Last Time on Nexus:
The Punishment of a God, Part 1

Falling. Chloe had no idea how long she had fallen, while thrashing around in complete panic, but it was in any case far too long to not die upon impact. So she was far more surprised when she simply stopped falling. She had reached the ground but her excess kinetic energy had apparently decided to pack it in early, thankfully preventing Chloe's body from becoming very flat and very wide.
She needed about ten seconds to process this fact. Her subconsciousness meanwhile assessed her environment and reported its findings, after her face had gone blank.
She was still surrounded by darkness, but here it was somewhat lighter. And there were walls. Apparently metal walls, given the bolts. She estimated that she was in a two and a half meter high container.
Chloe felt as if she was being observed and took a look around. She learned two things through this. First, she knew now where the light came from, second, it was obvious that she wasn't alone in here. Except that she wasn't sure what the other one present was.
Her brain tried to convince her, that in front of her stood, or rather knelt, a man with a beard and a height of approximately five meters. He wore a long black robe. His eyes were completely silver, appearing like big marbles. This was, what she should see according to her mind. Her eyes had a slightly different opinion, because Chloe couldn't determine if her opposite was located right in front of her or somewhere else in the room. She also didn't know if he was faced towards her or how many limbs he possessed. And he seemed way to real. One could literally taste his presence. Chloe could only partly handle the fact that this man appeared more real than her. Additionally, he glowed from the inside…
The stranger examined her with a sad look. He seemed melancholic.
"Err… Hello?"
The man didn't show any change in emotion. But he extended his hand and gently poked Chloe's nose.
For some reason she suddenly got charged with static energy.
Her hair stuck out in all directions. Chloe didn't know what to make of this but at least the man started smiling now.
She wanted to go home…
"Where am I here?"
The giant tilted his head. Then he said something. Chloe did not understand his language but there were also other reasons why she couldn't make heads or tails of the given information. She didn't just hear him with her ears. Her entire body trembled due to power of his voice and her head felt as if he had to explode immediately.
But despite the voice, that seemingly strived to push her brain into a mixer, she realized one thing: The giant, or whatever he was, was finished. He was at the verge of death. But could he please stop talking?
Suddenly, there was movement in the container. The wall behind her went up and a man in gray everyday clothes appeared. And he had a rifle with him.
He was presumably just as puzzled as Chloe because of this encounter, but he regained his composure faster and yelled something in a language Chloe did not know. After she did apparently not show the right reaction, the armed one shouted something over his shoulder, causing four more men and a woman to appear besides him. All were similarly clothed and armed like him. The woman, she wore jeans white shirt with writing Chloe couldn't read, subsequently entered the container to grab Chloe. The giant, however, pushed her down with a seemingly ponderous motion.
There was further shouting from the man and suddenly the cage got run through by glowing waves, as if all walls were smooth water surfaces. The big being screamed with its tremendous voice; a sound that sucked the strength out of Chloe's legs. When she fell on her knees, the static energy painfully discharged.
Since it required Chloe's full attention to not simply deliquesce because of that voice, it was easy for the woman to just grab her hand, pull her up and drag her behind herself. She, like the rest of her group, didn't seem to be affected in the slightest by the tumult of the giant.
The wail became silent, when the container closed behind Chloe. She still got dragged further but since her ears weren't ringing anymore, she finally had the opportunity to examine her surroundings.
The container she had been in was connected to a literal forest of glowing cables, tubes and pipes in all forms and sizes, which themselves vanished in the ground. The whole thing looked as if its parts had been cannibalized from other things before they had been build together here. Chloe asked herself involuntarily, why she hadn't seen the connectors from inside. The room she was dragged out of right now was colored in derelict gray, cylindrical and certainly 10 meters high. Without the apparatus in the middle one could have conducted ballet lessons for up to fifty people in there for sure.
Chloe, at the moment in a state of shock where she still thought somewhat rational, struggled tentatively in the grip of her gripper, since the friction with the untreated concrete floor became slowly and painfully noticeable in her naked feet. She stopped these efforts when the women pulled her to herself and tipped with a meaningful look on a telescope stick dangling on her hip. Chloe started shaking and nodded hastily. At least she was now allowed to walk by herself.
A man with a white coat walked in front of the group which at the moment walked through a pale-grey and only scarcely illuminated corridor. Chloe got pulled forward with a fearful squeak and presented to the newcomer.
He looked like a scientist. He had glasses, tangled gray hair and a small beard. It followed an exchange in this language unknown to Chloe. In the process she and the room where she came from were several times pointed at. The whole thing finally concluded with her being shooed again by her escort and ended with a stop in front of a door that was opened for her with a quiet squeak.
Behind it was something Chloe to her horror identified as prison cell. There was a sink and a lidless toilet, a chair, a table and a bed. And Chloe, after she had been steered in with gentle force and the door was locked behind her.
It took a while until she had processed the happenings and realized that she was obviously stranded here. All while not even knowing why she had come here. That damn notebook! If Chloe had just accepted that she has lost her shoes, then none of this would have happened! But no, of course she had to yield to her greed! She was trapped. She would never go home again…
Chloe broke out in tears.

Two men in white coats met a floor below at the urinals. There was a little conversation between them through which they both didn't notice, how a black dot formed in the door to the toilets. It grew and filled the entire door frame after a second. They also didn't notice how two hands reached for them.
But they noticed, how they suddenly got pulled into the blackness.

A little bit later the same blackness appeared in the door to a broom closet nearby Two people in white clothes exited from it. One of them held a little, cuboid device in her hands.
"Hm, we have to take a left…"

She didn't know how long she had cried, but a sudden "squeak" announced a visitor. It was the scientist from before. He entered together with a folding chair and an apparent guard, who immediately pulled Chloe to the table and placed her in her own chair. The scientist took a seat on the opposite site of the table and started to speak. He spoke a lot, but Chloe didn't understand any of it. Until she realized that he seemed to be trying different languages.
"Uh, I can't understand you?", she attempted to help him.
The man knit his eyebrows in confusion. Then he murmured something to the guard, prompting him to take out a device similar to a taser. He walked unaffectedly towards Chloe, who sat paralyzed by fear…
"Squeak."
"BONK!"
"Squeak."
The guard turned around instantly to investigate the source of that noise but all he saw was a fist that promptly made contact with his face. It belonged to a brown haired man with a white coat shirt and shoes and black pants, who immediately followed up and punched the downed guard until he went unconscious. While doing that, he displayed the sort of stoicism possessed by pig butchers after more than twenty years in the business.
"Dean, don't kill him, or at least not completely."
Chloe, still baffled by the things that had happened, stared at the second newcomer, who had knocked down the scientist with a frying pan she had carried in with her. It was obvious that she was her savior, but Chloe would have never imagined her that way.
There are a lot of blonde jokes. All unjustified, so Chloe thought; but the young woman here created the impression that every single one applied to her. She also wore a lab coat, but beneath that tight blue pants. The same also held true for her blue shirt and her black sneakers. She looked like she dressed as if she expected to appear on TV at any moment. "Dean", who now walked towards her, murmured something unintelligible and examined Chloe with a deadpan expression. He appeared menacing, probably because of his size and wide back.
Meanwhile, the woman stowed away the kitchen implement in a black woman's handbag on her shoulder. It took the pan in completely, despite it being logically unable to fit in there. Afterwards, she rummaged around in it and finally pulled out a device with the since and form of a calculator. After the activation, it made sounds like a Geiger counter.
"Bullseye!", she rejoiced then and extended grinning her hand for a greeting.
"If I may introduce myself, Elli is my name."
Chloe shook the hand absentminded. That went way to fast for her…
"And you are?"
"Chloe Winter", Chloe stated, before she could catch up to the present.
"I'm very pleased", Elli answered and pointed towards her companion with her thumb. "That over there is Dean, by the way."
"Hello", Dean responded dry-witted.
Chloe's brain finally reached a familiar operating speed again and deemed it appropriate to let her ask some essential questions.
"Wait, hold on, Who are you? And what are you doing here?"
"Well, regarding who, we are tourists," Elli explained as if Chloe had started a chat about the weather. "And we are here, because somebody performed a botched portal jump. And I want to know how."
She winked at Chloe while saying this.
"Portal jump?"
"Yes. Of magical nature as it seems. If the readings I've got are correct, you were lucky to get out somewhere at all. Or unlucky as well…"
"Where am I anyway?"
"You were thrown into another universe. Directly into a facility of the Saiga Factions. They are self-proclaimed world-savers; more on that matter later. In any case, the reality of your portal was to low, and-"
"Another universe!? Like parallel worlds and stuff?"
Elli seemed to search for the right words for a short while but didn't find any.
"Uh, yeah," was the answer.
Chloe's stomach fluttered.
"And… can I go back again?"
The expression of the woman became even brighter.
"Sure. I bring you back, you are being unjustly incarcerated here as I heard. But as it looks like we have to do something first."
"Err, and what?"
"I wouldn't have become aware of you if you had just screwed up a portal jump. That happens all the time. There was a massive fluctuation in the space-time continuum of this universe when you got here and that now it clings on to you. Best thing would be if I demonstrate it to you."
In front of the entrance a black dot appeared. It grew and almost immediately blackened the entire area of the door-frame.
"This is an entrance to my Nexus", Elli explained. "For now, imagine it as an ultra-highly advanced spaceship. We got here with this. Try walking through it."
"Through it?", Chloe affirmed skeptically.
Dean demonstratively stuck his hand into the blackness. It sunk in without resistance. Chloe shrugged resignedly. It would only get crazier anyway. She stood up and approached the portal.
When there was only half a meter left between her and the blackness, she felt how something started to hold her back. A force that grew exponentially stronger the more Chloe advanced towards the portal. As if she and the entrance where two identical magnetic poles, repelling each other. When she jumped tentatively, she got immediately yanked backwards.
"What is that?", Chloe asked.
"Your space-time position got locked on this universe", Elli said. "Meaning, you cannot leave this universe. For something like this great amounts of energy are needed. Your portal jump alone cannot have caused this. Did something happen to you after your arrival?"
Chloe remembered how ruggedly she had been brought here and the man in the box. Didn't he…
"Some big guy charged me with static when he touched me. Does that help?"
Elli smiled and raised an eyebrow.
"Oh yes. Has a lot to do with quanta and String-Theory but the static charge means that the guy was very sloppy. Could you describe him?"
"He was about five meters tall and stuck in a weird machine."
The woman furrowed her brow while trying to make something out of this information.
"We will have to ask for directions for that one", she finally concluded. "Dean, wake up the egghead, Chloe, take this."
With those words Elli gave Chloe something that looked like a small gray band-aid.
"That is a reusable translation sticker", Elli explained. "It will allow you to comprehend language and writing of the people here and to express yourself to them. Stick it behind an ear of your choice."
"This is a thing?", slipped amazed out of Chloe.
"In the future, yes. I have a lot of stuff from the future, got a time-machine. Now stick it on."
Chloe did as she had been told. Suddenly she could actually filter information from the whimpering Dean was currently wringing from the scientist through the use of moderate force.
"Please stop punching me!"
"OK," Dean said tersely, grabbed the man by the shirt collar and pulled him into an upright position.
"Hello!" Elli greeted him, as if she had just met an old friend on the street. "May I ask you something?"
"What?“ the man grunted. "Look, this is all one big misunderstanding. Whatever you have locked up here, it really doesn't have anything to do with this girl here, but it apparently fixated her in this universe. Could you tell us what it is and where we find it?"
While saying this, she made a face like a tourist asking a native for directions.
"Why should I? Who are you-" the scientist started before Dean raised his free fist with a meaningful look. "Okay, okay! I'll talk! He is on level 2, Room 110F!"
Elli again raised an eyebrow.
Chloe realized that she must have had much practice in expressing her mood just with her eyebrows.
"Really?"
She rummaged in her purse and finally retrieved a black orb from it, no bigger than a marble. Before the scientist could react in any way, she flicked the object with a skillful move into his open mouth.
"What you just swallowed there is a micro-bomb," Elli explained. "Which I can detonate via remote control. Even if you are on the other side of the planet. I believe I don't have to tell you under which circumstances it will blow up. 'Cause you are a bright one, aren't you?"
She again demonstrated practiced proficiency in the handling of her eyebrows to let her expression appear sadistic. Chloe found herself wondering if eyebrow Olympics existed where Elli came from.
Given what this face promised, the scientist nodded hastily.
"So, do you tell the truth?"
The scientist nodded hastily again.
"So, you are either one of the greatest pansies I have ever witnessed or extremely good in mind games. Whatever of those two holds true, I still don't know what it is that keeps my little friend locked here. So, would you kindly?"
"It is Ku!", it came quick like a shot.
"Ku?" Elli echoed and slowly became annoyed. "Which Ku? There are universes where this is the most common first name!"
"The god Ku!" Here eyes widened.
"Like in 'Ku, the Destroyer?"
The scientist confirmed with a nod. Elli and Dean exchanged a glance. Chloe thought to spot something like dark fascination in the eyes of the woman.
"That is interesting… I will not ask for the 'how' but why did you catch him?"
"Because he is a weapon. We want to use his might to power a weapon capable of destroying other realities. For deterrence. So nobody gets the idea of mounting an invasion-"
"That is so typical for your lot," Elli interrupted him with an annoyed eye-roll. "Dean, knock him out, we are going. They will soon realize that I inserted a loop into their surveillance feed. Oh, that will be great."
She entered the room giggling while Dean with moderate effort and only minimal noise disturbance did as he had been told. Afterwards he went to Chloe.
"Is she always like this?" she asked.
"Yes, sadly. She lives for adventure," was the resigned answer.
Dean grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her towards the door. His hand felt hard. Chloe tried to free herself from his grip.
"Hey, I can walk on my own!"
"Not here," Dean objected without loosening his grip in the slightest.
"If you walk around freely, you only draw attention. But if you are taken along by a scientist…"
"I see."
Elli stuck her head through the door. She had an expression that would have well-suited a child who couldn't wait to open Christmas presents.
"Hey, what are you waiting for? The Saiga Faction here will not be blind forever."
Signing, Chloe got on the move. She had no clue what the had engaged herself with here but something told her that it was better as if she stayed here. While walking, she turned a last time to the knocked out scientist who still lay motionless in her cell.
"Do tell, did you really give him a bomb?" she asked Elli.
"What? No, that was a glass marble. I bluffed", Elli responded and followed with an evil chuckle.
Chloe asked herself involuntarily if that really was better…

Next time on Nexus:
The Punishment of a God, Part 3


There are people that simply get showered with luck. They are born with exceeding talent, get a good education, find like-minded friends, a successful first love and a well-paid job.
Chloe Winter was not one of those people. You could tell that right now, because she was trying to find her shoes. They had vanished after P. E. class, and after some searching Chloe had been forced to accept that someone else had accidentally taken her gym shoes with them. Probably because she had put them somewhere they didn't belong, again.
Such things happened a lot, sadly. Chloe was an incredibly scatterbrained girl. One time she had, seemingly lost in thought, put her pencil case on the closet with the school material, another time she couldn't remember where she had put her jacket, and sometimes, she had apparently doodled on her desk without realizing it. The other day she had found her school bag in the trash. Chloe was constantly vexed by her own thoughtlessness.
No, there was no sign of her shoes.
"I don't think you'll find them here anyway."
Susanne Graf stood with a sad smile at the entrance of the changing room. Susanne and Chloe were complete opposites, appearance-wise. Both were around 13 years old, but Chloe was half a head smaller than most of her contemporaries. Susanne was half a head taller. Chloe had dark brown, open hair, Susanne instead was strawberry blonde and had a pony tail.
"Seems like it", Chloe replied, resigned.
Do you want to go home like this?"
Good question. This had been the last lesson, but she would ruin her socks on the way home. Wait a sec!
"Well, I always wanted to learn how to mend holes."
"Noble objectives you've got there. I'll go now. Can you manage?"
"Of course."

Chloe couldn't manage. It was fall, it was raining buckets, Chloe didn't have an umbrella and everything was muddy. Splash, splash, splash, that's how her steps sounded like. She could only throw her socks away once she got home…
Suddenly, a pair of bright-green lace-ups came into her view. Lace-ups with no feet in them, to be specific. They stood inside a shop window and shared the place with a lot of stuff that definitely wasn't shoes. Apparently, this was a business that sold everything.
The name displayed on a big sign over the entrance confirmed Chloe's assumption. Wunderkiste1 it read. Weird. Chloe walked this way every day, but she was sure, that this enterprise wasn't here yesterday. In any case, so she told herself, it was a welcome opportunity to escape the rain.
A little bell announced that Chloe had opened the shop door. She entered but didn't dare to step down from the doormat in the entrance area. She didn't want to dirty the floor after all.
It took a while, in which she gradually dripped the doormat full, then a woman in an emerald-green dress appeared before her. The brown hair was tied into a tight knot, giving her the appearance of a strict teacher. Her warm smile stood in stark opposition to that.
"Oh dear, you are soaking wet!", she exclaimed with a voice, which despite her apparently not very advanced age, indicated a lot of cats and freshly backed cookies. "And where are your shoes?"
"Not important", Chloe repelled. "I am just waiting here for the rain to subside, and then I will be gone. No efforts necessary."
"No efforts necessary", grumbled the woman and vanished in the back of the store for a moment to then return with a pair of shoes resembling those in the shop window exactly.
"No really, it's! Losing them was my fault."
The woman, Chloe discerned by a tag on her chest that her name was Mirabilis rolled annoyed her eyes.
"Girl, take those shoes; you only hurt your feet!"
Chloe was hesitant.
"But I don't have enough money for a pair of shoes!"
"I really don't care! A young girl has to wear bloody proper footwear. For that I gladly take the loss of 50 Euros. And now wait here, I'm going to get a towel and a hair-drier, so you get a little dry."
Chloe did as she was told, with a very troubled conscience. She really had not intended that. Mirabilis came back with an rechargeable hair drier and a pink towel decorated with blue bunnies, and blew hot air into Chloe's face, while handing her the towel. She became dry unnaturally fast.
"L-Listen, I can't take this", Chloe resumed.
"You want to go back out there like that?"
"I lost my shoes myself, for that I can't-"
"Okay, look. Search, and choose something you find here. The shoes are free premium to that."
"But-"
"No buts! You won't step out of my store without shoes, you got that?"
Chloe produced a distressed sound. She was sure that this would bug her the entire weekend.
She didn't have that much money on her person, so she looked for something cheap after putting on the shoes. The store had a weird selection. There were shoes, dolls, hats, building blocks, desks, clubs, axes, bowls and many more. Especially a big mannequin with a completely enveloping cloak. She had the feeling that the window dummy was looking at her. At last, she found a little notebook, with What I did on my holidays written on it with happy letters.
"Uh, that one…"
"Good choice, comes to three fifty."

Mirabilis looked after the girl while it hesitantly left the store with her new note book and the shoes, and shook her head with concern. At least she would have some fun with the notebook. Mirabilis was very proud on this creation. A notebook that, once written in it, could bring its user to any place in his memories for half an hour. That was perfect for relaxing.
Since nobody else came in, after half an hour the saleswoman got back to work on new products. On her way there she passed a basket, whose contents brought her to an immediate halt. Because said contents were nonexistent.
"MARKUS? DID YOU DISPOSE OF THE REJECTS?"
The cloaked mannequin creaked woodenly while starting to move and moved up.
"Rezheects? Madmoiselle, I did not 'andle any trash."
"Then why is this basket here empty?"
"Oh. I zhough zhose were new products. I sorteed zem all in."
Mirabilis's face went blank.
"Was there by chance a memory notebook included?"
"Euh… Oui, Madmoiselle."
Mirabilis knew that Malkuth was not made of flesh and blood and therefore couldn't pale. But somehow she had the feeling he did anyway while she grabbed the jigsaw. The girl had taken the topmost notebook, most likely the defect one. And she had no clue how to find the little one. All she could do was hoping that she would get cast away to not too bad a place or, for that matter, to some place at all…

Chloe entered her home. Silence welcomed her. Well, relative silence, she lived in a three-room flat on a main road by a railroad crossing . It was rarely quiet. This relative silence did not surprise Chloe. Her mother always worked long shifts.
Chloe's room captivated the observer through a manifold of details. She liked bright colors and chaotic patterns, so her bedding was held in appropriate colors, which seemed to fight a fierce war against the dull white of the ingrain wallpaper on the walls and ceiling. On the hardwood floor also stood a bookshelf with several well-thumbed magazines and books, some keepsakes of memorable events and several crates with stuff that accumulates in a child's room through the years but is never willingly thrown away by the owner. There was also a big, heavy closet that looked as if it had survived two world wars - which it actually had done - and a desk with a little mirror and a cheap laptop with several stickers stuck onto it. The desk was also misused as a makeup stand by Chloe, because she gradually became interested in looking good as part of her started to come of age. A makeup box revealed that.
Chloe then displayed rather unusual behavior for a child of her age. She willingly, and with complete focus, worked on her assigned homework. Afterwards, she pondered with a frown what she should do with the notebook the woman in the store had sold her.
In the end she decided to make a drawing book out of it. She looked in the mirror and started a self-portrait.
The imaginary observer would have noted that Chloe wasn't a particularly good artist, but still, a certain talent could not be denied. She got completely into the zone with her art.
At least until sudden vibrations of the notebook got her out of her focus. Her eyes narrowed while she tried to find out why normal paper acted like a smart phone set on mute. And now it also got hot….
Chloe just started thinking about putting the notebook down, before suddenly getting swept away by a strong wind, pushing her headfirst into the notebook.
And through it. The paper seemed to not exist anymore. Chloe saw only blackness, while she tried to push against the pull at the edges that became hotter and hotter, all while screaming fiercely and in panic. But she was mercilessly pushed further and further in. Panic got a hold of her completely once she suddenly lost her grip. A last scream resounded in her room, before getting suppressed by the closing pages. The pages of the fallen down starred to smolder as the heat increased more and more. There was no real fire, but the notebook still turned completely into a pile of ash after a short while.

In another place, a big cuboid apparatus started to rattle. Then, several green lights on it started blinking and a loud beeping sound rang out, similar to an alarm clock. It took a short while until a person entered the room, observed the technological racket with expertise, then started grinning. That would be fun.

Next Time on Nexus:
The Punishment of a God, Part 2

Footnotes
1. i.e. Wonder Chest


Thump.
The Library stood still and calm, among the chaos that raged outside. The Pages refilled the shelves, filled to the brim with books and guides. The Archivists worked away silently and the Docents guided patrons in and around the library. All was well. A woman walked through a Way on the far east side of the library, adjusted her crooked glasses, and walked straight towards one of the working Archivists. She was young and stumbled around clumsily throughout the library, her clothes were untidy and her hair ruffled up. She looked as if she had just been in a one-sided fight. During her entrance, she had caught the eye of something that lurked within the depths of the Library. As she approached the Archivist, it continued typing away.
Thump.
"Hi," the woman blurted out abruptly, "can you, uh, tell me where the magic section is?" She said, twiddling her fingers underneath the Archivist's dark-oak desk. You could tell she was panicking. The Archivists immediately stopped typing and faced the woman.
Thump.
"Thaumaturgy section, ask a Docent from there." The Archivist groaned, before diverting their attention back to the typewriter. Someone had a bad day. The woman rushed through the library, desperately trying to find the thaumaturgy section of the Library, trying to find a needle in a haystack as an ant. She had her head down, as she walked among the other patrons and guests.
Crash.
She fell to the ground and her glasses quickly slipped off her nose. A large shadow stood above her. Her head craned up towards the top of the giant, in shock. A Docent. She frantically began to crawl backward.
Snap.
Her body accidentally crushed her glasses. The Docent from before sat in front of her, shadowing her like a mountain to a river. Its face loomed in toward her, and she was paralyzed. They were face to face. She felt its breath blowing at her hair. Its twisty and turny body stretched on for what seemed like forever to her. She was petrified, but still had some sort of confidence within her that kept her going.
Thump.
"H-Howdy." She slowly rises from her position on the floor and stares the Docent in the eyes. The Docent growls back, almost piercing her eardrums. Throughout the entire confrontation, neither had blinked once. The woman's eyes were strained and welled but the Docent's illuminated eyes were half-closed as it attempted to keep them open. To win.
Thump.
The Docent's piercing-white eyes slowly closed as it slithered back to its corner, annoyed. She has just won. Asserted her dominance. She walked away as if unfazed, walking away with the same, if not more amount of confidence as before.
Thump.
She finally reached the beloved thaumaturgy aisle, eerily quieter than she had expected. Nonetheless, she entered and started pulling book after book from the shelf. She got a quick glance at each of the titles before she threw them into an ever-growing pile behind her
Thump.
A Magician's Handbook: Original Ultra Mega Super Extra Deluxe Edition 2 by Daniel Snake.
Thump.
How To Grow Certain Parts Of Your Body: 13th Edition by Cole Thereven.
Thump.
how to gaslight, gatekeep and girlboss like a boss by dado.
Thump.
Death in Disguise: How to Fake Your Death Effectively by Michael Jackson.
Thump.
Disguise in Death: How to Fake Your Death Better by Elvis Presley
Thump.
I, Magical Handbook by Some Dude.
Thump.
The Death of The Peanut: An Exposé by Moto Fortito
Thump.
A Day In the Life of An Anomalous Content Creator by Matthew Patrick
Thump.
The Claw Theory: An In-Depth Essay On Ethics by Plato.
Thump.
At last, she finds the book she was looking for: Anomalous Beats: And How To Play Them. by Justin Timber.
Thump.
She flipped it open hastily, almost ripping the cover off, and finds page 68. She admired the page for a few moments, before she reached into her red sweatshirts jacket, and pulled out a mini wooden violin.
Thump.
She looked at the large sheet of music in the book one last time and began to play, using a splinter of pinewood to hit the strings. As she began to play, a man jumped down from the top of the shelf, creating a small crater in the wood where he landed. He slowly raised his handsome face to look directly at her, but she continued playing. The thumps that grew ever louder from before transformed into a rhythmic and steady beat.
The man then began to say words, melodic words, that slowly transformed into a song. Brendon Urie then began dancing but then something else has happened. The entire room had frozen, Brendon was about to do the splits, the woman from before was playing her harmonic piece. The others in the library were intrigued, their faces stuck with an expression of shock and disbelief. The Docent that the woman had her confrontation with began to do something odd. Strange. It looked as if it had begun to bop its head.

You sit at your desk, an expression of dissatisfaction and confusion as you stare at the screen in front of you, the new "Panic! At The Disco" music video sitting paused on your laptop.
You take a quick look at the description.
"Announcing our new name, in partnership with The Serpent's Hand, Panic! At The Library!"
WHAT THE FU-?


by Ethagon

Item #: SCP-173
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: Item SCP-173 is to be kept in a locked container at all times. When personnel must enter SCP-173's container, no fewer than 3 may enter at any time and the door is to be relocked behind them. At all times, two persons must maintain direct eye contact with SCP-173 until all personnel have vacated and relocked the container.
Description: Moved to Site-19 1993. Origin is as of yet unknown. It is constructed from concrete and rebar with traces of Krylon brand spray paint. SCP-173 is animate and extremely hostile. The object cannot move while within a direct line of sight. Line of sight must not be broken at any time with SCP-173. Personnel assigned to enter container are instructed to alert one another before blinking. Object is reported to attack by snapping the neck at the base of the skull, or by strangulation. In the event of an attack, personnel are to observe Class 4 hazardous object containment procedures.
Personnel report sounds of scraping stone originating from within the container when no one is present inside. This is considered normal, and any change in this behaviour should be reported to the acting HMCL supervisor on duty.
The reddish brown substance on the floor is a combination of feces and blood. Origin of these materials is unknown. The enclosure must be cleaned on a bi-weekly basis.

« SCP-172 | SCP-173 | SCP-174 »


Raddagher

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The halls were still. The halls were always still, or at least they were supposed to be. But this was the Foundation, and plenty of things could make hallways move if they really wanted to.
The halls were “still” as in “quiet,” which, contrary to the halls' state of moving or not moving, was rather unusual indeed.
The halls were quite stationary, but they were also completely empty of people. Deep in the underground belly of Site-19 gathered scores of Foundation employees, packed into the cafeteria and the break rooms like many, many hamsters in Shop Vac suction hose. In their hands they clutched things; cheap plastic and paper things, shiny and loud things. Things for a very specific purpose, a purpose for which all eyes of every not-immediately-essential employee were trained on their inboxes. A thousand faces watching a thousand screens for one single message.
Site-19 held its collective thousands of breaths.
Site-19's hands held their collection of shiny loud things.
Nobody moved. Especially not the halls.

“SITE-WIDE ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING SCP-42069”

The halls trembled with the impact of thousands of fingers on thousands of phone screens to open one single email.

“For the purposes of continued efficiency, we would like to remind the staff that today's designation of an SCP-42069 was a rumor and a rumor ONLY. Due to staff's overall lack of professionalism and juvenile behavior regarding this event, the O5 council has advised “42069” never be used in conjunction with any SCP, Mobile Task Force, or any operation given a numerical designation, until such a time when Foundation personnel can “grow up and start acting like adults.” Please return to your jobs as usual. Today is not a holiday. You all have work to do.
- Chief of Staff L. Martinez”

And deep in the bowels of the underground top secret facility, on floor 15A, in one of two break rooms affectionately designated The Small One, Dr. Tobias Jay, a distinguished man with graying hair and a cleanly-pressed shirt, huffed spray paint out of a paper bag.
“WHAT?!” roared a security guard in full tactical gear. Her outburst disturbed the paper party hat taped to the top of her helmet. Her small plastic kazoo clicked off the floor as she hurled it to the ground. She wished it made a louder noise.
With the crackle of a lighted cigarette, a dark-suited figure with an immaculately-styled bun spoke from the corner of the room. She had pulled a chair over there from the break room table, because the table was not in a dark corner, and she only sat in dark corners.
“This is how it goes, Stuart. You think the Foundation will save you, but in the end they'll all stab you in the back.” She took a drag from her cigarette and exhaled the smoke through one of those round noisemakers with the fan inside that goes VWEEEE when you blow through it.
“Hang on, let me crunch the numbers.” added the final person in the room, a short and rotund young researcher. He had a name tag that just said “Jeremy” and nothing else, and a calculator watch which looked exactly as cool as calculator watches always do (which is very cool). Brow furrowing in feverish concentration, Researcher Jeremy punched a series of numbers into his calculator watch, squinting through his Foundation-mandated glasses at the results. All Foundation researchers are required to wear glasses, otherwise nobody would know that they are researchers.
“According to my calculations,” said Researcher Jeremy, “this is bullshit.”
“Let me see that!” said Dr. Jay, grabbing the calculator to judge the outcome for himself.
“Ow,” said Researcher Jeremy, who was still attached to the calculator.
“Bullshit,” said the screen of the calculator that was still attached to Researcher Jeremy.
Dr. Jay rubbed his silver, paint-stained chin thoughtfully. “Hmm. You're right. This IS bullshit.”
“It's ALL bullshit.” growled Agent Nadira from her dark-ish corner, “Deep down, we all know this whole operation is just a power-trip for our superiors.” Behind her black sunglasses she was scanning the room for a light switch she could turn off to make the room darker. It was very important that her peers see how cool and orange her cigarette looked from the shadows.
“I WAITED SIX MONTHS FOR THIS!” Officer Stuart bellowed.
“Now, now, Officer Stuart.” Dr. Jay crooned calmly, leaning over the break room table and steepling his fingers in the Foundation-universal gesture for indicating to your coworkers that you are an ambiguously unethical scientist. He continued. “Maybe the O5s can take our singular reason to live, but they can't take our ice cream cake”
Four sets of eyes shifted to the cake in question, decorated with blue and white icing, topped with words reading “Happy SCP-42069 Day, This Is It Folks, This Is Why We're All Here, Now That This Has Happened We Can All Die Knowing Our True Purpose Was Fulfilled, Humanity Is Saved At Last, Or At Least We Are, This Is The Only Good Thing That Has Ever Happened To The Foundation, Thank You And Goodnight.”
The occupants of the Small Break Room gazed upon it reverently.
Four cell phone alerts heralded the arrival of a new message.

“ADDITIONALLY”

Dr. Jay sprayed a fresh bout of paint into his paper bag.

“All staff are advised that a sweep of break rooms and common spaces will commence over the next hour. Please clean up any party supplies and return to your jobs. Any party supplies found during the sweep will be confiscated. Thank you.”

Officer Stuart's tree-trunk legs rattled the plastic table as she leapt onto the surface, taking position over the ice cream cake like an outraged swan protecting a brood of one large and frozen rectangular egg. “THEY'RE GOING TO TAKE OUR-”
She was interrupted by the wheezing, reaper-like gasp inhale from Dr. Jay as he hit the Krylon again. He looked up, mouth even more silver than a few moments ago. “Apologies. I'm very stressed.”
Officer Stuart took a less-than-cleansing breath and spoke, her visor muffling her voice but not doing much to disguise the way it brittled with the effort not to freak out, not to absolutely lose her shit, “They're going to take our cake, Dr. Jay…”
“Not without a fight, they're not.”
“A fight?” asked Officer Stuart, warily.
“A FIGHT?!” asked Agent Nadira, enthusiastically.
Dr. Jay stood up, his chair tipping backwards and clattering to the linoleum floor, and threw up his arm to point at the array of intercom buttons on the wall beside the microwave.
“JEREMY!”
Despite an entire lack of actual instructions, Researcher Jeremy knew this particular invocation of his name to mean “revolution.” And if anyone could be trusted to lead a revolution, it was Junior Researcher Jeremy. Researcher Jeremy pressed a button on the panel in the wall, ceremoniously activating the intercom system that connected all of the break rooms to each other and to no other areas of the building, a feature that Site-19 always had since the beginning.
“BAR THE DOORS, THEY CAN'T FIRE ALL OF US.” said Researcher Jeremy, to all the break rooms in the entire site all at once.
“They can fire most of us.” Dr. Jay pointed out.
“BAR THE DOORS, THEY CAN'T FIRE SOME OF US.” amended Researcher Jeremy.
The halls rumbled with the heavy metal screeching of tables and chairs being pushed against break room doors.
Officer Stuart shoved a large metal filing cabinet in front of their particular door, settling it like a dull gray obelisk of protection right beside the metal Ikea chair that Agent Nadira had wedged underneath the door handle. The cake was safe, although it was unclear for how long this would remain the case.
It would remain the case for the next 17 minutes.
The door handle didn't jiggle on account of how the security guards outside had definitely anticipated the barricade. They knew very well how much Foundation employees loved to barricade things. Instead, their arrival was signaled by a deliberate, exasperated rap on the door.
“This is Officer Graves, please open the door.”
“Uhhhh, it's open!” lied Officer Stuart. She wiped the back of her gloved hand across the top of her visor, which did nothing to help the sweaty state of her brow, which was underneath the visor. Noticing Officer Stuart's clear anxiety, Dr. Jay stood from his chair and calmly approached the door, clasping his paint-stained fingers behind his back in a definitively scholarly manner.
“It's open," he confirmed.
"No, it's not." said Officer Graves.
"Yes, it is." said Dr. Jay.
"It's definitely not, I've already been to, like, four other breakrooms and they all barricaded the doors."
"Check the door, Officer Graves."
"I'm not- I don't want to check the door."
"What if I'm telling the truth? And you look like a big dumb stupid idiot? Then what? You don't want to look like a big dumb stupid idiot in front of all your cool friends, do you?"
A palpable silence.
The jiggle of a door handle.
And then a pause, one heavy with the exhausted sigh Officer Graves was definitely giving on the opposite side of the door, “…Please open the door, Dr. Jay. This is absurd.”
“Not until you hear our demands.” added Researcher Jeremy, who had been through dozens of hostage situations and knew, even by the fresh age of 26, exactly how to handle this scenario.
Officer Graves conceded. “Okay…”
“We're keeping the cake.”
“And the party hats!”
“And the party hats.”
“You… we can't let you keep the party stuff, sir,” Officer Graves went on, voice growing heavier with defeat with every passing second, “The higher-ups are like, actually really mad about this.”
Agent Nadira gave a cold, mocking half-laugh and another drag from her cigarette, “Tell the higher-ups they can suck my chronic debilitating depression.”
Another silent few seconds, and Officer Graves made his concession. “I'm leaving to go take care of a few other break rooms, if you can get everything together in the next fifteen minutes or so, I'd really appreciate it.”
“OFFICER GRAVES IS COMING FOR YOUR PARTY FOOD, EVERYBODY STAY ON HIGH ALERT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” Researcher Jeremy broadcast through the break room intercom.
“Yep. Okay. Thanks, thank you for that. I'm- I'm leaving now.”
Dr. Jay, Researcher Jeremy, Agent Nadira and Officer Stuart pressed their ears and/or helmets to the door, listening with feverish focus to the receding tap of Officer Graves' steps as he retreated down the hall.
Agent Nadira spun around, the high-pitched squeak of her stiletto heels on the linoleum rivaled in volume and sharpness only by the piercing gasp she gave upon viewing the state of their precious ice cream cake. Somehow, in the commotion, they had all forgotten one of the defining traits of ice cream. And whether from the passage of time or the stress of the situation, the cake had softened into a thick, sticky puddle.
Researcher Jeremy evaluated the circumstance with quick efficiency, immediately pulling open several counter drawers open in search for implements he and his comrades could use to eat their cake. He found one drawer full of napkins, one full of paper plates, one that was two feet deep with a very tiny man in a cage at the bottom, and one full of half-used paper towel rolls. He turned around to Dr. Jay, his expression severe.
“There are no forks in here.”
Dr. Jay huffed, disbelievingly and anxiously and paint. “Are there spoons?”
“There are not spoons.”
“What does your calculator say?”
Jeremy took the next moment clicking numbers into his watch.
The calculator screen read “Forks=0, Spoons=Also 0.”
"We have these," said Officer Stuart. Clutched in one tactical-gloved fist was a handful of chopsticks.
Dr. Jay rolled up his sleeves. Sometimes at the Foundation, one had to take risks, or dares, or similar dangerous actions. It was all part of the job. He knew that, Jr. Researcher Jeremy knew that. Agent Nadira and Officer Stuart knew that. Officer Graves knew it too. So Dr. Jay made the difficult choice, scraped spray paint off his fingernail, and picked up a pair of chopsticks.
"We only have fifteen minutes."