Act 1
Trashcan's Eleven
"You really think working a desk in the bullpen beats being out here in the field?" Agent Rodney asked between bites of his cheeseburger.
"Hot pot of coffee always on, my nice ergonomic office chair, a bathroom right there whenever I want it… Gosh, what's to miss, right?" Agent Polk warily eyed the parking lot of the drive-thru joint while they each dug into their combo meals.
"Meeting new anomalies, saving people from monsters, getting exercise - you can't get that wasting away on a desk."
"Exactly my point," Polk said while brushing the crumbs from his lap. "At least on a desk I don't have to worry about my computer trying to kill me or something. Sometimes I feel like we're just a step above D-Class."
"I don't see it that way," Rodney lapped some sauce from the corner of his mouth. "Few actually have the opportunity we have."
"So you think it's an honor?"
"Well, that's part of the deal, but no." Rodney squinted in thought, then looked his partner in the eye. "Life's not about comfort, if that's true we'd be all blobs of flesh wasting away on a couch. To me, it's the moment. Seeing the supernatural up close tends to give you perspective. I mean, we're going to run out of road eventually, why not make the trip worthwhile?"
Polk didn't even humor the idea. "Whatever floats your boat, Rod. And it's 'anomalous', not 'supernatural'."
"Tomato, tomahto."
The radio on the dashboard crackled alive. "108, Unit 108 - do you copy? Over."
Rodney snatched up the mic and answered. "Ya, go ahead for 108."
"What's your status; are you working something right now?"
"Just trying to get some dinner in."
Agent Polk stared at Rodney. "I thought this was just a snack until we could get real dinner?"
"I got something on the line here needs a follow-up," said the dispatcher. "Looks like you're closest unit to the scene."
Agent Rodney chuckled to Polk "You can eat once you're off duty; that's field work." Into the mic now, "Dispatch, what do you got?"
"Something from the bunch in, uhh - Online Activities. Some kinda suspicious social media livecasts."
"Yeah, send it over."
Just a few seconds later, their mobile monitor indicated an incoming message from HQ. Rodney scrolled past the brief text paragraph and opened up the attachment file; a short video clip began to play. In it he saw a teenage girl, recording herself with her phone and speaking to the camera.
"Guys, this garbage strike is really just too much. I'm standing here on 10th street downtown, and there is sooo much trash everywhere! It's like people can hardly even get around because of how much it's piled up on the sidewalks."
Rodney found it uncanny how expertly she framed the scene over her shoulder without looking back - indeed, there were trash bags piled up around already-overflowing wastebins all along the street.
"We're all in this together, you guys! Please followers, if you can: share this with your friends, and come down to help keep our neighborhood from being totally buried in garbage!"
Agent Rodney grunted, "Kids these days. I never know what to expect from 'em."
"Um, what?" Agent Polk had been watching the same video clip, with the exception that he could plainly see it starred a wheeled rubbish bin which was able to move and talk on its own.
"My memetic immunizations aren't current," Rodney explained away the awkward moment when Polk pointed out the reality of the clip.
"And they let you in the field like that?"
"It's not that big a deal. I've got an appointment with a specialist at Site-17 next week."
"'Not a big deal' he says," Polk shook his head. "When we're about to go wading into," he pointed at the screen, "whatever this is? Because there is something up there, right?"
"Yeah, we better get down to 10th and see what's going on. Why don't you be a dear and read the rest of the attachments in the meantime?" With a flick of his wrist, Agent Rodney started the engine.

Light traffic and green lights all the way made it a quick drive into the neighborhood.
"So, Online's doing their thing - stopping the spread and erasing what's out there," Polk summarized the rest of the brief on the way. "It's pervasive, but limited to local groups and feeds here in the city. So at least these videos ain't getting spread too far."
"They are effective though," Rodney slowed to a crawl past the scene on the sidewalk. In an open plaza between office and apartment buildings, small groups of people were milling around and chatting amongst themselves. "Well, it's nice to see there are still people willing to volunteer here in the city."
"Nah, come on. It's making people see a cute girl instead of a trashcan; it's probably just got some kinda compulsion effect to it too."
"You're so cynical." Rodney found a place to park on the curb. "Come on, let's talk to a few and find out."
As they stepped out of the car, each man took a moment to stretch and assess the scene. The crowd was gradually beginning to disperse, their work apparently done. They picked out a group of three young men who were lingering next to a bench; one of them still had coveralls and gloves on.
Approaching, Polk addressed the group. "Hey there fellas. We out here for the community service?"
The three youths all paused and stared mutely at the agents. Probably assessing whether we're a couple of cops, thought Rodney. "Hi there," he stepped forward, deciding to take the lead. "Doug Randall. I'm a reporter with the Bugle," the agent grinned and extended his hand. "I'd just like to talk, if you guys have a moment to spare."
The group exchanged looks, but finally the one in coveralls spoke up. "Talk about what?"
"Well, it's uhh… it's for a human interest piece," Rodney improvised. "We've been in touch with local volunteer organizations, trying to learn a bit about the members and their experiences."
"Oh, we aren't members of any organization," the tallest of the three youths admitted.
"No?" Polk interrupted. "So how did all these people come down here at the same time?"
"Well," Coveralls glanced between his friends as he explained. "I guess because of the video. Right?"
"What video's that?"
"Online, man! This chick was linking it all over, it came up in my feeds like a hundred times today. But then again I suppose I get it, kinda."
"What do you mean?"
"Like… Okay, so I guess lots of old folks live in some of these apartments?" Coveralls explained. "The chick was saying how her grandma does, and now because of the garbage strike there's so much trash around on all the sidewalks that she can't even walk to get groceries or whatever." With a shrug, he added "so that sucks."
"But where did you people actually take all the trash?"
"We didn't! We just pushed it all over to the curb, so there would be a big wide pathway on the sidewalk."
The agents scanned the surrounding area, but none of the accumulated garbage remained. Exchanging nods, Rodney and Polk decided to end the interview there and get back in the car.
"So hey! Are we, like, gonna get our pictures in the paper or what?"
"Oh, we just might have an even bigger scoop to cover," Rodney called back over his shoulder. "Thanks for your time, gents!" Tossing the car keys to his partner now, "Here, drive us around the block a little."
Polk accelerated away from the curb. "Okay, so what are you thinking?"
"These folks there can't have finished very long ago, so that trash must have been scooped up recently," Rodney kept his eyes focused out his side window. "Here, let's take a look down that way."
Finally they see it, like a line drawn at the mouth of an alleyway - on one side the streets are clean, while on the other trash bags are stacked pressed together neatly. On Rodney's order, Polk pulled over and the Agents got out on foot. A scan down the alley revealed nothing of note, so Polk and Rodney continued along the sidewalk toward the intersection.
Rounding the storefront in the building on the corner, they saw a flatbed cargo truck idling at the curb; piled high on the deck were loads of garbage.
"Excuse me, sir," Rodney stepped forward and called out to the driver. "Sir, can you turn that engine off for a minute?"
"Are you talking to the dummy?" Polk turned to Rodney quizzically.
"Don't insult the guy, I'm trying to get us close."
"It's literally a mannequin propped up in the seat," Polk said. "You don't see that?"
Rodney looked again, squinting. "Oh… Well okay then, let's go take a look." But as they approached the truck, it suddenly cranked into gear and the engine revved. "I thought you said that wasn't a real person driving it!"
"It's not!"
"How would a vehicle just drive away on its own-"
Together they exclaimed "Oh no!"
Turning around and sprinting back to their car in order to give pursuit, the Agents came upon a sight even more displeasing: their vehicle had been rolled over onto its roof in the middle of the sidewalk. A forklift pivoted and sped away from the scene.
Two gunshots rang out. The mannequin in the forklift seat bucked against its restraints as pieces of its head were scattered by a bullet. A stunned Polk turned toward Agent Rodney, who stood with his smoking gun drawn. "Why did you shoot the dummy?!"
Rodney gave Polk a blank look. The forklift, unaffected by the shots, disappeared around a corner.
"You knew that one was a dummy, right?" Polk asked.
"Yes," replied Rodney. Following a skeptical beat from Polk he restated emphatically, "Yes! That was a warning shot." They were interrupted by a sudden shout from behind.
"Freeze! Drop your weapon!"
Both Agents groaned; they should have known if a police officer were in the vicinity. But as they turned around they heard three letters that explained everything.
"FBI! I said drop it!"
Foundation MTF Agents Polk and Rodney turned to bear the Foundation sigil markers of their uniforms; they stood facing the guns and badges of two UIU Field Agents in the street. All four men had the exact same thought:
"Ah, crap."

***

⏩ ACT 2>>>


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The following article is a part of the And Every Time We Meet Again storyline. Whilst you can read it on its own, it's highly recommended you read the previous installments to get this article in its fullest.

From:
O5-9

To:
D. Asheworth, M. Cornwell, E. MacCarthy Jr., J. Micheals, J. Rivera (Group)

Subject:
Promotion to Level 4 Clearance

Date:
01/05/1985

Due to the currently ongoing failure of SCiPNet databases as well as the uncertainty of the next move of Damien Nowak, it has been decided that Site-120 needs a new ruling hand, which, following MacCarthy's death, it had lacked for too long now. As such, it has been decided that the five of you are going to act as the ruling organ for Site-120 in exchange for the regular one-manned Site Director office usually expected. Additionally, Jeremy Cornwell will now act as the chief of Site-120's security.
Due to the currently ongoing situation with Nowak, a special gathering of the O4 Council has been called — as the weight of the situation has drastically increased with the paralyzation of most of the European facilities' servers and the lack of knowledge about Nowak's next move, we need to defeat him while we still have a chance.
We are of course aware of the unfortunate situation of Dr. MacCarthy Jr. and his currently comatose state — as such, his attendance is not requested so that he can fully come back to health. Additionally, as Site-120 still needs someone to look over it whilst you will be gone, Dr. Cornwell will stay on-Site to ensure everything is properly governed during that time. Your attendance is requested and required.

1st of May, 1985
Central Europe Regional Command Headquarters, 25 kilometers south of Sopot, Poland

Inhale, exhale.
As Daniel Asheworth entered through onto the other side of the Way, he felt the familiar portal-induced panic. Human perception wasn't exactly the biggest fan of fucking around with its cognition, and with portals being as much of a violation of that rule as practically possible, the natural reaction of feeling like "the entire fucking world is ending around you and your brain is dying" for a moment after usage was expected. Even after all the time he spent at Ontokinetics and the space-time fuckery they had going on, he never got used to that.
With vision and all of cognition relatively stabled down, he realized that he no longer was within Site-120's Grand Library. What replaced that view was a young white tall man with curly brown hair and a Foundation badge he couldn't quite read. They were standing within a corridor so clean and white he could practically see his own reflection within the walls, despite all normal Foundation Site markings present.

Paul Lague, Site-322 Director.

For a split second, Asheworth's heart stopped beating as the following words appeared above the other man.
"How the hell—" he said, looking at the white letters above, apparently, Lague's head.
"Wh— oh. That," Lague replied, slowly walking towards Site-120's representative. "No idea. Some sort of Thaumiel from what I've been told. Level 5 Classified and all of that. The idea is you can see other people's names and positions above their heads. Pretty handy, eh?"

Daniel Asheworth, Site-120 Director Council chairman.

As Asheworth looked at the white letters above him, reflected in the walls, a door opened, seemingly blending within the rest of the room. The pearl-white of the walls split, revealing a long corridor, leading towards a room he could not fully see from there.

Ilse Reynders, Temporal Anomalies Department.

Another one, this time coming from within the newly found corridor itself. The white letters revealed more and more of what looked like a red-haired woman, piercing through into Asheworth's brain with her sharp eyes from behind a pair of glasses.
"Oh, you're finally here," the figure spoke, looking at both men. "Later than usual."
"Are Rivera and Micheals here already?" Asheworth asked, rubbing his still adjusting eyes.
"They are. For a while now, and, may I add, earlier than in most versions, but that's beside the point — the point being that you should come in." She looked at her flickering stopwatch, visibly bearing the Delta T insignia. "Trotye's been shouting at your incompetency for way too long now." Ilse said, chuckling quietly.
"Who the hell is Trotye…?"
She rolled her eyes. "Happens all the time. Confusion is expected and quite natural I'd say, even if a little cliché," the voice down the corridor said almost silently, looking at Asheworth once more. "Welcome to O4."
It was not going to be an easy day.

* * *

As the corridor was suddenly filled with almost blinding, static light, the milk-white walls opened again, this time to reveal an extremely large, windowless room. Despite the brightness of the area, Asheworth's eyes quickly made sense of what was they were seeing: a room consisting of a giant table, hollow on the inside, and surrounded by chairs filled with unknown faces.

N/A — SYSTEM OVERLOADED.

A lot of unknown faces.
Inhale, exhale.
With Asheworth stepping forward into the conference room, in between the twenty-meter hollow gap between the edges of the table, a holographic map suddenly appeared. Despite not being quite able to see what it was a map of due to the distance, the thaumaturge could very much make out an elderly man in a lab coat moving its elements around.
Each step that got Asheworth closer to the table in the middle revealed more and more faces he had simply never met before — he supposed he couldn't say the same for his colleagues, however. Though exactly one seat was empty, waiting for his presence, the two between which it was located definitely weren't, with two people he quickly recognized as Micheals and Rivera sitting atop them. Both were talking to a person he definitely did not know.

Nathan Valis, IT Department Representative.

"Yes, she'll get sent to you soon. They even gave her a name," the man with neck-long hair chuckled. "Ra. Ra.aic. You know, after Raia Micheals?" He paused for a moment. "Anyhow, you'll most likely hear from AIAD imminently."
As Asheworth approached the three, the IT technician finally noticed him. "Well, looks like he finally arrived. Won't be taking any longer," he said, backing away from the table towards some point in the background. "See you."
The thaumaturge sighed, picking the chair and sitting atop it. He looked around the room again, trying to identify even a single face among the endless crowd of strangers. Despite his best efforts, the only ones he could recognize were that of that two men he had met before and his co-workers. Among the hundreds of faces of lizard people, androids, and mad scientists, he felt lost. Alone, in a room of couple-hundred people. Ironic.
"Now that everyone's here, let's finally proceed, shall we?" a loud voice filled the hall from the far end of the room.

Samara Maclear, Psionics specialist.

A young woman with long, blonde hair stoop up from her chair. She rolled her eyes almost unnoticably, looking at one of the corners of the room, curiously as if she saw something no one else did. Asheworth would have asked, but if he'd learned one thing from his time at the Foundation, it was to not interest himself in things he was not asked to.
"So, as we all know, the situation's… less than ideal, to say the least. SCiPNet's fucked and so is command of all-stuff-Poland," she paused for a moment, blinking three times in a row. "Let's just say this straight — we have utterly no idea how the facts connect, and I'll have to say them out here with no coloring for anyone who has any idea of what to do."
"So, to begin. There's a metaphysical ritual circle over the entirety of Poland, with the one in 5936 apparently being the first "seal." We know for a fact that the locations on the map do not correlate to the actual locations of required ritual sites. Pretty much any five specific rituals conducted by someone with a binding to the rest of the ritual would unlock one of them." Finishing the sentence, she swung with her hands atop a panel Asheworth couldn't quite see, activating the map in the middle. With a few flickers, the projector quickly turned itself on, revealing a circular map of the circle encompassing all of Poland. "What would happen if all five would go out, we do not know."
With a snap of her fingers, the map quickly changed its picture, making the previous image disappear. In its place, a map of a large, circular holograph of numerous underground tunnels quickly came up, all connecting in the middle of the map, near which a circular room was located.
"One-twenty informed us about two of their project leads disappearing in a place located underneath Nowa Oleszna, with its materials not coming from our planet." She stopped, and Asheworth's heart started pumping quicker than usual; he still remembered that day with each detail, for better or for worse. "Not a single extraterrestrial anomaly in Poland in the last one hundred and fifty years, yet that exists there."
The woman shook her head as her eyes glowed for a bit, snapping out of the trance almost immediately. Though it was clear it wasn't a pleasant experience, it didn't stop her from clicking a button on her desk and changing the map once again. This time, it showed a city, filled with numerous houses, walls, and buildings, all stacked atop each other in weird fashions.
"And then…" she said. "…there's Esterberg. I won't lie, especially since that worries me the—"
"A-apologies for the intrusion, miss," the youngest voice of the meeting said, revealing a young face with glasses and brown hair. "But… what's an Esterberg?"

Arthur Lennex, Junior Researcher.

Samara sighed, furrowing her brows a little too much. As she looked at the person asking however, the anger left, turning her expression into a more neutral face. That didn't mean the anger had entirely gone, no — instead, she directed that frustration at the man sitting near her.
"That is exactly why I told you multiple times to not put this information under Level 4 Clearance, for god's sake," she said, slightly angrily looking at a middle-aged scientist sitting by her. The man looked in frustration back at her, as if they had had this argument multiple times before.

Researcher Calvin, Site-48, Anomaly Interaction Specialist.

"And I told you we cannot threaten the lives of—" Calvin tried to say, only to be cut off by Maclear.
"We're not having this conversation now."
Samara paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts again.
"Anyways, to answer your question — in a way I'm allowed to without breaking any protocols, I mean — Esterberg is a Fae Free Port located within a pocket dimension entirely in Częstochowa. One-twenty's the one monitoring most of it." So that was one of the "important" files Asheworth got when he got promoted. Probably should have read them, but it was too late for that anyway. "And within that Free Port, we detected one of the ritual sites in which Nowak plans to use his gathered army to do something — presumably to bring one more seal open to his grand ritual, I suppose." She pulled a new map again, this time to show a figure Asheworth knew more about than he wanted to — Damien Nowak, the cult leader they'd been chasing for a while now. "And then," she said. "There's Nowak himself. We have intel from… let's say, sources that never are wrong," she said, with her eyes slightly flickering for a moment, "that he'll be in Esterberg in the next couple of days, and, well, if he does that, he'll probably do something to activate the next seal there. So if we don't intervene, we… well, to put it simply, we'll be fucked."
As she stopped speaking, the room was suddenly filled with utter silence. For a reason not specified, no one dared to speak a word, as if everyone was trying to piece the puzzle together.
Though this state lasted for more than felt comfortable, it was quickly broken by an older voice coming from Asheworth's far left.
"So… what seems to be the issue, then?"

Vodi Lababidi, Site-42, Containment Specialist.

The new voice joining the discussion quickly gained a face, be it one tired more than it reasonably should have, The researcher put xer head into one of xer long arms and yawned, visibly frustrating Maclear.
"Free Ports are protected by international law, meaning we physically cannot attack them."
"Not unless we want all of GOC on our asses at least," Calvin added, scratching his back.
"Wouldn't that be… pardoned, to say it straight?" Site-42's representative said, moving xer head a little bit. Asheworth could swear he saw a pair of cat ears atop it, though that thought disappeared as quickly as it showed up. "I mean, we would be working in defense of anomalies living within, and—"
"Look, no. It just doesn't work like that," Samara said, putting her hands together. "The GOC doesn't care about the motives — what matters is that we interacted with a space we weren't supposed to ever touch," she sighed, looking around. "And that brings us to today." she paused for a moment. "I'll just put it as straight as I can — what the fuck do we do?"
As chatter immediately exploded among the hundreds of faces present in the room, they were all suddenly silenced as a middle-aged American stood up from his position, with a judgmental look in his face.

William Trotye, Site-73 Director.

"Can't we just… send a couple of MTF units in? I mean, if we properly disguise them, nothing should be a problem, right?" he said, backing his hip with his right hand.
"That… that is something to think about, I agree," the leading speaker said, looking at Trotye. "I know that these thirty years in MTF experience are, well, experienced, but I can't just send people to an almost certain death. Not when there's no telling what Nowak's legion of shapeshifters are planning on doing. For all we know, it might as well be a trap to lure us and later use the opening we would offer that way." She took a quick breath in, blinking three times again. "But that is a suggestion we can go off of, so I don't think it's a total waste, no."
"Fair enough," the rough-faced former MTF operative said, sitting down again.
"Any other suggestions?"
"Is there any information about if Esterberg possesses any sort of internet structure? Or anything even similar, for that record?"

Pierre Dagon, General AIAD Director.

Another person, this time from near Samara. The programmer scratched his back with a hand that appeared to be somewhat mechanical at parts, though still remained mostly human.
"Should it have one, we would be able to relocate a couple of our newly developed programs into—"
"One — it doesn't. Two — even if it had one, AIAD still doesn't have enough well-made programs to even attempt to do anything. In ten years, maybe. Now — no." Both parties sighed silently, though the new voice was visibly slightly frustrated that a project it seemingly cared about a lot had been shot down.
"Anything else?" Samara said again, trying to find a solution, though failing to, even among so many of the Foundation's brilliant minds.
As silence filled the room, the sheer amount of tension present within it was to be felt in the air. Despite it, no one spoke a word for what felt like literal centuries.
"But… what if we just… raid it and get Nowak to justice?" the oldest voice yet said, coming from an elderly woman sitting two seats away from Asheworth. "I mean, fuck, if we just send three disguised squads to get a literal war criminal from it, no one will know, neither will anyone care, right?"

Laura Knight, Site-96 Director.

Though Knight didn't appear to be particularly happy about being there, looking like the most bored person Asheworth had ever seen, he couldn't say she didn't have a good point.
"What?" Maclear replied in the only way she found possible. "How would literally breaking an international GOC law help us in any way?"
Knight sighed. "Look, here's the thing — I know all of you newbies are big on adhering to every rule there is, but that's not how it works, sweethearts. I've been in this business longer than most of you had been alive, and trust me, as long as the GOC is happy, we good." She paused for a moment. "In practice that means we can do anything as long as we don't majorly fuck up. And if the gathering of Level 4s can't think of a stealth way to send twelve people into a magic city to retrieve one person, then Jesus Christ are we fucked already."
Silence filled the Summit, for a third time this evening. Not even Maclear spoke.
"So, here's my proposal — we send a couple of MTF squads into Esterberg, they get Nowak, done. Nothing more. We'll think of the details if we agree it's the right course. If we do it well, no one aside from him will get hurt."
The entire room suddenly exploded with numerous voices, each attempting to say something — almost four-hundred people, every one with an opinion to share and a proposal to put forward. Though the sheer chaos it created was like nothing Asheworth had ever seen before, the—
Everyone's attention got suddenly changed to Samara, who simply stood up from her place. Though Asheworth was too far away to be sure, he could swear her eyes were entirely white with nonexistent wind flowing through her hair for a moment. She angrily looked around, holding her head with her hands, sitting down as quickly as she stood up. She sighed, cracked her fingers, looked around the room, and crossed her hands. "I, Samara Maclear, as the moderator of this gathering as directed by O5-9, hereby wish to put this proposal to further discussion."
The entire population of the room started shouting over each other again, though this time much less loudly than before.
"Laura Knight's plan will be put to a vote as ordered by the previously mentioned Overseer," she said, with her tone getting slightly higher. "However, to make sure no one in this room is under the influence of any negative emotions during such a vote, I hereby order an official thirty-minute break to happen. You are free to wander this building's guest premises for the remainder of that time." Finishing her speech, Maclear stood up and left the table, heading for one of the exits from the room. Many soon followed, leaving only a few within the hall.
And as Asheworth remained almost alone, with almost everyone now gone, he noticed a single person in a red suit and fedora standing near the wall left to him which he hadn't noticed notice before. Starting to head towards the nearest exit with his co-Site Directors, he suddenly felt a feeling of dread as he looked the man into the eyes. He sped up his walk.

[IDENTITY CLASSIFIED — INSUFFICIENT CLEARENCE.]

And for a moment before Asheworth left the room, he could swear he saw the man grin.

* * *

"So, what did you want to talk with me about?"
As the trio of the newly-appointed Site-120 Directors entered Regional Command's massive, white-clean cafeteria, Asheworth sat down one of its tables with a cup of coffee he'd picked up on his way there. He didn't even like coffee, but some sort of automatic reaction within him wanted to take off his mind from the man in the red suit for a moment. It had been almost twenty minutes, but the figure still drooled inside his mind for a reason he couldn't explain.
"I… I think I'm going insane," he said, looking at a woman next to him. Rivera had been through a lot with him, especially recently, but… even then, he felt weird. He felt alone, paranoid, and scared, despite being in one of the best-guarded buildings the Foundation had to offer. "I… it's hard to explain, but I can't get Nowak and his… things out of my head. Not after what they did to MacCarthy."
Rivera sighed, taking her seat next to him. "Look, I… I know it's hard. I know. It's not easy for me either. But we gotta move on, alright?" she said, looking around the giant room. "MacCarthy will recover, and we will get Nowak to justice. I swear it to you."
"I… I hope."
As they both sat in silence, the third Site Director suddenly remembered he was also there, and probably should do something.
"So, uh, h-how will you two vote?" Micheals said, chuckling nervously as he corrected his glasses. He was never good at starting conversations, but he thought he should do something to break the awkward silence.
"Probably a yes, I guess," Rivera replied, taking a sip from her plastic tea cup. "As much as I don't like the idea of another unwarranted military action, I suppose it's needed.." Asheworth nodded in agreement.
Micheals sighed, taking a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He knew smoking wasn't allowed here, but frankly, he knew no one would care.
"Anything else on your mind?" he said, breathing out the smoke of a newly lit cigarette. Both of the sitting shrugged. "I mean, if we got the free thirty minutes, I guess we can at least talk about something, no?"
Neither of them replied, quietly sipping their respective drinks. They were tired.
"I… I guess there is something I think you should know," Asheworth broke the silence quietly, taking another sip. "There's… there's a person in that conference room — or, rather, was when I still was there — that looked… weird."
"Huh?"
"I… I know it will sound insane, rightfully so, but… he felt wrong. Wrong like MacCarthy did back in 5890, or, well, what replaced MacCarthy did. I—"
"Look, if you're saying some r-random guy is a sh-shapeshifter based off of your—"
"No, it's not like that, it's more like… I… I don't know," Asheworth said, scratching his neck quickly. "I… you know what? Just ignore it."
Micheals raised his brow, exhaling another portion of smoke, masking it as quickly as it appeared. He looked in the distance quietly, ignoring what Asheworth said, as requested. He worried about him sometimes, you know. He knew he had a weird past he didn't like talking about, but sometimes, it was too much for him. He did have to agree that the man in the red suit was weird, though. Micheals saw him too, and, well, he was… off. Not like that wasn't normal for the Foundation, though, but even for an employee he just… Micheals couldn't put it well with words really. It was a weird feeling of being eerie he couldn't—

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.

Suddenly, a loud sound filled Micheals' palace of thoughts, completely pulling him back into reality. Though the moment of initial confusion was longer than he probably wanted it to be, he quickly realized it only meant they were being called back into the hall for the vote. He almost called his companions to come back, but as he entered into the corridor leading towards the conference hall, he realized both of them were already there.
And though James Micheals tried to remember what he'd been thinking about before the alarm, despite possessing an almost perfect memory, for the first time in ages, he couldn't remember.

* * *

Entering back into the conference room, Asheworth glanced over it in an attempt to once again find the red-suited man from before. Although no one even remotely similiar caught his eye, the thaumaturge did notice that almost everyone else was already here.
"Before we proceed to the vote, does anyone want to add anything?" Maclear said loudly, with her voice filling the entire room.
Though for around five seconds, no one replied, the silence was quickly broken by a vigorous young voice, filled with a thick Irish accent coming from Asheworth's right.
"If I may, Director Maclear, me and my friend would like to put something forward."

Winter McCormick, Department of External Affairs

The man stood up, revealing a medium-sized scientist with entirely white hair and pitch-black eyes.
"As the representative of DoEA, I believe it is my duty to point out something everyone has missed during our initial proposal," he said, putting his hands together. "That being of course the well-being of Esterbergians. You see, with this operation, we also risk the destruction of numerous extremely valuable habitats of anomalous races, probably some of the last ones existing. I… I'd like for my friend here to take a word himself."
McCormick pointed towards a man sitting near him with his head — though Asheworth couldn't quite see him due to the distance between them, Winter's colleague appeared to be a balding man in his sixties, with large glasses on his eyes.

Drahoslav Patočka, Site-64.

"Putting my personal beliefs aside for a moment, I'd want all of you to see the possible catastrophic consequences this little escapade of ours may have for the inhabitants of Esterberg. You see, with recent years, the pacifist ideology believed by many employees of the Foundation, including myself, has been rooted out and replaced by a military spirit, which, well, I personally condemn." He stopped, correcting his glasses. "With this, we simply cannot ignore the possibility our MTF units will attack local inha—"
"I… pardon my intrusion, but that is a massive overstatement. I find it extremely hard to believe any employee of the Foundation would attack the Fae on their own initiative. It's… I'm sorry, but it's ridiculous," Maclear cut him off before he could reply. "Let's just proceed to the vote, shall we?"
The two men tried to reply again, though no one listened. Asheworth almost felt bad for them, knowing that they acted in good faith, but, well, there wasn't anything he could do anyways.
And though Asheworth was too far away to be sure, he could swear two little flames blinked in the eyes Patočka and McCormick as they angrily sat down.
"So, with the power given to me by the organizers of this Summit, I hereby declare the voting to begin," Maclear said loudly, snapping her fingers. "All in favor?"
A forest of hands exploded into the air, with almost no one withholding. Asheworth automatically followed, not wanting for his opinion to not get counted.
"All against?"
All previously erected hands fall down, only to reveal less than ten standing against.
"Well, I think that settles it. Now, before we continue to discuss the details—"
"Um, if I may," Asheworth said nervously, standing up. "I'd like to offer myself for the leader of the mission. I know Nowak like no one here and—"
"I… I'm sorry, but I can't allow that," Maclear replied. "You know nothing of Esterberg, and that's what matters here. I'm sorry, Asheworth."
"Now that that's done for, may we proceed to…"

* * *

1st of May, 1985
Site-120, 5 kilometers south-west of Częstochowa, Poland

"That's bullshit!"
As Asheworth entered through the closing portal into Site-120, he felt angry. He felt angry he couldn't do anything, he felt angry he was put down, but mostly, he felt angry he knew that it didn't even matter in the grand scheme of things.
"Look, I know it doesn't—" Rivera tried to say, following her colleague's footsteps out of the portal into his office, only to be cut off.
"No, no you don't know. I know him like no one there does, for fuck's sake!" Asheworth spat out, angrily. "I was with him when he started this and I'll be there when we finish this!"
He paused, realizing he probably shouldn't have said that.
"I… I'm sorry, Jess. I shouldn't have—"
"It's alright," she sighed. "We're all tired."
"Look, I was young and stupid, alright? I… he gave me hope. After I left the Library, I needed guidance, and he gave me it." He sat down on the closest chair angrily, covering his face with his hand. "The moment I realized I was nothing more than a part in his game, it was already too late."
He paused for a moment, sighing in the process.
"It was too late for me and the only person I cared for, though I fought back. You ever wondered how he got that burn on his face?" Asheworth chuckled nervously. "Yeah. I… I was always good with flames."
He finished, realizing he'd made it more awkward than it should have been, but to be fair, he didn't care that much. It felt weird sharing his past with other people, but he knew she wouldn't tell anyone. She never did.
"You should rest before the operation," Rivera broke the silence suddenly. "Even if they didn't give you the captain permission, they still will need your help out there, and it's not like you can do well when exhausted."
"I… I will."
"Goodnight, Asheworth," Rivera said, closing the doors to his office behind her as she left.
He didn't reply. It wasn't like like she'd have heard it anyways.
Putting his lab coat on the rack in the corner of the room, he realized how utterly tired he was. He'd go sleep somewhere else, but it wasn't like he had a home. He envied those that could get back after work to their loving families, but that option was way past possible for him.
As the sit on the sofa turned into a lay, he closed his eyes, trying to stop thinking about what happened all those years ago. It was hard for him, you know, but even if, he had to move on. You can't just live with the past, or the past will one day get you.
And for a moment before he escaped into the unconscious, a single tear rolled down his cheek.

* * *

2nd of May, 1985
Overwatch Command, ██ kilometers █████ of ██████, █████

He hadn't been here for a while, at least not for a while he remembered well. Though the man in the red suit knew the layout of Overwatch Command almost by heart, the endless labyrinth it was never ceased to amaze him — the sheer amount of rooms with apertures he simply didn't understand was always rather impressive, even after all those years.
Though the elevator was slow as it had always been, he got used to it. Everyone did. Though he wasn't sure if the place it was leading to wasn't just extremely deep underground. Either way, he wasn't paid enough to care, nor would he even if he was.
As the moving room stopped, a familiar "blip" filled his ears. The elevator doors he'd been looking at for a long while opened. The room was dimly lit, with almost all of it being left to one's imagination, including the person it housed. O5-9 had a temperament for rooms with a weird atmosphere. The man in the red suit had never seen her clearly once, but he was sure Nine wasn't a normal person — no one not insane contacted their employees through an underground bunker. But, to be fair, no one who worked for the Foundation for longer than a year could call themselves fully normal.
"So, you're back," a young, distorted female voice called from within the halls, revealing a short person whose face the man couldn't see — though, the more he thought about it the more he realized it was probably for a reason.
"I am," the newcomer said, half-closing his eyes, focusing on his boss. He was always curious as to who was behind that fog, though he knew that if he asked, he'd probably see no tomorrow.
"What's the reason for this… intrusion, let's call it?" the Overseer said curiously, pouring herself a glass of a liquid the man couldn't see. If he had to guess, he'd say it was whiskey, but if he was honest, he wasn't sure these bastards even drank alcohol.
"Neverland passed," the newcomer spat out with a harsh and rough voice, approaching the half-visible figure.
"Good," O5-9 said, mixing her drink. "Proceed to Operation Ex Machina as planned."
The man in the red suit nodded, tipping his hat to the Overseer he hadn't seen for so long. He grinned, heading towards the exit.
"Oh, but before you go," Nine said, snapping her fingers in an attempt to stop the other person in the room from leaving. "Tell Nowak the Sparrow heard his call, and that the Black Moon will soon howl like it hasn't in ages."
The other nodded in understanding.
And for a moment before the doors closed behind him, the red-suited servant grinned again.

A Library, Empty

And Every Time We Meet Again

SCP-5373

More From This Author

More From This Author

Ralliston's Works

SCPs

SCP-6372 (+95) •

SCP-5936 (+90) •

SCP-7672 (+80) •

SCP-6120 (+67) •

SCP-6483 (+132) •

SCP-7120 (+51) •

SCP-6172 (+77) •

SCP-6672 (+71) •

SCP-7292 (+58) •

SCP-6072 (+97) •

SCP-5292 (+74) •

SCP-6079 (+77) •

SCP-6772 (+76) •

EE-7372 (+46) •

SCP-5572 (+137) •

Tales/GoI Formats

Time Machine (+26) •

Project Proposal 2008-041: "The Spark to Raise the World Ablaze" (+40) •

Deconstruction Of A God (+28) •

Ignition (+21) •

Jäger, Part 2 (+23) •

Skyline (+60) •

The Ninth Archangel (+32) •

Epitaphs of Mine (+24) •

GRANT REQUEST FOR THE CREATION OF A CURE FOR THE IRON ALLERGY NATIVE TO THE HOMO SAPIENS SIDHE SPECIES (+83) •

A Library, Empty (+49) •

Human (+31) •

People Without Meaning (+19) •

Free Bird (+31) •

Somewhere Out There (+30) •

When the Sun Sets For Its Thousandth Time (+36) •

Other

Artwork: Witches on the Moon (+37) •

Public Release of OPERATION: WITNESS Materials (+140) •

Ralliston's Authorpage (+191) •


I returned to my alma mater inexplicably.
As I walked along the road leading to the biology department building, looking at the students coming and going around me, I couldn't help but wonder what was waiting for me ahead.
A week ago, while still on a business trip in Alaska, I received an email from Patrick C. Wallace. Except for a simple beginning and signature, there were only a few sentences in the email:
"Long time no see. I have met some problems that can only be solved with your assistance. Next Thursday, please definitely come to the Structural Biology Laboratory. I'll be here waiting for you."
Professor Patrick C. Wallace was my doctoral mentor. For the general public, he was a world-renowned leader in the realm of protein structure resolution. But he actually had another lesser-known role as a Level 5 Researcher in the Department of Sciences (DoS) of the Foundation. He and his group completed the protein structure analysis of several anomalous viruses, such as SCP-217 and SCP-5365. As his favorite protégé, I was also recommended by him to work in the Foundation after getting my Ph.D. degree.
As I walked down the stairs of the biology building, I started to wonder what problem it could be that even a great scholar like Wallace could not solve, but I could help with. After all, I was no longer working on protein structure analysis since my graduation - Working on this pipelined research for my whole Ph.D. career made me really exhausted, and thus after joining the DoS, I switched to studies such as gene editing and biomodification, and have never manipulated cryo-electron microscopes1 again.
It was said that Wallace received a request of identifying a mysterious sample from a site in Greenland one year ago. He fell ill seriously for a month after that, and when he came back, he submitted the retirement application to both the University and the Foundation. He even disbanded his research group. He had only one request, which is to keep this laboratory and the best cryo-electron microscope in it. I didn't know whether it was due to his past contributions or some secret transaction he reached with the Overseer Council - beyond everyone's expectations, his application was approved.
From that day on, he began to become elusive. Sometimes others could see him working alone in the lab for days without a break, and sometimes he might vanish for months. At the annual meeting of the DoS two months ago, several Greenland geologists even complained that this eccentric old man with a white beard pushed them to dig for frozen soil and rock samples every day.
No one had any idea what he was doing. Occasionally a few people would ask him about his research program, and he was always impatient and drove those people away. Perhaps the reason I was here had something to do with this?
When I came back to my senses, I had already reached the laboratory door. I rang the doorbell.
As the access control indicator flashed green, the heavy steel door of the Structural Biology Laboratory slowly opened in front of me. A figure was sitting behind the door, staring at something on the computer screen carefully.
I walked cautiously into the laboratory, fearing that even a little noise would disturb his work. Even so, the figure in front of the computer noticed me.
"Just wait there for a second, Young." He said without looking back.
"Ah… OK, Professor."
I leaned against the wall next to the door and looked around, remembering the days and nights I spent here during my five-year Ph.D. career.
Minutes later, Wallace finally got up slowly from his seat, walked towards me, and stretched out his right hand.
"Long time no see, Young."
"Glad to meet you again, Professor." I held his right hand. "Long time no see."
Just at this moment, I came to realize that he has indeed changed a lot during the past year: his originally round and flushed face had shrunken, showing a strange grayish-white hue, dotted with large and small age spots. A strange ticking noise faintly sounded when he approached me, but the sound was so subtle that it was easily overshadowed by the roar of the liquid nitrogen pump. I thought it was just a hallucination.
After a simple greeting, Wallace cut directly to the chase. "There is no time left for us to talk nonsense… I want to discuss some important topics with you, come with me."
I walked to his computer screen and saw the 3D model shown on the screen. It was a virus - sorts of similar to a bacteriophage, but with some strange additional structures and details.
"Is this all that you were working on during the past year, Professor?" I was a little bit confused.
Wallace stared at me. "Have a guess, what is this?"
I had definitely seen it somewhere. I tried to search for it in my brain, and suddenly an answer emerged in my mind.
"Is it… SCP-217?"
Wallace nodded.
"If my memory is correct, the electron micrographs of SCP-217 should have been available as early as… in the 1990s. One of the first virus-type items being structurally resolved. And the structures of its capsid proteins have also already been analyzed, don't they? I remember that this work was even Jack's doctoral thesis topic." I added.
"Exactly, but this sample is somewhat different."
Wallace motioned to me to follow him. He put on anti-frostbite gloves, carefully took out a small sample bag from an ultra-low temperature fridge, and showed it to me. The bag contained some brown-black powder, and the label on the back said something in Danish.
I was reminded of the rumors that he had dug frozen soil samples in Greenland previously, this must be the result of his exploration. "Are these samples of frozen soil taken from Greenland?" I asked.
"Exactly, it seems that you have already known something about this." he answered immediately. "We found some… very ancient virus samples from this soil, which contributed to the model you just saw. The dating experiments have revealed that these viruses were presumably from…3 billion years ago."
This conclusion is somewhat ridiculous. Organic substances are quite fragile and will almost definitely be completely destroyed by various factors such as oxygen and radiation in tens of thousands of years. Even in the oldest stratum in the world, even under low temperature just as in the Arctic cycle, it is still very unlikely to have any complete virus sample preserved.
Maybe my frowned brow reminded him. "I also didn't believe this before." He added. "Actually, almost all stuff we found were just fragments of the viruses - but after a whole year of sample collection, the evidence in our hands is still sufficient to reconstruct the complete structure of this virus."
He put the sample back into the fridge and walked back to the front of the computer. "This virus only has some minor changes in its structure during the past billions of years. We can even say that - it seems that it will no longer be SCP-217, the virus that turns organisms into machine-like things, if its structure changed a lot."
"So…? Is there anything I can help with?"
"What kind of virus do you think SCP-217 is?" Wallace didn't respond to me, but instead raised a question.
"…Bacteriophage?" This was indeed the closest answer I could come up with.
"Indeed… SCP-217 is very much like a phage." He affirmed my answer. "But, why can a phage-like virus infest the cells of eukaryotes?"
I shook my head. "Well, I don't know. I'm not a virologist and don't really know about their habits. It may just be that the corresponding protein structures have changed or something."
Instead of continuing the conversation, Wallace pulled a stack of paper information out from the drawer under the mainframe and handed it to me. I heard the sound similar to a moving clock hand ringing again imperceptibly.
"Huh… Actually, I shouldn't have shown you these materials. Your clearance is far from being high enough to see this stuff - but it doesn't really matter now."
Under the huge "Top Secret Level 5 Information" warning on the front cover was the title of this file - "Broken God Engineering Drawings". The complex drawings on the back and the familiar huge mechanical figure proved it even further.
Although I had heard some gossip about "the Foundation is holding the drawings of the Broken God", no one would take it seriously. All of us knew that we did not have enough authority to check it, and no one wanted to confirm such frivolous rumors while risking being killed by the Mobile Task Forces.
Nevertheless, I was still really shocked at the moment that the document was actually in front of me.
However, I had not really learned anything related to engineering seriously. Even if I was shown such a document, I wouldn't be able to offer any help. "Why are you showing me this, Professor? Although SCP-217 can turn people into machinery, there doesn't seem to be solid evidence that it's actually related to the Broken God - "
Wait a minute. I looked back at the 3D model of SCP-217 on the screen. I felt drops of sweat trickling down my forehead. It was as if the ticking sound from the collision of mechanical gears was becoming more and more pronounced.
"Although it is theoretically believed that the most powerful 'Broken God' entity can only be constructed using the so-called 'real' parts of the Broken God, even a complete fake can actually mimic at least some of the functions of the Broken God, as long as the structure is correct." Wallace stared at me, with his face expressionless. "That is to say, the divinity of the Broken God comes from its structure, from the union of the parts constituting it, and not from the parts themselves."
I had realized what he was going to say. I was really having a bad feeling about this.
"Therefore, the Broken God does not necessarily need to be built with those crunching metallic gears. If you have found the right direction, it will definitely be possible to build the Broken God using wood, or even flesh and blood. So… molecules would also be available choices."
I started to pretend as if I didn't know anything. "I …… I don't really know. Molecules?"
"You should have known about molecular machines. Many proteins are classic molecular machines. ATP synthase, the flagellum of bacteria, ion channels, receptors on the cell membranes. You could say that every life is a combination of several complex molecular machines that have been exquisitely designed. These proteins, these molecular machines, are like the parts of …… life. Since they are parts, they can of course be reassembled according to certain laws."
At this point, Wallace stood up and gave me a deadly stare. I could see the zooming lens in his dark red pupils. I finally understood the source of that ticking sound - under his skin.
"Professor, you…"
"Let's take a look at this 3D model." His tone was as calm as an electronically synthesized voice. "This virus has evolved so conservatively over the past few billion years, all thanks to one thing - only this particular structure could make it the Broken God. SCP-217, this virus, is the world's smallest, most finely structured, replica of the Broken God. "
I shiveringly looked at the screen. Wallace skillfully manipulated the software, zooming in, zooming out, and dragging the model of the virus. I could see every residue, every helix, and every fold of the proteins constituting the virus. I finally understood what I had seen before were, those "superfluous structures compared with the common bacteriophage".
They were the head, feet, body, two wings, and scepter of the Broken God. My mind felt feverish and blank, as if a loud buzzing sound was going on all around me.
"The oldest virus sample in the world. Existed three billion years ago." Wallace didn't turn around, speaking to himself. "Let's put aside for a moment the fact that we've found direct evidence that viruses existed billions of years ago itself - It shouldn't be a difficult thing to initiate a revolution in the academic community of biology if this file can be made public. I'm more concerned with another question. Why did this thing exist three billion years ago? Was it created by someone? Or… was its formation originally the will of the laws of nature?"
He walked up to me and patted my shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the scars on his hands, which were filled with hundreds of gears and levers in constant motion.
"Young, There is only one thing that I want to ask you for."
I held my breath.
"You're a chemical biologist, right? You should be familiar with how to modify living things."
Wallace's pupils narrowed mechanically, making the crunching noise of a lens rubbing against the slide as it moved back and forth.
"The function of this virus - it seems that it's turning people into a disgusting pile of fleshy cogs and levers - but in reality, The real power of the virus would be promoting life to instantly arrive at its ultimate form of evolution, completing the most extreme orderliness and accessing to the power of the Broken God. "
"Unfortunately, it has some unpleasant side effects that make it impossible to do this right now, and will still cause people to feel pain. As a patient, I am well aware of this."
No, that's not right. I slowly came back to my senses. "Have you been infected with SCP-217?!"
"Correct. About a year ago. I gave myself a shot of this virus, since I received a sample from Greenland, and then the side effects forced me to stay in bed for a month." Wallace's face was completely devoid of any emotional turmoil. "Let's not talk about that - Young, you're a chemical biologist, you know very well how to modify the virus. I'd like to ask you a favor - modify this virus. Remove its side effects, while retaining its structure. Make it available for us to reach our goal of becoming a god. Modifying the incarnation of a god requires great skill, and those mediocre and stupid chemical biologists can't do that, but I know a genius like you can."
"Why are you doing this?" I instinctively took a few steps back.
"Young, countless Broken God believers have tried to use crude surgery to transform themselves to gain the power of the Broken God. We don't need to. With a slight modification of the virus to remove the lethal, painful side effects, we, ourselves, will become one with the Broken God. We will then have access to the power of one of the creator gods. We ourselves will become gods. We will recover the Broken God. We will be able to dominate everything. All this can be done by simply engineering this tiny virus."
I realized that the person in front of me was no longer my mentor - if it could still be called a person.
"That… is not very realistic, I'm afraid, Professor, that I… I'm not familiar with the genome of SCP-217…"
I began trying to stabilize its emotion while constantly backing up, trying to find an opportunity to escape from the lab. Just outside this lab was the stationing point for a Mobile Task Force disguised as campus security.
But I forgot one thing. It didn't have emotions at that moment.
"You want to escape, don't you? Give it up, Young. Try pushing that button that opens the gate of the room if you don't believe me." It sat back in its seat and made an expressionless sound.
I turned and ran towards the exit, trying my best to tap on the exit button. There was no response. It slowly stood up from its seat, clipped a syringe filled with a dark red liquid from the pocket of its lab coat, and slowly moved towards where I was.
I tried to make a last-ditch effort.
"Professor …… No, Wallace, think about it! 3 billion years! What organic substance can be preserved for 3 billion years! Do you have any proof that it was really a virus from 3 billion years ago and was not a fake created by some guy?!"
"The formation of SCP-217 is the will of nature, Young. This is the shadow of the Broken God. The evolution of life itself is a process of ordering, and is the path of the Broken God coming back to wholeness. SCP-217 has existed since the origin of life. It IS the Broken God, which has been watching life emerging from a primordial soup of disorder, just as watching its own children growing. All we are trying to do is simply following the laws of nature and the will of the God to make ourselves stronger." Wallace's tone didn't have any fluctuations.
I took a few more steps back. "Just give it up. I will NEVER choose to become a bunch of emotionless gears, even if I can get the whole universe after that."
"Emotions are useless things. Superfluous part for our survival. That kind of stuff only detracts from our development and stops us from the great work of becoming one with the Broken God. Come to grips with the reality, Young. You are a wise man."
The talking paused. It suddenly stopped in its tracks. I held my breath and saw it abruptly raising its right arm, pointing at me with the tip of the syringe, and then lunged at me like a hungry wolf -
In a panic, I reached for the pistol I had been carrying with me for protection.
Bang.
The humanoid entity that had once been Professor Wallace fell to the ground on its back, the structures that had once been eyes did not close, but merely glowed an eerie red before dimming completely. Black and yellow liquid flowed all over the floor from the bullet hole on its forehead, smelling like burnt gasoline.
I felt like the world was spinning, my legs went limp, and then I sat down on the floor, looking at the syringe that had rolled off from its hands. Luckily, it didn't break.
I could hear screams coming from outside and the sound of a group of people running through the hallway. A few seconds later, the long-lost fresh air rushed into the lab as the heavy steel doors fell down. When I turned around, I was greeted only by a row of black muzzles of guns belonging to the Mobile Task Force.

As ordered, I took over the lab temporarily until the next structural biologist arrived. I inherited Wallace's Level 5 researcher privileges and all the information and equipment he had left behind.
Except for me and a few high clearance researchers, all members who stayed in the building received Class-B amnestics that day. Wallace was publicly declared dead in a campus shooting. The remaining samples of SCP-217 were sealed, many materials that the Overseer Council believed should not exist in the world were destroyed. And the research projects he left were then postponed indefinitely, becoming a secret known only by me and the Overseers.
I set out to sort through the frightening information he had left behind. Although the chaotic events that happened on that day were unforgettable, I still didn't believe what he said about the virus.
In any case, it is too absurd to believe that any of the complex biomolecules could be preserved for up to three billion years, and it could not be really regarded as evidence that the virus had been existing since then. What he said was probably just some nonsense after listening to the heresy of the Broken God stuff. After all, once a person has fallen into his false thoughts, it is really difficult to get out.
I just thought about it, and it slowly faded into oblivion. In the meantime, I was asked to suspend my previous work and resume my old job of protein structure determination. I recruited a few temporary students to do the protein analysis that was supposed to be done by Wallace's group. However, with a mountain of samples that had not been tested for almost a year, the work that needed to be done kept the entire lab quite busy, even when I myself joined the work.
I don't know if it was because I was tired or what, but I had been feeling somewhat unwell since that day, like having insomnia at night, and feeling as if I was caught in the thickness of brain fog.
A few hours ago, having been working intensively for three days with less than ten hours of sleep in total, I decided to give myself a break. I handed off the task to my deputy and ducked into my office. Sleepiness came over me like a tidal wave as I sat in my seat, and I fell asleep quickly. I had a dream.
The dream took place in the primordial ocean billions of years ago, small organic molecules polymerized and grew on the surface of minerals at the bottom of the sea, forming nucleic acids, sugars, peptides, and fats. They gradually gathered together and a prokaryotic cell was born, floating lonely in the dark and cold seawater.
A virion of SCP-217 suddenly emerged from the darkness. It rested on the surface of the cell and injected its genetic material into the prokaryotic cell. Fragments of the genetic material were integrated into the cell's DNA, which was then transcribed and translated into a large number of proteins.
Those newly formed proteins created by the gene of SCP-217 bound to other peptide chains in the cell just like prions, changing their conformation, twisting, modifying, and refolding them into completely different shapes. The modified proteins come together to form a molecular motor. I realized that I had seen it before; it was the ATP synthase that could be found in almost all living things. Then came the bacterial flagellum, the ion pump… More proteins were turned into structures similar to mechanical parts.
My vision gradually pulled away. Behind this cell were millions of similar cells, the interiors of which were filled with precisely functioning mechanical structures. Some were even stuffed with exaggerated, gears-like organelles that look as comical as children's illustrations.
As the evolution process continued, I saw something that was not prokaryotic emerge from a disordered mass of polypeptide aggregates. Myosins, cytoskeletons, kinesins that walk on microtubules. They are all molecular machines, constructed by the precise meshing of molecular gears and levers.
Cell nuclei were forming. Those cells were evolving, completing the metamorphosis from prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic cells.
I awoke suddenly. The familiar ticking sound occurred in my head again. I rubbed my eyes and felt as if my vision wasn't as good as it had been - it took me a while to see clearly what was in front of me, along with a strange scraping sound.
Just an nonsensical dream, I thought. The evolution of life had its own path, how could SCP-217 be the shaper of life forms?
In a trance, I suddenly noticed a wooden photo frame on my desk, probably left by Wallace. Inside the frame was a small, well-protected rock sample. The label underneath reads "Prokaryotic fossil, Greenland, 3.2 billion years old."
Driven by my curiosity, I opened the frame and cautiously took the fossil out, and then placed it under the light microscope, looking at it carefully.
Finally, I found a dark, round spot. As I looked closely at it, the situation in front of me made my mind go blank.
That was a prokaryotic cell, filled with gears and levers.

Footnotes
1. A kind of electron microscope which can be used for the determination of protein structures.


"That damn buzzing noise" whispered GOC Assessment Operative 'Noface'. "They won't shut up!"
"Getting your brain fried does that. To them anyways." replied team leader 'Generous' over the radio. Generous pointed her thumb over their cover. Noface squinted hard at where he thought her hand might be.
The two operatives had sheltered behind a low grey brick wall. A few meters away, two civilians yammered in the open about starfish. It contributing to the loud shouting which filled the entire town. Eyes were everywhere, in more than one way. The town was small and rustic. Each building was far apart, which made stealth challenging.
Generous noticed Noface's hesitation. "Oh. You haven't learned to see chameleon cloth yet. I'm pointing to those two. And you don't need to whisper, newbie. Suits are insulated."
Noface gave up on trying to see the nearly-invisible woman, deciding to move closer.
He accidentally kicked a rock, making a loud clatter. One of the men turned and looked straight at Noface, who froze on the spot.
"Oh hey! A kitty!" said the man.
"What? Carl, there's nothing there." said the other man, glancing over his shoulder at Noface.
"No, I swear, I saw a cat! Do you think we can tell them the good news?" said Carl.
The second man turned all the way around to stare at Carl for a long ten seconds.
"Don't be stupid, Carl. An animal can't understand the Universal Truths. Bother me if you see a person. Now, let's keep spreading the good word! Blessed is he who understands the Cosmic Greatness!"
"Blessed is he who understands the will of the Fifth Star!" yelled Carl.
Noface didn't dare so much as shake his head. "Still only hear buzzing through the audio cognitohazard filters. I suppose they still think I'm a cat." he whispered.
"Remind me, your magic have a time limit?" replied Generous.
"Ran it for days without a problem." said Noface.
"Roger. Move slower than me.", grumbled Generous. "You might not get away with what I can. Your semantic pointer trick is useful, but mind-controlled civilians are unpredictable. Be careful. We're going to that house over there, one with the tinted windows. Got it?"
"Got it." Noface said. He hoped that his team leader couldn't see the tension in his shoulders.
Generous seemed to materialize out of thin air. She appeared as a mirage-like blur of a broad-shouldered woman in dark grey armor. She started crawling from behind the brick wall. At this pace, her body settled into a blur against the light grey road that one might mistake for heat shimmer.
Noface tried to think zen as he very slowly crept after her. He paid special attention to the open pavement before him. He had no idea if his active camouflage was still working, or if he was moving too fast.
After moving a dozen meters from Noface, Generous stopped crawling. In a few seconds, she again vanished from his sight. In what felt like a full hour, surrounded by sweat and insane ranting, Noface finally made it to her position.
He internally groaned after she became visible and resumed crawling. Again. He started after her.
He had been so focused on his own movements that he didn't realize someone actually touched him.
He froze in the middle of the road. He hoped Generous noticed.
"Hey what the-" said a female voice from behind him. "What in the Fifth's name was that? Was that-… hm…"
He felt the woman's hands touching his upper back, trying to grasp what she couldn't see…He tried not to scream. Her hands went lower…
lower…
lower…
"Oh hey, kitty!" she said.
She started patting the back of Noface's calves. If she realized the semi-rigid infiltration suit did not at all feel like a cat's fur, she gave no sign. Nor did she question why this cat was invisible and human-height.
"Who's a good kitty?" she said. "Who is a good kitty? Yes you are! We'll spread the good news of the Five through this country, and then we'll all be happy together, one big family. Too bad you can't understand. Go on then, little kitty!"
Noface heard her tromping away and allowed himself to take a very deep breath a few seconds later. The sound was louder than he liked, but the woman did not seem to react.
"Hell of a Serpent's Hand trick." said Generous's voice in his ear.
"No, it's a me trick. Way too close though." said Noface.
"You were fine, Vulture has us covered. Gen to Vulture, abort shot. Tango is leaving south. Over.", said Generous.

"Copy, Gen. Vulture is resuming overwatch. Over." replied 'Vulture', the team sniper.
The lean woman observed her teammates far down below through a scoped assault rifle. Her infiltration suit blended in almost flawlessly with the mottled brick tower's roof. She lowered her rifle, brought up a pair of binoculars and gazed over the low town skyline. The town bustled with townsfolk under an unseen influence, their mouths open half the time.
"Vulture to Gen. Hostiles in your sector still unaware and occupied. You are cleared hot to proceed, over." she said.
She continued tracking her two teammates through the binoculars. She had long since tuned out the faint buzz of townspeople ranting below her perch.
"Roger, Vulture. Noface, not so close. Generous to Wheels. Sitrep on rest of village? Over." said their team leader's voice.
A skinny woman on the other side of the narrow, slanted roof responded. She sported a near-invisible infiltration suit like the rest of the GOC team. She also had binoculars up to her eyes. "Wheels to Gen. It's not looking good, I see three of those flesh pillars from this vantage point. They're dragging people up to the pillars then the victims go real stiff after twenty or so seconds. Then they join the infected mob. We keep going at this pace, there may be no one sane left to interrogate. Over."
"Noted," came the reply over radio. "Noface, let's pick up the pace. Any other concentrations of infected, Wheels? Over."
"Affirmative" replied Wheels, squinting into the distance. "Can't get full visuals, but there's a crowd congregating in the southwest corner of town. Possibly a fourth pillar. It's behind that large, blocky tan building. The one that looks like a castle. Over."
"Got it. We'll steer clear of that one. Over."
"Wheels to Noface. Ever seen anything like this before with the Serp's Hand? Over."
Noface responded, "Uh, well there was this one-"
"Gen to Wheels," the team leader interrupted. "Not a chatroom! Keep chatter off-radio! Over!"
Wheels sighed. "Copy, over and out."
Wheels made a precise set of eye movements on her helmet HUD to kill her radio link.
"Friggin' killjoy." Wheels sighed.
Vulture took exactly one second to look askance over her shoulder at Wheels. Then she returned her gaze to Noface and Generous halfway across town.
"She's just focused on the mission. Like you should be." Vulture told Wheels without looking a second time. "You're still using that thing instead of your arms?"
"You mean TX?" Wheels gestured to a large string of metallic liquid holding up her binoculars to her eyes. It protruded past her dark skin out of a rolled-up sleeve on her dark grey armor.
"You really named it that?" scoffed Vulture, still focused on her teammates.
"Wasn't me. Nerds I stole it from watched too much Terminator or something."
Vulture sighed. "Please… just focus on your task, Wheels. And use your hands, you're less likely to drop something."
"Alright, alright!" said Wheels, shifting binoculars from her liquid metal helper to her actual hands. "It's just so… awful down there. These people are turning into freaking Fifthist zombies before our eye- wait… what is that?"
"Something wrong?" said Vulture.
"My HUD shows motion sensors tripped. Many times. Lots of them coming up the tower. How'd they find us?!" said Wheels, turning to Vulture.
Vulture was already moving across the roof, breaking her active camo. "Vulture to Team, we've been made. Multiple hostiles. Moving to fallback site. Over!"
"Copy," replied Generous over radio. "We'll find a vantage to support. Stay safe. Over, out!"
The screams of the townsfolk echoed in the tower beneath them: "They must hear!" "The truth must be told!" "Interlopers"!
Wheels said, "Still filtering what they're saying, but they're angry. I doubt they mean to say 'welcome to town, ladies!' "She lifted her arms up and acrobatically flipped down the tower rooftop, into the top floor windows.
"Are you insane? We need to leave!" shouted Vulture, moving to a ledge on the opposite side of the roof.
After a moment, Wheels' head emerged back onto the rooftop. "Just leaving them a surprise!" she said. She gracefully rolled herself up onto the roof and in a flash. ran past Vulture's ledge. She leaped an impressive distance onto an adjacent building two stories below. The young woman folded her body into a roll as she hit the roof. As easily as a swan flicking off water, she folded herself out of the roll into a brisk walk, then a complete stop.
Vulture whistled and shook her head. She hesitantly looked at the long distance between herself and safety.
"Wheels to Vulture," the other woman's voice said through Vulture's helmet. "You don't want to be on that tower in twenty seconds. Over."
"Never had to do this kind of shit in Iraq!" Vulture mumbled. She took a running start and jumped off a moment too early. The sheer terror of the ground rushing up to meet her jumbled her thoughts, and she remembered too late to tumble into a roll. Then… the edge of her landing site flew up and out of her vision. She reached out, flailing and… caught something. Her hand ached from the sudden deceleration, but she had stopped falling.
"Still gonna talk trash about my friend here?" said Wheels. The metallic goop in question sprang from her hand in a string down to Vulture's outstretched hand.
"No! And if you get me up there, I'll live to mean it!" said Vulture, wriggling like a fish.
The infected townsfolk yelled in alarm from the brick tower above them.
"Don't worry about them." said Wheels. She braced her foot against the edge of the roof and strained to pull Vulture up.
"What did you do this time, Wheels!" accused Vulture.
A loud pop went off. The tower's open windows bellowed out clouds of dust. Screams echoed from the tower.
"I took out… most of 'em!" grunted Wheels. She had managed to pull up Vulture enough that she could grab the ledge and pull herself the rest of the way up.
"You idiot!" hissed Vulture. "Now the entire town thinks they're under attack!"
"Gen to Team! What the hell was that?!" crackled Generous's voice in their ears.
Vulture said, "Wheels dropped a mine on our pursuers. Pursuers are down, buzzing from below sounds a lot angrier. Townsfolk are mobilizing. Over."
"She. WHAT." said Generous. Vulture heard her team leader muttering harshly in Portuguese, though Vulture only recognized the term for 'woman of ill repute'. Which was repeated many times.
"Gen to Team, let's keep moving! Noface and I are - disregard we're engaging! You're on your own! Out!"
Wheels and Vulture started to run, moving and jumping over rooftops. They heard the faint staccato of a single burst of automatic gunfire…

…Generous's rifle smoked, briefly lighting up the damp alleyway. The blood-splattered man splashed down into soft dirt, releasing a kicking, screaming woman.
"Lady, you're coming with us! No questions! No talking!" Generous roughly grabbed the woman off the ground so quickly there was no time to struggle. She slung the civilian over her shoulders like a child would a blanket. "We have an eyewitness Noface, let's go before we eat 'nitohaz. Find something to stuff in her ears-"
The woman screamed, which like all speech not on the operatives' secure channel, filtered to a tinny buzz. Generous sighed. "Noface, shut this puta up! Use your fists if you have to."
Noface paled, not that Gen could see it. "We shouldn't-"
"This cat will feed our Lord the Fifth Star! He demands flesh!" screamed a voice behind them. A wild-eyed man lunged at Noface with a knife. Generous, one hand still securing the civilian on her shoulders, used her other hand to lift up her rifle. The assailant dropped when a crimson 7.62 flower blossomed over his heart.
More of the buzzing noise that indicated shouting. Noface turned around to see a half-dozen angry villagers with clubs and torches. Their mouths were wide open as they rushed down the alleyway.
"AAAGH! Shut up! Just shut up!" Noface screamed. He retrieved his shotgun from a shoulder sling and discharged. His first shot obliterated a charging woman point-blank, in a burst of scarlet. Generous methodically swept the rest of the crowd with a controlled long burst.
A pile of red-splattered bodies now graced the entrance of the alleyway.
"Oh my god. We just…- let's … let's go!" Noface mumbled in shock.
Generous patted him on the shoulder, though too briefly to be comforting. She still slung the now-whimpering civilian on her back like a light rucksack. She walked past Noface and said "Detour to avoid the 'nitohaz pillars over here-"
As Generous stepped over a body, it lurched up to a standing position.
Noface yelped. A second human head slid forth from the corpse's neck like a bloody mockery of childbirth. The disembodied head flew about, yelling Fifthist slogans like a deranged mockingbird. Generous raised her rifle arm and fired before the abomination finished its sentence. The head burst, its pieces bleeding and sparking. Another round went through the corpse. It staggered back to its rightful place slumped against a blood-speckled wall.
"Holy shit! What was that?" yelled Noface. He hadn't even raised his weapon before it ended.
"The unexpected. Expect it." said Generous. She fired again into the corpse for good measure and leaned forward into a run. "Stay close!"
If the rescued woman over Generous's shoulders slowed her down, Noface couldn't tell. It was hard to see anything at top speed. Noface tried to ignore the angry crescendo of buzzing closing in around them.
The two operatives turned a corner into a tunnel. The night vision in their HUDs flicked on, revealing a solid column of human eyeballs. The mass of eyes seethed as if it still had muscles. The pillar had hid in this dark tunnel that barely tasted sunlight.
Generous hesitated for the first time Noface had seen today. "Ah Gen, you little fool." she muttered to herself. "Fifthists… five pillars."
The pillar screamed. A human could not reach that volume. "THE FIFTH WILL COME DOWN FROM THE STARS AND FIVE WILL BE THE DISCIPLES WHO BRING THE-"
Even through the buzzing, far louder than before, Noface heard every word. His ears stung. Noface dropped his gun and covered his ears with his hands. He began singing as loud as he could against the sounds of the pillar, "Out in the cold, like a bundle of coal-"
Generous emptied her rifle into the column of human eyes, chipping pieces off of it. The gun clicked empty. With her arms occupied by her charge, she ran up and attempted to kick over the pillar. It withstood the fierce blow. She kicked it again to no effect as it ranted.
"THE STARFISH WILL CONSUME ALL, LIKE A TOWER OF FLESH ALL IN ITS GRASP-"
"Little packets of darkness, wanting to grow,
Well there's nobody home…!"
He fought to push the words out.
Generous continually cursed and reached for something on her belt. The woman she carried twitched, struggled, and nearly toppled both of them. Generous adjusted her stance, threw her burden overhead and drew her pistol, all in one motion. She placed a single shot on the grounded woman's forehead. The newly-infected civilian went limp.
"THE FIFTH WILL COME DOWN FROM THE STARS AND ALL WILL BE ONE AND-"
"Fucking… freak! DIE! Just die!" Generous screamed, as she emptied her pistol into the mass of eyeballs at point blank. The pillar, though badly torn up and bleeding, continued screaming. Then Generous froze. Her shoulders slumped and her gun dropped from her hand. The pillar continued to rage at both operatives.
"WE WILL SPEAK OF THE FIVE AND THE FIFTY AND ALL WILL BE WELL AND-"
"And there's a wreck in the yard-
And maybe they're coming back-"
Noface tugged at Generous's shoulders, urging her to go. His singing remained barely audible, only just keeping the Fifthist chanting out of his mind.
"Generous are you alright? Come on, let's move!-
If we wish really hard
if we wish real hard now!"
Generous looked at him with… he wasn't sure through her helmet… disappointment? Her hand shot out, grabbed his wrist and pulled him by sheer brute force towards the pillar.
"FIVE DISCIPLES BRING ALL TOWARDS US IN PEACE AND TOGETHERNESS AND-"
Noface did not stop singing. Even as he shoved his foot down and grabbed his former team leader's shoulder with his free hand.
"Won't somebody please come up with something!"
His throw took her down perfectly, to his surprise. She landed hard onto the pavement. He turned on the spot and sprinted as fast as he could, still singing. He couldn't quite see where he was running, only seeing the blurs brick walls, pavement and grey walls.
"Cause Jesus just don't seem to be
Impartially working,"
"REJOICE IN THE COMING OF THE STARFISH AND THE FIVE THAT WILL UNITE OUR-"
His vision bounced from pounding cobblestones. He put his eyes through the gestures to activate his radio. "Noface to Team, Generous is compromised, I say again, Generous is compromised! Need help! Over!"
And all of the rest are really down in the ratings,
But everyone, is going to keep on waiting"
"Wheels to Noface, why are you singing? We'll make our way there and- flanking! There! We're under fire! Sorry, Noface, we'll catch you at exfil site! Over!"
"Waiting for peace,
At the end of our street,"
Noface realized he had no idea where he was. The road was broad and poorly paved, the stone grey walls unadorned. The sounds of the pillar's rants still chased him, though his song drowned out its meaning. Faint buzzing sounds returned to prominence as he continued to sing.
"Back behind our apartments,
In our passenger seats,"
He continued to sing, even as he saw figures following after him.
"Just a moment of bliss,
Of it all of the ways,"
"The black cat! Our lord the Starfish demands we skin it!"
He couldn't hear them, but he could outrun them-
"But despair and oblivion,
Of our precarious ways,
It's ours to face now!"
Then he realized there were many of them. Too many of them. In front, in back and around. His weapon was far behind him…he fumbled for his sidearm…
The bullet caught him hard in his back. He felt his body go stiff.

Vulture peeked out from behind a toppled stone column. Clouds of dust dominated the wide-open, brown-tiled town square. She fired her assault rifle in nonstop three-round bursts. Every time, she ripped apart the silhouette of an infected civilian. Every time, more climbed over their comrade's corpse. They all screamed hymns and beat their chests to otherworldly masters. They bore self-inflicted tattoos and scars shaped after the same, like evangelists from hell. At least, that was Vulture's best guess through the dust and blood. She did not want to take a closer look.
"We'll have to fight the entire town at this rate!" said Wheels beside her. "There's got to be another way out! Down to my last mag!"
A large man closed in with a pitchfork. Wheels' liquid metal tool wrapped around the weapon and tore it out of his hand. A sharp kick to the gut dropped him. She finished him with a bullet, then retreated while Vulture covered her flank.
"Reloading!" said Vulture. Wheels turned around to cover Vulture in turn, as the townsfolk swarmed them. "They have guns, they'll shoot us if we turn our backs!"
"They'll shoot us anyways!" said Wheels beside her. She shot another attacker and-
A pair of arms burst forth from the fresh bullet wound. A second, blood-covered body emerged from the corpse.
Wheels screamed and emptied her entire clip into the abomination, shredding both bodies. They fell to the ground, completely riddled with red and holes.
A body that she was certain she had shot before was now levitating towards the two operatives. She dropped her spent rifle and drew her pistol, firing away to no avail. Vulture pushed her aside and blew the flying corpse's head clean off. Another human head disgorged from a gash in the flying corpse's chest. She destroyed the floating head with a second shot, then returned to shooting the townsfolk.
The infected climbed over bodies, heedless to their families and friends beneath them. Like ants eager to rip apart a fresh carcass.
Then Wheels noticed many human eyeballs gathering not thirty meters away. The eyeballs started to form up on each other.
"Vulture!" she yelled, still firing her pistol at anything that got close. "They're building a pillar!"
"Would love to do something about it, but I'm busy!" replied Vulture, still firing at deranged Fifthists.
A shotgun blast carved out a blood splotch from a flanking attacker.
"Don't worry about the pillar!" said Noface, appearing beside them.
"Why is a cat talking… Wait, Noface!" exclaimed Wheels. "And you're hurt!", she said, noticing a large red gash on the back of the mage's armor.
"I-it's really not that bad." said Noface. She couldn't tell whether he was anxious as usual, or… more than usual? She pushed it out of her mind and kept firing to cover her friends.
"Pillar looks almost solid now. If it starts shouting, we'll be compromised!" said Vulture. "We need to change position! Let's go, we'll have to risk it!"
"Let's focus on the townspeople first!" said Noface. He started mechanically racking shotgun blasts at the incoming, clambering horde. He took no note of his teammates' attempt to abandon his position. The blast of a grenade went off behind them as Vulture tried to shoot her way out on her own.
"Noface, are you alright?! Did you hear us?" yelled Wheels over the gunfire and Fifthist chanting. She put a hand on his shoulder and considered dragging him away.
"Kill them all!" yelled Noface. "Kill! Kill!"
Wheels' shock cost her. Noface turned to her and she heard him say: "THERE WILL BE FIVE AND THEY WILL BRING US TOGETHER AND-"
Wheels screamed and covered her ears, to no avail. Beside her, Vulture fell to a flanking set of townsfolk. They stabbed her several times, drawing sprays of blood everywhere.
"BRING HER TO THE PILLARS!" yelled Noface.
"FIVE! FIVE! FIVE!" chanted the townsfolk. They dragged Wheels' squirming body over to the pillar of eyes.
She had no choice but to listen to its booming voice speak, rant and rave about starfish and the number five.
She saw her HUD read in bright red: "YOU HAVE BEEN INFECTED. YOU ARE TO TURN AGAINST YOUR TEAMMATES FOR THE REST OF THIS EXERCISE."
She grimaced and felt the townsfolk drop her.
A familiar voice stepped out from behind a corner. "Alright, that's enough!" Generous sighed. "Entire team's down. We failed."
A whistle blew in the distance. The men and women standing the defeated assessment operatives respectfully backed off. Dozens of bodies covered in fake blood and red paintball splatters arose and filed out of the woods. Some gave nods to the operatives. The bodies which sprung extra heads and limbs made metallic noises when carried off. GOC medics rushed onto the field to triage bruises and sprains.
Noface sighed and threw off his helmet, revealing a reedy, pale man with Asian features. He took a very deep breath, sat down and continued to breathe heavily.
Vulture wiped fake blood off her abdomen as she stood up, and Wheels tore off her helmet and clutched at her head.
The four Assessment operatives began the very long walk back to base.
—-
GOC Assessment Team 777, callsign Fingertip, stood at attention helmets off in front of Combat Instructor "Lasso". He was a grey-haired older Caucasian man with a scarred face. He spoke with a slight Southern twang which had diluted from decades away from home.
He walked back and forth on the wind-swept asphalt, red-faced and glaring at the four operatives. Like a particularly furious shark looking for an opening to bite.
"Generous" he finally said. "Can you explain why you just hand-gifted four operatives' minds and bodies to KTE-8762-Burrhus-Copernicus!?"
"I… sir, our sniper and spotter were detected by a large concentration of enemy! We were surrounded and overwhelmed." said Generous. Her round, tan Hispanic face did not show fear or sadness, but rather discomfort. As if being yelled at were a cruel reversal of roles.
"Just being discovered doesn't get other Assessment Teams wiped out!" Lasso yelled back. He stepped forward. "I'll tell you why you failed this evaluation, Fingertip! Because that was the saddest fucking Rambo wannabe clusterfuckery I have EVER seen from Assessment! I know damn well Wheels and Noface are green like the mold on a wet sock. But you, Generous, acted like you were still in STRIKE! Even STRIKE hotshots know better than to get into a shootout with fifty times their number! And YOU, Vulture!"
Lasso turned his gaze at Vulture so sharply that Wheels and Noface flinched. Vulture's Middle Eastern features remained passive, like this was her daily routine.
"I am particularly disappointed in you Vulture. You're the only one here who's veteran Assessment and you went along with this absolutely pea-brained plan." Lasso said very softly, which somehow only made the blow worse.
Vulture's lips stiffened but she did not otherwise move.
"In the interests of actually teaching you something! Let me break down how you fucked this up! You blew the op long before the shooting started!" said Lasso, resuming his pacing in front of the operatives. "It begins with your cockamamie idea to walk into the center of town with your team split in half! While outnumbered, surrounded and unable to hear external speech with your auditory 'nitohaz filters going. Yet you decided to increase your contact area with the enemy, and reduce everyone's ability to cover each other. Brilliant."
Generous's eyes flicked down and then back up, as she fought the urge to look at the floor in shame.
Lasso said, "Now, I will give credit; Generous's stealth skills are top-shelf even among Assessment. If the rumors of what you did before the GOC are true, I can believe it. But you used that gift to walk straight into the viper's nest, then forgot it existed when the pressure was on! Didn't think you'd ever need it again, did you?"
"Sir-" replied Generous.
"I did not give you permission to speak!" said Lasso. "You get permission to speak when you run an OP better than a goddamn trainee! No, it did not occur to you to hide after you were made! Or better yet, not stroll into town like you owned it! Maybe you could have just stayed on the border of town and nabbed a few individuals until you got answers! Maybe you could have observed from outside the whole time! Noface, you look like you want to say something! You didn't plan out this clusterfuck, you may speak but it better be good!"
"Sir, there were latent cognitohazards in their speech, er, or that was how it was simulated. We couldn't have safely interrogated them." said Noface.
Lasso looked the shorter man over for a moment. "Then don't. Bring a few back to HQ where PSYCHE can handle them. Use your fucking imagination. 'Assessment' does not mean 'be heroes and save civilians', it means 'Assess!' You pass over enough information to STRIKE, they deal with the threat entity! You do NOT take direct action. That goes double for planting goddamn explosives as a first resort, Wheels! That was the single stupidest thing that's happened in a very long line of stupidity today! They teach you make a shitload of noise the moment you're found in cat burglar school or whatever?!"
Wheels cringed, seeming to become as small as possible while still upright.
Lasso continued, "Of all the fucking idiocy! Now, let's talk about your contingency plans. Or rather, lack thereof. Once found, all four of you decided to shoot and run your way out like a mindless action movie. You had neither the firepower, nor orders, to kill the entire town! Maybe you think that's all Bookburners do, Noface. Or maybe you watched too many heist action films, Wheels. Or maybe you were high on your own supply, Vulture and Generous!"
The Assessment operatives tried to look away from Lasso's gaze, and from each other.
Lasso went on. "There's more! Choosing as a fallback point an insane 20 foot jump which nearly killed Vulture! Wheels ammo-dumping into a chest-bursting animatronic that others handled with two bullets! Generous charging the eye pillar when shooting it clearly did not work! No one picking up on Noface's infection, when Opfor told him to act suspiciously to allow you a fighting chance! Other rookie mistakes that elude me right now!"
Lasso sighed, being the kind of man who has only so much shouting in him. He lowered his voice to normal speaking volume.
"Well, you didn't screw up everything. Noface's semantic thaumaturgy worked perfectly; Opfor swore you were a cat the entire time. And when you heard the auditory 'nitohaz, you distracted yourself with a competing stimulus and ran away. Something that Generous did not do, for reasons I cannot fathom. Vulture, for her part, executed her role competently. Her biggest mistake was going along with the rest of the team's stupid, stupid plan!
"I have three other teams to lecture today, so let me bring it back together. We are Assessment. We are not STRIKE. We are not Rambo. We observe, assess and report. We only dive in when absolutely necessary. Take a rest. Take in your mistakes today, and remember it for next time. And if you ever repeat the kind of bullshit you tried today, simulation or not, I will see you kicked out of Assessment! High Command be damned! I don't know why their panties are so on fire to have Fingertip in particular ready ASAP. But unless they fire me on the spot, I'm starting 777 Fingertip on the full six month Assessment course. Dis-fucking-missed."
He stormed off, leaving the four alone on the cold, windy training grounds.
Generous turned to the other three. "Hey… you guys did fine. It was all on me. I got too full of myself. I…. set us up to fail." The words almost caught in her throat.
"Nah girl, it was on all of us. Lasso pointed out that we all fucked up in some way or another. Well, me in particular." said Wheels.
"Yeah, all of us. Hey Gen. I was meaning to ask. Why did you only try to drag me when you were infected?" asked Noface.
Generous with a slight tilt of her head, deferred to Vulture.
"You'd be monkey chow if any of us seriously attacked you." said Vulture.
"Oh… uh, also, what was it Lasso meant about Gen's uh, pre-GOC job, anyways?" asked Noface.
Vulture grinned in anticipation.
"You know what? Let's talk about that after we eat so you still have an appetite." said Generous.
Noface chuckled. Generous did not. Noface's expression dropped.
The four walked off to breakfast.