her sight, was a target. A man in a security officer's uniform was at the other end of the range. Two revolvers and a set of eighteen bullets were spread on the table in front of them. Patricia gave a weak smile and wave to the D-class in the alcove in front of her, a teenage boy, around her son's age.
“It's going to be okay…” she said softly to him. The boy gave a sharp nod. "Whats your name?"
"B-blake," he stuttered. Patrica nodded.
"Call me Pat," she replied and then chuckled. "Heh, you know, Blake is my son's name."
The boy gave a soft smile.
"We'll be fine, okay?" Patricia continued. "Understand?"
“Agent Wilson,” a male voice said over the intercom. “Please load the object with the first set of ammunition, and fire at the target.”
Silence filled the room for a few brief minutes, and was then interrupted by six shots fired in slow succession. Patricia opened her eyes and let out an unsteady breath. The boy across the aisle was keeping his eyes tightly closed, and was shaking nervously.
“Agent Wilson,” the voice called again a few minutes later. “Please read the imprints on the second set of ammunition, and load the non-anomalous revolver.”
“Gabriel, Sarah, Theodore, Emily, Blake, and Patricia,” Agent Wilson called out.
Once again the room filled with silence, followed by another six shots in slow succession. Patricia gasped. The boy across the range was crying.
“It's going to be okay.” Patricia mouthed through her shaking. “It's going to be okay!”
“Agent Wilson,” the intercom blared a third time. “Please read the imprints on the third set of ammunition, and load the object. Fire at the target again.”
“Gabriel, Sarah, Theodore, Emily, Blake, and Patricia,” Agent Wilson called out yet again.
Patricia and the boy locked eyes in the silence. Then the revolver fired.
Bang.
A muffled yell.
Bang.
A scream.
Bang.
A dull thud.
Bang.
A sharp yelp.
Bang.
Patricia watched as the boy across from her flew backwards, a large hole in his head. His chair tipped over with a loud clatter. Her mouth hung open.
“Oh god…”
Bang.
Patricia felt like a truck had run into her shoulder, and she too was knocked out of her chair. While the pain was immense, she couldn't make a sound. Instead she stared at the ceiling, wondering what exactly it was that had happened.
Before long, medical personnel were carrying her and three other D-class away in stretchers. Several men and woman in lab coats inspected the contents of the other alcoves, mixed expressions of regret and unease upon their faces. Blood seeped into the main aisle.
"You're going to be alright," a medic said as a team carried Patricia away. "Just a scratch, we'll get you patched up.
This thought lingered on Patricia's mind for awhile. She couldn't hear what the medics around her were saying, though it seemed comforting. Eventually she closed her eyes. Then began to scream from the pain.

Day 13:
Patricia finished her recovery quickly, and had been returned to the D-class quarters as soon as she was deemed medically fit to resume testing. Upon her return she found that the initial crew of 60 was now down to 52. Annette had undergone some test that left her catatonic on her bunk, leaving Patricia and Derek alone at a table as she looked over her list of names.

Husband: Sid, Sebastian, Sean, Dean, Derek, Rick, Rich, Ray, Roy, Roland, Nolan
Son: Jeff, Jason, Jacob, Jake, Jack, Mack, Michele, Mitch, Morgan
Bradly, Brice, Blake, Bobby, Robby, Ron, Tom, Tucker
Daughter: Cecil, Cierra, Sarah, Sasha, Sandra, Sam, Sally, Sydney
Kaitlyn, Katie, Kara, Lara, Lisa, Lilly, Lana, Leslie
Diane, Anne, Anna, Alana, Alison, Elise, Erica
Jane, Jill, Jesse, Jenifer, June, Juniper, Lilly, Lavender
Maggie, Megan, Margaret, Melissa, Maria, Mary
Sophie, Cindy, Candy, Lilly

She drummed on the pad and paper with a small smile. Two down, one to go.
Bang!
The vision of the D-class boy's head exploding from a gunshot wound blasted its way to the surface of her consciousness, then just as quickly vanished.
Patricia shook violently, one hand nearly snapping her pen in two, the other clinging to the edge of the table for life. She slowly opened her eyes and relaxed as the thought faded, realizing that Derek had been talking to her the whole time.
“I'm a goner…” Derek finished.
“How's that?” She asked.
“One way or another, we're all dead. The experiment they had you help on was a glorified execution. They melted the skin off Haley's face, and I think Donna said that Annette was basically sucked molecule by molecule into a hole in the wall, then reassembled across the room. You don't kidnap sixty people, lock them up 2 miles underground, and just let them go…”
Patricia grabbed Derek's hand and squeezed.
“We're going to be alright,” she said. “Its just going to take a little luck. We'll get out.”
Derek scoffed.
“Maybe for you…”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Six of us go into an experiment and all but one of them receive serious, if not fatal, gunshot wounds. Your luck is a step above mine.”
Derek looked at her with tired eyes.
“Can you just… do me a favor?”
Patricia nodded. Derek handed her a folded piece of paper.
“If you do make it out… can you give that to my boyfriend… just some closure…”
“Of course.”
“Thanks,” he replied with a weak smile. He then stood, stretched and walked away. Patricia watched him go with a sad frown and turned back to her list of names. She wearily scanned them and scanned them again. After a while she smiled. At last she remembered her daughter's name.
"Finally get it?" Dr. Tanner asked with a small grin, they were completing their weekly counseling session.
"I did," she replied excitedly, showing him the name Lilly, circled on her list. "I finally did."
"Oh…" Patricia mumbled as this most recent flash danced out of her mind. She blinked and quietly looked around. Dr. Tanner was approaching the table.
"Afternoon, D-5111," he said. "Care to join me for your counseling session?"

Day 19:
Patricia stood in a largely empty testing chamber with two other D-class. As of two days prior, the last of the pieces had fallen into place within her mindscape, and she recalled who she was, and what it meant to be her.
She recalled her husband, Dr. Nolan Walker, the pediatrician who would sometimes affectionately call her Patty-cakes. She remembered her son, Blake, the theatre technician who had recently been made stage manager. She thought of her daughter, Lilly, and how she'd spend hours in the park near their house playing games on her Gameboy. The puzzle was complete, and she was terrified that it may fall to pieces again.
“All D-class, please pick up one of the candies on the table.”
A feminine voice over the intercom shattered Patricia's self-reflection, and brought her attention back to the matter at hand. On the table at the center of the room were three bright pink and red hard candies. Patricia looked to the others. One was the tall bald man who had been shocked by a guard on the first day of their confinement. The other was a slender androgynous person with short blond hair. Patricia shrugged and took a candy. The others followed in kind.
“Please consume the candy. Make sure to suck on it, and not bite it or swallow it whole.” The voice instructed over the intercom. The three D-class reluctantly complied. The candy tasted alright. Some kind of berry flavor that eluded certain description. Patricia ran it around the inside of her mouth, only stopping when the entire lozenge was gone. From the confused expressions on the faces of her peers, the other D-class had finished their candy as well.
“I mean… is that it?” The man asked. He looked toward the mirror along the far wall of the room. “Hello? What now?”
“Oh, shit…”
Patricia turned to the androgynous D-class to see them looking at their hands, their eyes wide in fear. Red bumps had begun to rapidly cover their body. Her years of nursing and being married to a pediatrician allowed Patricia recognized it at once. Varicella. She looked to the bald man to see that he too had begun to break out.
“Oh fuck! Jesus Christ!” The man began to scratch at himself furiously, dancing around the room like a marionette. The androgynous D-class was viciously picking at themselves in a corner, screams of pain mixing with screams of terror. Patricia looked down at her hands. She had yet to break out.
“Why not you?” The man shouted and began to cross the room toward her. “What did you do? Why not you?”
The man threw her to the ground before she could say “I don't know.”
Guards entered the room and quickly subdued the man, escorting both him and the androgynous d-class out of the testing chamber, presumably to quarantine. A woman in a lab coat entered, still writing on her clipboard as she looked Patricia over.
“Immune?” The woman asked as a guard helped Patricia to her feet.
“Vaccinated, y-yes.” Patricia mumbled.
“Interesting…” The woman furiously scribbled on her clipboard. Then looked to the guard. “Take her back to Tanner and tell him we need to have a physical done.”
The guard nodded, and gestured for Patricia to follow him out of the room.
"You've got some luck, I'll give you that," the guard said, leading her back to the D-class dorms. She was covered in a thick paste, the remnants of the previous experiment.
"Guess if you hadn't been standing where you were, you'd have suffocated as well."
Patricia cringed, her hand brushing off a thick paste that was not there. When she opened her eyes she found herself standing in front of an exam room door. The guard gave her a small nod as he watched her pass the threshold.

Day 24:
Patricia and Derek stood within an enclosed clear plastic cage within a grassy field on the surface, along with nine other D-class. This was the final testing of the month for most of them. It was the first time any of them had seen the sun or plant life that entire month. Before them was a fenced in field. A similar cage of clear plastic sat open on the far side.
“Attention All D-Class,” a masculine voice called from an intercom within the cage. “In three minutes the doors to your enclosure will open. At that time, cross the field and enter the enclosure on the other side.”
Patricia felt Derek squeeze her hand.
“We'll be alright…. Right?”
Patricia nodded. “Yeah… we'll be alright.”
The door slid down and the D-class began to walk across the field, the enclosure door snapping up behind them. There was a slight breeze and the sun felt warm on their skin. A small, cautious smile came to Patricia's face.
“So far, so good.”
When they crossed the halfway point of the field, a loud pinging became audible, followed by the sound of a circular saw running. Eleven sets of eyes turned to the source, a hovering disk with a rotating blade around its circumference. A small green eye could be seen watching them from the devices surface. A faded emblem of a falcon was printed below this eye.
“HALT,” the device said in a computerized voice. “RETURN ALONG YOUR PREVIOUS COURSE.”
The D-class looked to one another nervously, then back to the device. One of them, a slender girl no older than twenty, took a step backwards, crossing into the far half of the field. The devices eye turned red and flew forward with a high pitched whine. Patricia blinked. There was a sharp gasp and a splatter of blood. The girl's upper and lower halves rested in two different locations. The disk flew upwards, taking off a man's head along the way. The crowd quickly became a mob of yelling, flailing people, each scattering and sprinting towards the open cage at the end of the field.
Patricia and Derek zigged and zagged across the field, the two sticking together and occasionally looking back. The disk took out a man's legs from under him, sending his upper body sailing backwards. A woman near him tripped on the blood, the device severing her in length wise upon the grass. Patricia snapped her head forward and wheezed as she felt herself losing speed. They were closing in on their destination.
She and Derek then slid to a stop, a young man in front of them who nearly made it into the cage was struck from behind and carried for several yards before splitting in twain. The device then turned and appeared to gaze at the five remaining D-class that stood before it.
“Fuck off man…” Derek nervously laughed.
The disk sprang forward again and the D-class resumed their scattered sprint.
Patricia's breath was ragged as she closed in on the cage. The sound of screams behind her indicated at least one of her peers was rather unlucky. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Derek sprinting in from the other direction. The whirling of the disk grew louder. Patricia gave one last push with her legs and jumped toward the cage. Derek did the same. She hit the ground with a heavy thud, and turned to see Derek had fallen just short, and was crawling forward as fast as he could. Patricia reached out a hand, grabbing his and began to pull him toward her.
A heavy metallic whine, and a loud bang.
Patricia fell backwards into the cage with Derek's forearms in her grip, the young man toppling inside with her, the disk colliding outside with the ground.The disk eyed them for several moments, hovering in front of the elevator entrance. Its eye then turned green and it gently floated away.
Derek and her crawled to the back of the cage where the looked out over the nine corpses left behind in the afternoon sun. Eventually Derek began laughing. A shrill nervous laugh. Patricia turned to him to see tears in his eyes, as he gestured to the carnage before them. A few moments later, she began laughing as well. The elevator whined as it carried them back down into the earth.
Upon their arrival in the facility, Derek and Patricia were swarmed by medics. While the two of them could tell that they were being spoken to, their laughing drowned out any incoming stimuli. The two of them were placed on stretchers and carried away, passing a group of horrified looking scientists, some pale with fear, one crying, and a last one being yelled at by a furious man in a suit. Patricia could make out the words "slaughter" and "ethics" between bouts of laughter.
The laughter eventually turned to tears, as Derek and Patricia were carried away to separate exam rooms.

Day 31:
Patricia sat in an exam room, having just finished her exit physical. Her eyes were slightly glazed over as she stared at the floor. Of the 60 D-class that had started in her cohort, only 40 remained to see the final day. Of those, at least 20 had sustained serious physical or mental damage.
Hidden in her shoe was Derek's note. He maintained that she should hold on to it in the event that something should happen to him on the way out. She doubted it would survive whatever it was that these people did once they wiped her memory, but she promised her friend she would deliver it, and so she had to try. On her lap was the notepad with the list of names.
Dr. Tanner returned to the room, looking at a large folder on his clipboard. There were several small vials held tightly in his other hand. Patricia watched him tiredly. Eventually he placed the clipboard down on a side table and gave her a soft smile.
“Congratulations, D-5111,” he said. “You made it. As we discussed during orientation, we are going to inject you with a chemical compound called an amnestic. It will remove any memory of this month from your mind. Then you'll be free to go.”
Patricia nodded.
“Powerful stuff.”
“Very,” Tanner replied. “It's not even the most powerful variety."
He then handed her the folder. Patricia eyed it curiously.
"Whats this?"
"Debriefing," Tanner said with a sigh. "For however brief a time it will be, at the end of each month we present the D-class with summaries of the outcomes of the experiments they participated in. It's a little watered down, and obviously we won't tell you everything. Still, you deserve to know what the sacrifice was for."
Patricia looked through the the folder's contents. A fair amount of it went over her head, she was no scientist, but she managed to get the gist of what was being said. Important discoveries made in such areas as "Anomalous projectile trajectory," "Spontaneous virogenisis," and the capabilities of the "Lanner Series Security Drone."
"Got plans on your release?” Tanner eventually asked when she put the folder down.
“Return to my family…” Patricia said softly. “Hope that I never remember this horrible month again.”
“I can assure you that you will not,” said Tanner as he collected the notepad off her lap. “I'm afraid I'll need to confiscate this, though.”
Patricia remained silent as she watched Tanner prepare the syringe and clean a spot on her arm. A few seconds later, the various shots had been injected, and Tanner had bandaged the wound.
“So how does this work?” Patricia asked as she rubbed the injection site gently with a finger.
“In about one to five minutes you'll fall asleep. When you wake up, your memories of the past month will be gone. Pretty simple.”
“Can I ask you a question, then?”
“Shoot.”
“I'm not really going back to my family, am I?”
Dr. Tanner remained silent, he kept his attention on the clipboard on which he was writing.
“I figured as much…” Patricia sighed and laid herself down on the table.
“Humanity thanks you for your service,” Tanner finally answered as Patricia felt her eyelids become heavy.
“Fuck off…” Patricia mumbled, and finally fell asleep.

Dr. Tanner returned to the office he and Morrison shared. Under his arm was a basket of all the items the guards had confiscated from the surviving D-class. He sighed as he sat down at his desk, and began to sort the various paraphernalia. Morrison watched him from her desk across the room.
“Another month, another cohort,” she commented with a sigh. “How'd the recycling go?”
“Survivors are on their cots, awaiting orientation in the morning,” Tanner replied. He placed D-2960's note in a small Ziploc bag and that was labeled “Notes to D-5111.” An additional six such notes rested in the bag.
“This is, what, twelve consecutive months for 5111?”
“Thirteen…”
Tanner placed Patricia's notepad into a separate Ziploc labeled “D-5111 lists.”
“I've asked the other D-class Wardens,” Morrison continued, “She's got the old record beat by about five months, it's truly amazing. One of the Ethic's reps is going to be swinging by later. They don't actually have a protocol in place for when the D-class hit the one-year mark. It's… pretty impressive. Barely a scratch on her.”
Tanner paused and then nodded.
“Do you still have Kerrigan's extension?”
Morrison froze and rose an eyebrow.
“Yeah… why?”
“Thirteen months as a D-class, barely a scratch on her. I think that warrants an inquiry by someone in Ana-Hums.”
"That still doesn't answer the question," Morrison snickered. "We've had plenty of D's with obscene luck before, you never had Kerrigan's crew look at them until now."
"Well, chances are that D-5111's going to be a little D-class energizer bunny, and keep going and going until the end of time. It's inhumane to keep on trying to feed someone to wolves this long… let alone a mother of two. If she's made into a skip at least, then she's not being prodded into the mouth of an eldritch horror every few days."
"D-5111 has children?" Morrison chuckled. "Huh…"
"Christ, do you even read the D-class files?" Tanner's brow furrowed in disgust.
"Do you?"
"Every last one," Tanner replied sharply. "Those people deserve to have at least one person know their story. Guess that's not you."
Morrison's expression became flat and she sank back into her chair.
"Save me the lecture," she eventually replied. "I've been doing this job for fifteen years. I've seen over two thousand D's come through here. Lots of sob stories. Lots of innocents. Lots of orphaned kids. Lots of widowers and lots of widows. You want to know each one, be my guest. I'll tell you this, though, thats a fine way burn out."
Tanner and Morrison locked eyes for several seconds before Tanner finally shook his head and shrugged.
"Kerrigan's extension?" he asked.
Morrison read the digits out loud and shrugged.
"It's your time to waste, I suppose."

Day 1
D-5111 woke with a sudden jolt, and a splitting headache. As she rapidly blinked, her eyes adjusting to the low light of her environment, she took the time to look around. She was dressed in an orange jumpsuit. She was lying on the bottom bunk in what appeared to be some kind of dorm, the room packed with bunks and about 20 other terrified looking women. Already the room was filling with panicked voices, shouting, and crying. The noise made D-5111 realize she had no idea who or where she was…


Nechayeva emerged from a utility panel in a frozen alleyway after a thirty minute trek through the underground service corridors. She recognized her surroundings as a nearby power substation. She was met by the sound of sirens in the distance. She kept her pistol in her hand, low and as out of sight as possible as she made her way to the edge of a nearby fence, taking care to step on the patches of bare ground between the small drifts of snow. She peeked around the corner, searching out the third utility pole on the left side of the street. She looked for the white chalk mark.
It wasn't there.
Her curse left her lips as a sharp trail of white steam in the cold winter air. The drop was compromised. Someone at command had made the call to abandon the other part of the operation to secure the GRU-P safe house. Were the sirens the aftermath of the operation's failure? In any event, there would be no extraction team. No place to leave the documents. Nobody waiting to take SCP-1041 and the fruits of three years of research out of Zherdev's hands.
A truck sped by, kicking up a trail of dirty slush as ten security officers, rifles at the ready, made their way to whatever had caused the disturbance. A disturbance that happened to be in the vicinity of the drop point, if the sirens were any indication. She thought back to the briefing in Novosibirsk. This sector of Kraków was a restricted area, under Red Army jurisdiction. Security protocols would mean that at least three other trucks would be en route to an alarm like that. Plans B and C looked to be shot as well.
Several steps back, she retreated into the service corridor. Possibilities and permutations of the likely situation shuffled through her mind. The planners back home had spun the various intel sources into a tapestry of diverging scenes, all with potential to occur during the mission. Chernikov and his GRU-P delegation would certainly be arriving in person at Site-7, but probably not until after her operation was completed. The probability of a direct encounter between herself and any hostiles was pegged at 15%. The mission would have been scrapped at 20%.
The Foundation was thought to be too busy cleaning up in America to mount any sort of offensive action in Eastern Europe. The likelihood of intervention on their part was projected at 25%, set higher than the planners ordinarily would because of the desperate tone of the intercepted cable from their assets in Warsaw. Rumors, however, persisted that GRU-P had a defector last month. A quick check-in with the field offices in Washington, London, Beijing and Cape Town turned up nothing. Zherdev's defector was likely imaginary. Or dead. But if he wasn't either of these, there was only one other place he could be. The planners, with much irritation, refused to rule out a Foundation mission in Kraków occurring in the same window of time as her operation.
Try as Petrov did to train the planning staff out of the habit, these assumptions were based on past mission histories, confirmed intelligence, state-of-the-art statistical models, game theory. Rationality. Nechayeva and the rest of the KGB field operatives that dealt with this sort of thing were well familiar with how fragile these assumptions could be.
Nechayeva stilled herself and listened to the tenor of the sirens of the distance, allowed the echoes of the trucks and the bullhorns to wash over her perception. The cold air, brisk without biting, caressed her face. She inhaled deeply, discerning a faint whiff of truck exhaust through the cloying, metallic layer of ozone emanating from the tightly wound steel coils of the nearby power station. Copper?
There was no point going back to the Site without an escape plan. At this point, even a bad plan would have to do. But she needed to know more. Only GRU-P or Foundation would be raising any sort of commotion right now. Which would it be; negotiations, or bullets? No other answers could come before this one.
She would have to go to the drop point, regardless.
She listened again to the sounds of the city blocks around her, empty now except for soldiers. Most of the activity headed away from her, but through the faraway clutter, one noise seemed to be coming nearer; a high-pitched revving and buzzing. A bike. By the sound of it a single one, likely looking for civilian stragglers. It was time to act.
Nechayeva ran to the access gate of the nearby substation. The fence surrounding the substation was solid enough, but the door was secured by only one deadbolted lock. The deadbolt looked solid, likely too much for the picks she had with her. So she counted off ten paces away from the gate, then one step to the side. She gently set down the briefcase, then drew her pistol, training her sights to the lock on the door. With steady hands, she exhaled, then squeezed the trigger.
A sharp report, followed almost instantaneously by a dull thud as the slug ricocheted and buried itself in the wall about three meters away. Head height. Picking up the briefcase again, she inspected the lock. Broken enough. She delivered a sharp kick to the door, flinging it open. The motorcycle had stopped in the distance at the sound of her pistol, and now the buzzing engine was headed directly for her position. About four blocks away, she reckoned. Quickly, she looked for the main control panel. The most prominent cluster of boxes and lights was next to a large, standing metal coil. The heat from the coil had melted a circle in the fallen snow, leaving a prominent, ring-shaped drift surrounding it. Nechayeva paused. Then she ripped off a length of fabric from her civilian's coat, wrapping it around her right hand, tightly clenching her pistol. The motorcycle was almost there. She moved quickly.

The soldier cut the bike's engine. He could barely hear the squelched and muted voices from his radio. The district commander would be furious when he found out that the perimeter had missed this substation. Maybe it had been nothing? His heart sank when he saw the broken lock and the footprints. It had been something. Best to resolve it quickly.
There was one set of footprints in the snow, leading into the substation's interior. It had definitely been a gunshot. But only one person? It might have been one of the men of the platoon, screwing around after having too much to drink. In that case, it would be whoever he brought in that got the Commissar's rage, and not him for missing a civilian in the security cordon. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.
He warily followed the footprints into the substation. They looked small to him. So much the better; the last thing he wanted was to try and wrestle some drunk, hulking oaf back to the base. His radio, muted by his coat draped over the speaker, angrily demanded something. He thought he heard "perimeter" in the tirade somewhere. Shit. He hurried along, following the tracks.
The soldier felt a radiating heat on his face as he went further in, small twinges of metal creaking and groaning amid the tangle of cables and wires, the tiny hairs on his neck raising as though the current of the substation were leaking into the air around him. He came to a melted circle in the snow, bare ground marking a control console. The footprints ended.
"God damn it! Quit messing around! We have to get back!" He yelled to no one in particular. Every minute he was out looking, the Commissar would get angrier and angrier. They would both get skinned if he was out here looking around all day. He scanned his surroundings in increasing desperation. His eye caught.
A briefcase. Lying against the edge of the snow-circle, propped against a drift, about five meters away. It was the only clue to a mystery that he needed to solve before the radio burned a hole in his hip with its rage. He gingerly approached, each step measured and careful as he crouched low, old habits learned on Mamayev Kurgan kicking in now as he moved as quickly as he could without disturbing a single pebble or dirt clod. He kept a few paces of distance as he smoothly and quietly unsheathed his combat knife, scanning the ground in front of him for any hints of wires or suspicious patches of fresh dirt.
When he was satisfied that the ground around the briefcase was clear, he laid his rifle gently on the earth beside him, and lowered himself into a prone position. He crawled the last meter to the briefcase, carefully, delicately. He tilted his head, examining the tiny sliver of daylight between the bottom of the case and the snowbank. Nothing. Almost clear.
He took several deep breaths to steady his nerves. Plaintively, he brought his knife forward in his left hand, not ideal but better suited to the position his body was in. Gently, ever so gently, he began to work the tip of the blade between the case and the snowbank, listening for the slightest noise of any springs, bearings, or god knows what rolling around in the briefcase. He twisted his wrist slightly, and started to work the knife as a lever, moving the briefcase slightly.
Something right next to him burst out of the snowbank, sending piles of gray slush flying through the air, and for a moment he thought he was dead, but the briefcase was still intact. Then he felt a weight slam into the middle of his back, the shock causing him to release the hold on his knife. He turned his neck to find a woman, covered in snow, her hands wrapped in rags, pointing a pistol in his face as she drove her knee into his back.
"How…ho-how…" he stammered, still not convinced that he had not been blown up.
"The keys. To your bike."
He nodded back to the entrance. "In the ignition, I left them. What is this?"
The woman stood up and kicked the soldier's rifle away, gun still trained between his eyes. Nechayeva did not answer. She picked up the briefcase once more, her hands freezing but not too numb to keep a finger on the trigger. She started to back away, out of the substation. The soldier's eyes were still wide with shock at the ambush. He started at the fresh round of profanity blasting from the radio at his side.
"What did you tell them?"
He shook his head. "Nothing, just that I was checking out a gunshot, establishing the perimeter."
"What's caused the lockdown?"
"No one knows, they don't tell us shit. And who are you, anyway? What are you doing here?"
She motioned with her pistol for the soldier to stand up. Hesitantly, wearily, knowing what was coming, he obliged. He slowly put his hands behind his head.
"We're on the same side, comrade," said Nechayeva.
She lowered the pistol and discharged two rounds, one into each of the soldier's knees. He screamed and dropped to the ground, writhing in pain, blood seeping through his fingers where he clutched at his wounds.
"Now no one can tell you that you didn't do your duty," she said as she holstered her pistol. "Tell your commanding officer the truth. They'll sort it all out eventually. My apologies."
She turned and walked out of the substation, the soldier's curses trailing after her. She spotted his bike at the entrance. She stowed the briefcase in one of the saddlebags, mounted the bike, and with a kick started the small engine. In moments, she was speeding away from the scene.
She made her way through several back streets and alleys, looking for an access point to a concrete drainage ditch that passed behind the rendezvous point. After a few blocks, following a corrugated storm pipe from a nearby factory, she found it. Twisting the throttle, she zipped onto the service road, ducking her head to avoid a tree branch growing around the disused gate. She immediately raced north down the concrete ditch, swerving to avoid the clumps of mud or debris that dotted it. Alerting the local authorities was less than ideal, but if KGB had an advantage over GRU-P anywhere, it was dealing openly with the rest of the military. Hopefully, this all would prove more disruptive to Zherdev than KGB.
That was a problem for later. For now, she was headed to the drop point.

« | Part Four | Matryoshka | Part Six | »