Opening Statement
Application to form MTF Rho-87
Material Requisitions
Personnel Requisition
CLASSIFIED - MTFC

To:
Director of Mobile Task Forces

From:
Dr. Ahmed Faisal, Site-19

Subject:
Proposal: Application to form MTF Rho-87 ("All Chewed Up")

There are multiple GoIs currently that produce anomalous items for public use. MC&D, Wondertainment, The Factory, etc. All of these GoIs have produced edible anomalies of some kind, but in generally small and exclusive amounts. As most competent Foundation employees and assets are aware, the consumption of anomalies is unwise. The issue is that most people in the world are not Foundation employees - a fact I am concerned many members of Foundation command have forgotten.
We are now aware of a small GoI operating somewhere in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, with a particular spotlight on Seattle, Boise, and multiple small towns throughout the region. This GoI has so far only produced a single SCP - SCP-2867, a strain of anomalous cheese that currently constitutes a Class III memetic hazard, a Class V security breach, and a Class VII biohazard - it is self-replicating, compulsive, infectious, and available and promoted for public consumption. It has appeared in cheese shops, supermarkets, and delicatessens throughout the region, appearing as various recognised and unrecognised brands of gorgonzola, mozzarella, and most recently, cheddar and monterey jack cheeses. They are chemically and visually indistinguishable from normal cheese, and containment has been left to individual tracking and destruction of infected individuals.
This is an exceptionally expensive, overt, and time-consuming process, that has so far been relegated to Foundation assets embedded within regional emergency services as well as the occasional direct-force MTF deployment. The costs of constantly deploying, withdrawing, re-deploying, and covering-up said deployments are astronomical, as well as resulting in drastically inefficient containment. As with any production-based skip, the final goal is to locate, disable, and contain the method of production and those responsible.
Enter Jack Terrence and Terrence Farms, the former being an unknown PoI and the latter being the assumed producer of SCP-2867. From physical evidence and witness statements, we have determined Jack Terrence to be the original creator of SCP-2867 and Terrence Farms to be their business. Jack Terrence's identity, location, and motive are all unknown, and we know just as little information about Terrence Farms as we do about them.
A small statistic you won't find in the listed file: SCP-2867 has killed over 220 people, including one agent, two Foundation assets in the Seattle PD, and my former colleague, Dr. Pradesh. We have destroyed over two tons of captured product; about 1/10 of the amount we believe has been produced so far. We've spent upwards of thirty-three million dollars on containment; amnestics and situational blanketing alone have set us back five million. SCP-2867 is a Keter-class SCP; and it deserves such treatment. The response it has been allotted as of yet has been noting short of irresponsible and ignorant.
My request is simple. With command of a small and decently-funded Mobile Task Force, we could most likely neutralise the threat before it gains significant national or international spread. My proposal would require very little; our entire requisitions form can be found on the next page.
I hope you take my request into consideration.
With regards,
Dr. Ahmed Faisal, Site-19

Request to form a provisionary MTF
Designation: Mobile Task Force Rho-87 ("All Chewed Up")
Classification: (check one) Provisionary Regional Task Force

[X] M (Combat)
[X] C (Containment)
[ ] G (Engineering)

[ ] E (Esoteric)
[X] T (Tracking)
[ ] U (Undercover)

Mission Statement:

Provisionary Regional Mobile Task Force Rho-87 ("All Chewed Up") will monitor cases of unexplained disappearances and other phenomena relating to possible SCP-2867 infection. Operatives will conduct in operations to destroy sources of SCP-2867 and ultimately capture POI-17357 (Jack Terrence) and the GoI Terrence Farms.

Task Force Organisation:
Operations

A group of retired agents and operatives from multiple arms of the Foundation. Ops will be responsible for boots-on-the-ground intelligence gathering, neutralisation, and investigation. Ops will be armed with civilian and military-grade munitions, and will be responsible for the purchase of most of their own equipment through back-channel sources. Operations personnel will be participating in live combat and operations that are uncleared by local law enforcement, with minimal intervention from existing Foundation assets beyond what is determined completely necessary. A complete operations personnel list can be found on the personnel page of this dossier.

Research

A selection of doctors specialising in memetics, biohazards, and food-based anomalies from multiple arms of the Foundation. Research will be responsible for all technological research and conceptual development. Due to the indeterminate goals of the research team - whether focus is placed on developing a chemical countermeasure, a 'cure', or reverse-engineering the process through which SCP-2867 is created - the purpose of the research time will be specifically determined on a case-by-case basis.

Operations:

Requirements:
2x Operational SUV
1x Albatross UAV
2x standard infiltration/breaching kit
4x standard infantry kit
1x Class IV MIIU (Mobile Infantry Incineration Unit)
4x SCAR-L assault rifles
$150,000
Further requisition capacity at Task Force discretion

Research:

Requirements:
Standard microbiology testing equipment
Mobile testing/containment apparatus
Standard memetics research equipment
18 (eighteen) units Class-B amnestics
Class V disinfectants
Class V biohazard protections equipment
1x warehouse in the city of Seattle, with space to accomodate a ten-man operation
$350,000
Further requisition capacity at Task Force discretion

Overall Operations:

MTF Rho-87 will require assistance and cooperation from MTF Iota-10 ("Damn Feds") in preventing local law enforcement from interfering with operations.

Overall Estimated cost of outfitting: $1,985,575

MTF Rho-87 requires, at most, ten individuals, each with distinct skills. Preferred personnel:

Name: Dr. Albert Donovan
Location: Site-19 - Biohazards/Epidemiology department
Status: Active
Reason: 40+ year research experience with biological/infectious hazards.
Service: Site-19 Biohazard Sector.
Name: Agent-in-Command Aaron Judd
Location: Ely, Nevada - deployment ready
Status: Active, pending assignment
Reason: 25+ years experience in urban combat/tracking.
Service: 11 years USMC, 7 years MTF Nu-7, 7 years MTF Delta-5.
Name: Agent Jennifer Lyndon
Location: Site-19 (on security remand; pending disciplinary hearing)
Status: Active, pending assignment
Reason: 10+ years experience in forensic investigations.
Service: 3 years Australian Federal Police, 4 years MTF Epsilon-11, 3 years [DATA REDACTED]
Name: Rs. Maya Li
Location: Site-19 - Memetics department
Status: Active
Reason: 5 years memetics research experience.
Service: Recent recruitment c. 2012
Name: Agent John Atkins
Location: Site-19 - tertiary personnel housing
Status: Active
Reason: 15+ years biohazard containment experience
Service: 5 years Canadian CRBN, 10 years MTF Beta-7
Name: Agent Frank Moretto
Location: San Juan Island, Washington
Status: Semi-Retired - leverage through service pension
Reason: 35+ years urban tracking/investigation experience
Service: 10 years with the NYPD, 2 years FBI, 23 years MTF Pi-1
Name: Agent Vasiliy Cherenkov
Location: Site-19 - Security department (active response/incident patrol)
Status: Active, pending assignment
Reason: Personal transfer request
Service: 15 years Foundation security asset
Name: Dr. Mary O'Malley
Location: Site-19, Biohazards/Epidemiology department
Status: Active
Reason: 45+ years anomalous pathogen research
Service: 45+ years research and testing w/ Foundation assets
Name: Rs. Daniel Earl Doe
Location: Site-19, pending permanent assignment
Status: Active
Reason: 4 years research into anomalous foods/food products
Service: Recent recruitment c. 2013

Overall personnel count: 10
Operations personnel: 5
Research personnel: 5

This is a mixed bag, but I think we do need to address this seriously. Don't give them too much free reins, keep them held tight. Let's have a play with this one, shall we?
O5-5


“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”
~ John Greenleaf Whittier

It was overcast, that day.
For many people, the middling grey British sky would be heralding something to be wary of – at the least, rain to dampen spirits and ruin picnics of those optimistic enough to believe Summer meant sun. For others, it would be integrally connected to their mental health; a heavy sky pregnant with an equally heavy burden, making promises of something awful and unpredictable.
For Laurel, it was a blessing in disguise.
She tugged her pajamas off and stood in the dim sunlight that came through her bedroom window, arms wrapped around herself in protection and in defense against the chill that was definitely not born of Summer. Eyes narrowed, she took in the outside world with a sense of defiance.
No shadows. The grey smothered the sun and left people to walk alone. Laurel thought of Peter Pan, thought of shadows sewn to soles of the feet, wondered where the shadows went when the sun hid, or slept.
As she tugged on a t-shirt that didn't smell so godawful that it should have been quarantined, and a pair of jeans that only had suspect stains near her ankles, Laurel tried not to second guess her urge to go out. Her fingers twitched anxiously and she reached for the lighter in her back pocket. Right. Fuck it, she could do this. It, the thing, it didn't own her, goddammit!
She slipped on a pair of trainers, grabbed her keys and a handful of suitable money from the change dish near her front door, and left the flat. A sign near the letterbox proclaimed in understated, but red, text -
'Night worker sleeping. Please do not knock!'
Blinking at the slight light the daytime provided, Laurel hesitated in the doorway to the outside world. Her mind registered that the cloudy day was rather depressing, but it was better than the sun.
Taking a deep breath, Laurel began her walk to the local off license. It would take five minutes, tops. Walk, walk, walk don't look down, pause at the road, watch for the cars, walk, walk, walk fuck, is it getting sunnier?, pause again, cross again you used to do this every day, don't worry, walk, walk, walk, hit the shop like a nosebleed.
The owner of the shop peered at her licence like he always did and she again contemplated getting her date of birth tattooed on her arm. This was taking time. Time was something she didn't have. Windows were something the shop didn't have. It was all making her incredibly anxious, her mouth dry when she finally asked for her cigarettes, her hand shaking as she snatched back her ID.
The transaction felt like it took forever, but she was soon back outside and flipping her lighter open. She absently wondered when it became automatic to leave her phone at home; when it became automatic that she didn't want to check messages and phone calls from friends. Her back pocket felt strangely empty without the cumbersome object, but she increasingly found that a social life was too dangerous, these days. Too troublesome, when…
She absently shook her head as she also shook her lighter and flipped the lid down on it. Fuck it, forget it. She slipped a hand into her pocket, her other hand smoking the cigarette with slow purpose. She wanted to smoke until her throat was sore, as if curing a problem. She bowed her head and absently pulled her hood up over her dirty hair, suddenly self-conscious now the desperate drive to get fags had left her.
This self-consciousness is why she was staring at the pavement when the sun suddenly decided to reappear.
It happened instantly. One moment, darkness on the pavement, the threat of rain; the next moment, the shadow appeared next to her, as it had done half a dozen times in the last few months. Laurel's breath caught, but she couldn't bear to lift her head and look away from the figure.
It was simple enough to tell what the shadow was. What it had been. What it might have been. A head that came up to Laurel's hip, a head with hair in pigtails on each side of the head, and a motion that indicated skipping – two skips to Laurel's one step, keeping pace with her. Laurel swallowed dryly, shook her head.
'It isn't there,' she told herself, firmly. 'You're going mad. You are mad. It's the night shifts, it's the isolation, this is nothing, no-one.' As she threw affirming, if degrading, thoughts at herself regarding her own mental health, a voice from nowhere piped up. A voice she didn't know, but it was definitely female and definitely young. And…pink?
'Was I an accident?'
It may have been the tenth or so time she had seen this shadow, but Laurel had never had the figure talk to her – if, indeed, that was what was happening. She didn't feel confident she wasn't only providing her own narrative. Her chest hurt, and she looked around to ensure she was alone, so it didn't feel so weird when she said out loud -
"No. You were very much wanted. I just… lost you."
'Well, I'm not lost right now!' The voice was quick to reply, cheerful, definitely pink. 'You found me!'
Laurel felt like her own grey-speckled thoughts were disturbed, thrown about, struggling to find a foothold in her own brain, struggling to make sense of what was going on. It was this unnerved disruption that allowed her to speak freely.
"…I guess I did."
It hurt her chest more to try and ignore the shadow than to actually give it attention. She couldn't pinpoint why, and she could hear her own breathing, heavy, as she tried to stumble for some moment of reality. She tapped the ash off her cigarette – it had consumed so much of itself that over half of it blossomed and blew away in the wind. Shit.
She kept trying to ignore the shadow. The doorway wasn't that far away.
'Who was my daddy?'
The voice was sweet. Almost lyrical, humming to a tune forgotten in childhood, going up and down in all innocence. The simpleness of the question was another heart-stopping moment.
"Your daddy…uh, his name was David. He was a lawyer."
The child shadow nodded, still skipping, keeping up with Laurel, on an even plane.
"It was probably him. But it may have been a man…whose name I didn't know."
Dark shadows - why always shadows, a cold punishment - an alley by a club. Drinking, after the end of a relationship. Drinking way too much, get pushed out of the bar for being an obvious drunk. "No more for you." Some guy comes up. Handsome enough, looked sober, tall and muscular – an overwhelming strength she was oblivious to, at the start. He offers to help. Blinded by drink and tripping over her feet, she takes it. Next thing she knows, her back is scraping brick under her shirt and he is inside her, and she tries to scream but can only whimper. She hates her body in the darkness, she hates it in the shower later, and she hates it when she pees on a stick and it tells her she's pregnant. But she never hated the… thing, growing within her.
"Who your daddy was…or wasn't, doesn't matter. I wanted you."
The reply was instant, and cheerful as ever, waking Laurel from the dark memory of that night where everything changed.
'I want you too, mummy. Always.'
The shadow, which until now, had been like any other shadow, produced a hand that twisted awkwardly but stayed flat as it was lifted from the ground. It shakily turned the palm towards Laurel's empty hand, the hand without the cigarette.
Laurel paused, then took the hand. It felt like holding nothing, but when the shadow squeezed her hand, she could feel it, and her fingers tingled. It was like when her insides had tingled before the blood started trickling between her legs, before she lost the baby from the cozy nest it had made itself in her womb. She never even got to hold her, but now…
"This is as close to you as I've ever been." Laurel muttered, mainly talking to herself. She could see her front door now. The sky above was changing its mind on this moment of freedom for the shadow-child, and the sun was threatening to go in once more. Laurel swallowed anxiously, squeezed the alien hand that somehow gripped back, despite its consistency and the impossible nature of the situation. All that didn't matter right now. Only one thing mattered.
"You know you'll…go away, once I get inside."
She waited with bated breath. She wasn't sure what for. A denial? A tantrum? A sudden revelation that the shadow could do more than hold hands, that it could come to life and be the child lost so many years ago?
All she got was childish innocence in response.
'I know.' The child answered. 'But I won't be lost, and you'll find me again.'
Find her again. That meant going outside in the sun. That meant confronting this. That meant being seen as potentially insane as she spoke to shadows she was pretty sure no-one else could see. But… she had lost her child, once. Did she really want to lose her again?
Hand in hand, both continued walking towards the building. With a heavy heart, Laurel knew that her child would disappear the second they reached the threshold. The child kept skipping, seemed happy, held her hand, and continued towards their destiny, for now, motivating Laurel to keep moving too. She suddenly felt all too aware of where shadows go when the sun goes in, and she suddenly felt all too aware of the people she met in her life who hated going out in the sun, and she suddenly thought that maybe she wasn't so alone after all.
Linked hand in hand, mother and child both knew as soon as they hit the threshold, Katie would disappear. She would be gone until Laurel could face seeing her unborn child once more, on a sunny day, filled with a desperate need.


...This is bananas.
Marcus Nakamura stayed silent with fear as the armored van carrying him and Dr. Pearl Watkins rumbled softly down the road to who knows where.
Things had taken a very sudden turn of events. One moment, you're being interrogated by an EPA agent about a mutated banana pipefish. Next, you're being rushed out a door because said banana pipefish (Which somehow grew legs) ate something called a D-Class, and the man interrogating you pushes you out the door, throws a bag over your head and then shoves you into a van with an armed guard sitting in between you and your colleague.
Marcus was beginning to have his doubts about this man's credibility. What the hell is going on? Marcus felt his neck beginning to sweat as a number of fears began to hit him all at once. Is this man even with the EPA? All this talk about mutant fish and — and — what is gong on?!
Meanwhile, in the driver's seat, Foundation Agent Matthew Liu was weaving his way through traffic, trying to get off the main road so he could get back to Site-71 as soon as possible. He occasionally glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure the two scientists weren't trying to pull anything. Thankfully, it seemed they were too frozen with fear and confusion to try that. He felt a quick pang of guilt for being so rough with them on the way out, but that guilt was quickly replaced by annoyance. It was their own damn fault that they got caught up in this mess. You release a mutant fish into the wild, you think you'd be responsible to clean up after it.
Back in the back seat, Watkins began to cry.
Oh, no. Liu thought. Here we go.
"Why — hic — where are you taking us?!" Watkins managed to choke out. "What are you gonna do-do-do to us?! Please, please, I don't wanna die!"
"Pearl," Nakamura tried to calm his friend down. "It's okay, we're gonna be okay, all right?"
"Yes, yes, listen to Dr. Nakamura," Liu said still trying to concentrate on driving. "You're not going to die, Dr. Watkins, we just need your help. After you help us, you're free to go."
"You-you-you're kid — hic — napping us," Watkins voice was barely understandable between her tears and the bag over her head. "Are you g-g- hic gonna — Wh-who are you?!"
"I'll explain when we stop driving, Dr. Watkins," Matthew said, gritting his teeth. God, I don't wanna babysit these two.
"Agent Liu, should I sedate them for now?" The guard sitting between Nakamura and Watkins asked.
Watkins squeaked. Nakamura slumped.
"What? David, no, no, don't be stupid, don't freak them out," Matthew snapped. "We need them to trust us, okay? For now, just — just, I need you to stay quiet, all right? I promise, nothing's going to happen to either of you, all right? You're gonna be fine."
Matthew, Matthew, you there? The car's intercom flared to life again.
Matthew hurriedly flipped the radio to speaker. "Yeah, Morgan, I'm here, what's the situation? All good?"
Yeah, still under control. We got a team in and were able to knock the thing out. Just pumped it with a ton of tranqs. You know how this thing works though, it's always changing. It's out for now, but get your ass back here sooner than later. Wouldn't want it to eat those two you're bringing—
Liu turned the speakerphone off, quickly glancing in the mirror again. Ah, Jesus, I hope they didn't hear that last bit.
"Oh god, we're gonna die!"
"Mr. Liu? Please, please don't hurt us!"
"Uuggggggh," Matthew groaned and punched the accelerator. The sooner they got back to Site-71 the better.

Phillip Morgan, SCP-2761 wrangler, had one thought going through his head as he kept an eye on the yellow monster that was SCP-2761, or, as the staff of Site-71 had begun to call it, "Bananafish".
This is stupid.
"This is stupid," he said out loud. "No, no, this is really, really, really stupid."
As he sighed, his radio buzzed.
We're outside the gate, a familiar voice said. Matthew sounded more than a little annoyed. See you in five.
Phillip pressed the respond button. "Got it, Matt. See you soon. No problems on our end, you'll be cleared to enter."
Meanwhile, in its metal enclosure pen, SCP-2761 rumbled softly as it lay on its side, chock full of potent tranquilizers. Its yellow hide continued to exude the scent of bananas, masking the fact that its body contained what could basically be summed up as "Everything Cancer".
Except that "Everything Cancer" didn't kill it. Nooooooo, that Everything Cancer just made it a bigger pain in the ass every time it ate something. And now, it had just eaten D-5781-E, in a not so pretty fashion. And now, it had gone from a four-meter banana-salamander with teeth, to a five-meter banana-alligator. With much bigger teeth.
We're gonna need a clean-up crew in there as well. Phillip shook his head, groaning, and wondering what sorts of wrong would have to come together to make this absurd animal.
At that moment, the door to SCP-2761's door buzzed open.
Not even turning around, Phillip rolled his eyes. "About damn time, Matthew." Despite what he said, Phillip felt a wave of relief wash over him.
"Good to see you too, Morgan." Liu patted his old friend on the shoulder, then said a bit more softly. "We got company. Go easy on them okay? They're understandably a bit spooked."
"No problem." Phillip turned to greet the new arrivals. "So, you're from Aquagene?"
Morgan took a moment to take in the two scientists. Liu was right. They looked pretty damn terrified. The woman on the right looked like she actually might faint at any moment. She had black, thick-rimmed glasses and strikingly pink hair, almost like bubblegum. She was also rather skinny, which only accentuated her height; she stood a good ten centimeters above her colleague, though the Japanese man was shorter than average too. Even still, Phillip, a muscular Jamaican field agent, towered above both of them at 195.
The Japanese man was trying to remain calm. He's probably the senior scientist, maybe even the head, Morgan noted. He was a bit round, though not overweight, with prominent eyebrows and short salt-and-pepper hair.
Phillip walked up to the pair. "Hello. My name is Phillip Morgan, I'm one of the field agents that helped capture the animal you're going to study. I'm sorry we had to bring you in like that, but, we're trying to keep a low cover with this thing. Haven't seen anything like it before, and this place is supposed to be a secret."
Watkins' knees were shaking, but she felt her voice coming back. "Y-," she managed to choke out. "Who-who… are you people?"
"Y-yes." Nakamura added. "I don't think you're EPA, or-or at least no-normal EPA. What are you?"
"I'm sorry, your names are again?" Morgan frowned. He forgot what Liu had told him before heading out.
"Sorry, Morgan." Liu walked back over. "This is Dr. Pearl Watkins," he gestured towards the woman. "And Dr. Marcus Nakamura."
"Right. Thanks, Matt," Morgan said. "Dr. Watkins, Dr. Nakamura, I'm afraid we can't tell you who we are, but you're right, we're not exactly EPA. However, we can tell you that we are very much concerned with the threat this creature has, given its… mutations. We can also guarantee that while you are with us, we won't hurt either of you. All we want is your help in studying this."
Dr. Watkins gulped. "W-what's a D-Class?"
Phillip frowned. "I'm sorry?"
"I-I heard y-your voice… on the radio." Watkins said shakily. "You said something about this thing eating a-a D-Class. Is-is that bad?"
Morgan opened his mouth to reply, but Liu suddenly stepped in again. "No, Dr. Watkins, no need for concern," he said, trying to sound as casual yet convincing as he could.
"S-sorry?" Watkins whimpered.
"D-Class is just the terms for one of the drugs we mix into its food. You see, its blood and waste are highly toxic. Obviously that's a health hazard to our researchers, but we've managed create something that lowers this amount to a reasonable level." It wasn't an exact lie. Site-71 had found a way to reduce 2761's carcinogen output. Although, it didn't involve D-Class. It involved bananas.
Of course it did, Liu thought to him. Bananas. Everything involves bananas with this thing.
Watkins and Nakamura seemed to relax considerably after hearing this.
Good thinking, Matt. Morgan thought. Always quick on the draw.
"O-okay," Watkins was breathing a bit easier now. "Wh-what's gonna happen to us if we help you?"
"You're free to go, of course," Morgan said. "Of course, we will have to keep an eye on you and your company for a while after. We want this thing under wraps. You'd have to keep it a secret. If you told anyone… there would be consequences. Not that we want to go that route."
There was a potent silence for a minute as everyone in the room took in what was going on.
Finally, Dr. Nakamura spoke up. "So… how big has this thing gotten?"
Pearl shifted uncomfortably. "Um… Marcus. What?"
Despite the tension of the situation, Marcus managed to crack a weak attempt at a smile. "How big is this bananafish now? If Perkins was involved, I'm pretty sure he would have messed around with its growth rate."
"It's currently at around five meters," Morgan said flatly. "And it will probably still grow as time goes on."
"Oh… I… see." A strange look suddenly overcame Marcus' face, as if he was calculating several things at once. After another moment, he piped up again. "You said it was asleep right now?"
"Erm, Marcus, fish don't sleep," Watkins said awkwardly. "They just kind of—"
"Yes, Dr. Nakamura," Liu replied. "It's currently knocked out right behind those doors." He gestured towards 2761's containment pen. "Are you feeling well enough to look at it right now? We'll send you in with guards of course."
"I-" Nakamura paused for a moment. "Yes, Mr. Liu, I will go in right now."
"Marcus?!" Watkins said, bewildered. "What are you—"
"Pearl, it's a giant bananafish. Our bananafish." Dr. Nakamura looked a bit excited. "Don't you want to see it too?"
On the side, Matthew and Phillip exchanged nervous glances with each other.
"I — Well, I mean - But —" Pearl sputtered, confused at the sudden shift in mood.
"Pearl, a giant, mutant bananafish." Dr. Nakamura enunciated every word. "Come on, this is the kind of stuff that inspired us to start Aquagene in the first place! Thinking up crazy stuff and watching that stuff come to life!"
"Really, Marcus, really?!" Pearl's voice rapidly climbed in pitch and volume as she stared at her friend in disbelief. "You're serious?!"
"Yes, yeah, I think I am," Nakamura replied. He turned to Liu and Morgan. "We'll help you, sirs," he said confidently. "What do we need to do?"
Liu blinked. Phillip spoke up for him. "Thank you, Dr. Nakamura. We can get you geared up with protective suits right away. Matthew and I will accompany you into its room."
"Yes. Thank you, Dr. Nakamura." Liu tried not to grit his teeth as he shot a sideways glare at Morgan for volunteering him. You're enjoying this, aren't you?
Phillip's eyes betrayed a hidden grin. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't. This man loves his job.
Liu sighed. "All right." He reached for his radio. "Be advised, this is Agent Level 2 Matthew Liu, and Agent Phillip Morgan. We are gearing up for entrance into 2761's containment unit with two I-Class Persons of Interest. Clearance code whiskey, whiskey, niner, delta."
"Copy that, Liu. Clearance code confirmed. Do you accept responsibility for the two POI?" A stern woman's voice responded.
"Affirmative." Liu replied.
"Affirmative." Morgan said.
"All right, gear up. Suit room is unlocked."
A buzzer went off as the doorway adjacent to 2761's pen clicked open. Inside, Watkins and Nakamura could see neon yellow hazmat suits hanging on a rack.
Morgan and Liu walked past the Aquagene scientists. Liu turned around. "Come on, Watkins, Nakamura. Suit up. Don't worry, you'll be safe, Morgan and I will have your backs."
Nakamura nodded and eagerly followed behind. He had the look of a child on Christmas morning. As he walked behind, Watkins could swear he heard him singing a song under his breath. Except he was saying "fish". She stood still for a few moments longer.
"Why, Marcus?" she whined.
She then followed them into the room.

Ten minutes later, Liu, Morgan, Watkins, and Nakamura all walked out fully suited up. Wakins and Nakamura held packs of various medical and testing equipment. Liu and Morgan both carried giant rifles filled with tranquilizer.
A voice called out on the loudspeaker. "NOW OPENING DOOR TO SCP-2761."
Watkins and Nakamura looked at each other from behind the visors of their hazmat suits.
"Ready?" Nakamura asked.
"No," Watkins groaned.
"Great! Let's check this fish out!"
The doors whooshed open. The whole room was filled with the smell of bananas.
And Liu, Morgan, Watkins, and Nakamura all walked in.
"What… the hell."
"That is not a fish."

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I observed a noticeable uptick in events this week. So noticeable that I thought it too reckless to not report in early.
There were four events. All involved two people or fewer, but I couldn't catch any names.
The first was on Monday. It was early in the morning, before sunrise, and I was stationed on the corner of Grand and Multnomah. An older man in a suit came walking down the street from the West, and he stopped near me.
I was very still, and my act was working, and I don't think he noticed that I was a person. He took out his phone, and I caught a glance over his shoulder of what he was typing. I could pick out "can't be the Foundation", and Foundation was capitalized. Do we know of a Foundation?
The man had a gun on his belt, but I don't think he was a police officer. He didn't stay long.
The second event was Wednesday night. I was down Broadway street, by the veterinarian. Two men walked by, and they were arguing. I froze up, kept my pose, I don't think they noticed.
The taller one was saying that they couldn't do what they were doing, that they were going to end up caught, and then they wouldn't even get to remember what they did so wrong.
The smaller man shushed him. Said no, the plan will work, and the reward will be worth it. Portlands will remember us well. And he said Portlands, specifically, plural. Is that significant? But they were gone before I could hear anything else.
The remaining two encounters were on Friday. The first was in the early evening, when it was just dark enough for my act to be most effective. I was by the big parking lot on Halsey. A group of two, a woman and a large person in a suit. The woman sat down on a bench, not ten paces from me.
She sounded angry. "I just don't see why we're still going through with this," she said. "I've done my part for our partnership, and I know he must be happy." Emphasis on "he". "We're in such a fucking rut now," she said.
The other person didn't reply. Out of the corner of my eye I peeked at them, and they didn't have any eyes behind their sunglasses. Just empty sockets. Unusual.
"Fine," she said. "Let's just get out of here." She pushed herself to her feet and stomped off, the suited person following behind.
Later that night, I was waiting for a bus to take me home, right across the intersection from the Taco Bell. I was still wearing my makeup, but I wasn't trying to hide.
The exact same woman came up next to me and started waiting. She wasn't attentive, she was trying to light up a cigarette. I offered a greeting, and she yelped, dropping the smoke. She muttered some obscenity and turned to leave.
I watched her go across the street, into the parking lot of that Chipotle. When I was sure she had stopped watching behind her, I followed.
She turned around a corner in the parking lot, but when I reached the corner, she was gone. I glanced around the parking lot, but she was nowhere to be found.
I realize now that every group I encountered this week was walking in the general direction of the Chipotle when I lost sight.
I would very much like to investigate the Chipotle parking lot further. Please provide me with further instructions.
As well, my compliments on the chalupas. They are always a sublime experience.
Best,
Vera Garcia
Rotational Static Reconnaissance Specialist
Oregon Division of Secret Meetings

« Hub | Slow Animals »


The Coming Nightmare | Before the Nightmare | A Nightmare on 234 Street | Spiraling Night Terror | The Revealing Dream

August 5th, 2015. 02:02:34 A.M.
Down hallway F, and back around A. Same route as always. Don absently looked around, brown security uniform loosely cuffed to his torso, security badge lazily bouncing with each step. The hallway's spotless white walls gleamed from the dim overhead lights, a few of which flickered.
He rounded the corner, and was greeted by the giant letters adorning the entrance to the building. "Promethues Labs." He kept walking, missing the shadows darting past the entrance door.
Prometheus Labs had collapsed not too long ago. Foundation raids, as well as MC&D and GOC interference had crippled the top down structure, leaving a few isolated facilities on their own.
Fortunately for Don, and the others that worked there, no one ever really made the connection between an obscure research clinic on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama with a silly misspelling, and the anomalous organization itself. Of course, Don knew nothing about this. He was just a simple security guard. He wasn't even sure what this particular facility did. As long as the facility was open, he was happy to spend his nights doing almost nothing, collecting his annual one hundred grand, and watching TV shows he'd fallen behind on.
Don stopped in the middle of the hallway, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. A distorted ticking noise softly pinged off the tile walls, from about 5 meters ahead, and to the left. He moved quickly and quietly towards the noise, instincts and training kicked in as he drew the pistol. The bulky middle aged security guard pressed his ear to the wall.
Tick Tick Tick.
He took a couple steps back, and away from the noise.
Tick Tick Tock.
A moment of silence passed, and then the wall blew outwards towards him, in a small ball of fire and concrete.
Don managed to roll away from most of the blast, but took a glancing blow, losing his firearm in the debris as a combination of dust and smoke filled the hall. Two small cylinders rolled in through the debris, a thick cloud of white smoke venting from the canisters.
The security guard pulled himself from the tile floor, and looked to the billowing column of smoke, his ears ringing from the blast. Silhouettes darted through the thick and cloudy material, harsh footfalls barely registering over the echoes of the previous explosion. As his senses returned, the alarms blared, red lights flashing, as the sound of distant glass shattering reached him. The alarms stopped, as quickly as they turned on, surely disabled by the intruders hands.
A figure emerged from the smoke, and strode past in a flash of red and black. It ignored Don, leaning against the wall, and moved towards the front entrance. It stood in front of the sign, back to Don, as if waiting for something. "You aren't supposed to be in here," Don said, coughing as a trickle of warm fluid dripped down from his elbow. The figure ignored him, the flickering lights illuminating it briefly. A woman, red hair, wearing layered black clothing. The shaken guard pulled his phone from his pocket, only to discover there was no signal, completely ruling out contacting the authorities.
Don pulled a small metal baton from his belt, and pressed a red button on the grip. The baton extended out 45 centimeters, a small arc of electricity wafted the air with blue fire. The gap between them was closed quickly, arm rising for a vertical swing. The arm came down to a jarring halt against a gloved hand. The fingers wrapped around the device, and pulled it from his grip with surprising strength, tossing it deeper into the hall. A spike of pain in his abdomen, as he briefly stumbled back, having taken a kick to the gut.
He looked up, and was greeted by emerald eyes, burning in fire. She swung, and he tried to dodge.
He heard the words as the first punch landed across his cheek. "Too slow." Another in his stomach, a third beneath his jaw. He swung back, his fists parting empty air, before his legs were swept from below, a sudden wave of pain as he fell to his knees. He did't see the kick coming, the combat boot impacting the side of his face, hard and fast, sending Don skidding across the tile towards the column of smoke. Consciousness faded fast, as the woman's face hovered into frame one last time.

"What have we got?"
The occupants of the room turned to the speaker, a short man with a large forehead and hooded eyes. He scanned the room, counting heads. His cheeks turned red when the numbers didn't add up.
"Alright, where is she?"

The lights flickered continuously, the woman with red hair still hovering over the unconscious guard. She bent down at the knees, perching on the balls of her feet, and snapped several times in front of the older man's face. He didn't stir.
She sighed, and muttered to the walls, fluorescent lighting bouncing off the Greek letter Chi, and number 7 etched into her vest. "Too easy. Is it too much to ask for a challenge." She stood back up, and listened, the sounds of other people moving, equipment being dismantled, metal being shifted and moved. Her emerald eyes slowly arced across the hall, before landing back on the baton. She stepped over the man's limp form, towards the baton, picking it up, and turning it over in her gloved hands. Her thumb pressed into the red button on the shaft, and the baton extended outwards as before, electricity winding along its length.
A smirk took to her lips, as she pressed the button again, collapsing the baton back down before hooking it on her belt. She turned and walked back to the guard, pulling a piece of rope from her belt, and tying it around his hands in a tight knot, before gripping him by the collar, and dragging him towards the dissipating smoke.

"Anything Sal?"
"Nothing on 2546, but I'm not that deep into their database. Their security algorithms are older, but more complicated than what my field equipment can penetrate. Gonna have to download the files onto my quantum and do the analysis back at base."
"How long?"
"Download shouldn't take more than 5 minutes." The skinny man, with a pair of square lens glasses returned, fingers working away at the backlit keyboard perched on the desk of the server room.
"Good. The faster, the better."
The man with the wide forehead clicked a button on his radio. "Squads 2, 3, 4, and 5 status?"
"We're back at the vans sir. Managed to salvage most of the equipment and samples."
"You make sure to load those bio samples into the specialized containers like Dir. Andrews instructed?"
"Yessir."
"Good, make sure they stay steady. Wouldn't want you growing an extra pair of limbs."
There was a moment of radio silence. "Commander Ryley?"
"It was a joke Jenkins."
"Roger." Ryley sighed, and clicked another button on his radio.
"Kyle, Rodney, any sign of our guest?"
Two men rounded the corner back into the server room. Both appeared anxious. "Nothing. She must have wandered off."
Ryley rubbed his temples. "Where the hell did she go? And more importantly, how the hell did she get away from you?"
"I swear, she was right there behind us, and then she was gone!"
"Well keep looking till you find her, or she finds you." Ryley barked, sending the two young men scrambling.
"Commander?"
"Download completed, already Sal?" He said, fingers still rubbing his temple.
"Not quite. You may want to come here and take a look at this."
Ryley crossed the room to where Sal was sitting, pausing by the 5th squad member. "Kath, go see if you can help Kyle and Rodney. Lord knows if what Director Andrews says is true, finding her might be a challenge."
The young woman nodded, and jogged out of the room as Ryley strode to the console.
"What is it Sal?"
Sal pointed to the screen, a look of disbelief on his face.
Ryley did a double take. "Is that real?"
Sal nodded, "Timestamp confirms it."
Ryley looked back, making sure noone else was in the room, and handed Sal a USB drive. "Put that on my drive, then delete it. This stays between us. Neither of them should know."
Sal glanced at Rylely, a questioning look in his eye, but went ahead and did as requested, handing the drive back once the files were copied.
Ryley clicked his radio again. "Jenkins, do me a favor."
"What'cha need commander?"
"Make sure container 4 gets put in storage block E."
"E, but sir that's whe-"
"Just do it." Ryley cut his radio off, and sighed, eyes sinking into his skull from exhaustion. He almost didn't notice the footsteps, or the sound of cloth dragging along tile.
"Did I miss any fun?" Ryley turned slowly, and found his guest, with a security guard tied and bound at her feet.
Kyle and Rodney came scrambling back into the room, followed by Kath, out of breath. "We found her s- oh." Ryley shot Kyle a glare.
"Done!" Sal said, disconnecting the drive from the mainframe, and scooting the chair back. He turned and stopped. "Oh, Director Andrews."
Sherry Andrews looked back and forth between all 5 members of the squad. For a moment, none of them were sure what she was going to say. She smiled, showing teeth. "Time to go home."

Dir. Leep Andrews sat behind a wall of paper and folders, a veritable mountain of bureaucracy. No matter how many forms he signed, authorizations he stamped, or old reports he shredded, the size never seemed to change. Today was a bit different, today he'd managed to get through months of backlogged reports and authorizations, partially thanks to a humorous sign posted on his door by an anonymous member of the secretarial staff which read "Enter at own peril, occupant is drowning in paperwork."
The last 32 or so pages before him were the only unsigned/stamped forms in the room. 32 security personnel transfer requests. Leep's fingers massaged his temples, reading the list of reasons for each request, all of them centering around a certain Dir. Sherry Andrews.
"Harsh verbal reprimands. Continuous pay cuts, unrealistic performance expectations, constant morale degradation, assignment of menial, humiliating, or extremely dangerous duties." Leep turned to his computer, and searched for the names of each employee, pulling up their performance reviews. He might have been surprised, had any of the individuals been given good or even stellar reviews by their shift heads. No such reaction manifested, every individual had performed below average in at least 2 of the 4 observed categories.
A click pinged across the room, as the hinges of Leep's office door slowly swung open. His heart sank slightly in his chest. I was so close to being finished. Dammit.
"Place whatever you've got in the tray back there, and I'll get to it soon." Leep didn't bother to look over the stack, pointing to the tray behind him. He could hear the footsteps approach the desk, and then to his left, and behind. He pulled the denied stamp from it's place, and moved to press it on to the first form, expecting to hear the sound of paper being deposited in the basket.
"And here I was, thinking you'd never get through that mountain." A smile leaped to his lips, the familiar voice smoothing any previous worries into dust. Two hands with a strong but gentle grip clasped onto his shoulders. Leep Andrews bent his head back, and made eye contact with his wife and Site-234's other Co-director, Sherry Andrews. She bent down, and gave him a peck on the lips, hair gleaming with a crimson tone in the high afternoon setting sun.
"What's this?" Sherry reached forward, and drew one of the request forms from the desk, eyes skimming over the text. A look of satisfaction grew on her face as she put the form back on the desk. "Finally. It's about time we cleaned out the riff raff."
Leep's brow wrinkled, a small frown taking residence on his lips. "Sherry, we can't do this every time there is a member of the staff that you don't like. You've already got a reputation."
Sherry waved her hand, dismissing his concerns. "Had nothing to do with whether or not I liked them, Leep." She said, releasing her grip on his shoulders. The young woman moved a couple of items on the desk, and perched on the edge, swinging her boot clad feet back and forth. "I liked Dave, had a good sense of humor." She paused, "My "like" or "dislike" of our staff rarely has anything to do with how I behave. It's not relevant."
Leeps right eyebrow rose ever so slightly, sensing the slightly defensive tone leaking into her voice. "The reports seem to indicate otherwise."
Her face tightened into a cold and emotionless mask. "Leep, how many anomalous pathogens do we keep here?"
"Close to one thousand."
"Who's responsible for locking down the site if one breaks loose."
"Site Security."
"Who establishes quarantine with new cases. Who establishes quarantine if and when one of these pathogens gets loose? Do you see where I'm going?"
Leep leaned back in the chair, "Of course I do." His eyes caught a flicker of light, as the web-camera attached to his computer blinked on.
"Then you understand." She said, the corners of her mouth turning up in the beginnings of a smug smile.
"Yes."
"Good, then we ca-"
"I understand that you're hotheaded, impulsive, obtuse, and think you're going to get out of a reprimand for your actions." Leep said his demeanor completely changing, as he rubbed his temples.
The comments were unexpected, and caught Sherry off guard, her previously emotionless face having twisted into a visage of surprise, and a brief flash of hurt.
"I -" Leep stopped her mid-sentence, with a raised hand.
"I also understand that, despite your impulsive actions, you somehow still managed to be one of the, if not the most, forward thinking, intelligent, and compassionate people I know, regardless of the often unconventional ways in which you show it." He paused, staring up, "Despite the abrasive behavior shown to specific security personnel, it is difficult to argue that your methods failed to protect the employees of this site, and I thus don't have a valid reason to actually reprimand you. However, I would ask something of you, as your partner."
They locked eyes, Sherry's eyebrows raised slightly. Leep tilted his head to the right. Her head tilted towards the webcam on his computer. He nodded, and she registered what he was really doing.
"Could you do me two favors?" Her head turned back.
"Depends on the favors." Sherry responded, the uncertainty evident in her voice.
"Tell me when you're about to do something…unconventional."
She snorted, and rolled her eyes. "What, so you can tell me not too?"
"No." Leep's voice was firm, drawing Sherry's gaze. "So that we can do these things less obtusely…and as a team."
Again she snorted, her lips quivering as she suppressed a smile. "And?" The light on the webcamera switched off.
The grin he'd been suppressing spread across his face. "Stop being so tough. You're a teddy bear, not a cactus."
Sherry chuckled, lightly punching Leep on the arm. "You're full of shit."
There was a moment of silence, as Sherry tilted her head, checking to make sure the camera was off.
"How much of that was real?"
Leep leaned back in the chair, a solemn look on his face. "Enough to make it believable." He moved the chair forwards slightly, and put his hand on hers, drawing her attention back. "I was serious about favor one."
She nodded in acknowledgement. There was a moment of silence between them, as Leep released her hand. Sherry put her hand on his knee, and squeezed slightly. "How long have they been doing that." She nodded towards the web camera.
"Since 2546."
Sherry stiffened. "They aren't expecting us to…"
"No. Nothing like that." He paused, shifting directions. "Did the raid uncover anything?"
"Sal and the IT techs are still working on the encryptions. Don't think they'll find much, to be honest."
The conversation came to an abrupt end with a knock on Leeps door. "Come in."
Sherry didn't bother moving, merely twisting her torso slightly to the left as a young woman with dirty blond hair walked in. Sherry twisted back, her left eyebrow rising questioningly in Leeps direction.
"Er, Director Andrews," she said nervously, clearly intimidated.
Sherry shot Leep a bemused look. "New girl." he mouthed.
"What do you need Karen?"
"Commander Ryley is asking for you in the "War" room." she paused. "Both of you."
"Can it wait?" Sherry responded, non-too kindly. Leep's head turned towards her, a look of ever so slight annoyance across his features.
"He mentioned something urgent. Something about Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and a 2546?"
Sherry and Leep froze. They looked at each other, and then the girl. Sherry leapt from the desk, as Leep pushed the chair back, and stood. The two nearly collided, in a most spectacular fashion, resulting in a muffled giggle from Karen. Again, the pair looked at each other, before speaking in unison. "We're on our way."


Beneath piles of slime and discarded scrap, shaking from hunger and near-blind in the darkness, Amy held her breath. The creature was just outside her hiding-hole. The scraping noise of claws against metal filled the space. Beneath it was a wet growl, the sound of the beast's eagerness. Amy's grip tightened around the steel fragment. It wasn't much of a weapon, but the point was sharp, and it was sturdy. She didn't have the luxury of pickiness.
She yearned to scorch the creature with flame, or freeze it to the garbage, or bind it in vines. But the metal collar digging into her neck taunted her. If she tried any sort of rite, it would respond, sending a surge of electricity through her body strong enough to render her comatose.
She felt the garbage above her shift. The creature getting closer. The sound of its grunts made the scrap tremble. She could feel the weight above her lifting as it stripped her protection away. Tensing, she waited. The noise grew higher, like a dog whining in anticipation of meal. Not yet. She kept waiting. A beam of light peeked into the nest. She could see the shadow of its talons.Her muscles trembled.
Its claw scraped her back and she struck. Amy roared, leaping up from the garbage and hurling herself at the beast with all the force she could muster. They collided, fell, tumbled down a mountain of trash. Bits of broken metal and wood and wire tore at her skin. She ignored the pain, slamming the steel point into the creature's chest, its arms, its eye, grinning at its howls of agony. Before it could attack her she pushed off. She struck the bottom of the pile and jumped to her feet. A few feet from her was a broken metal beam, a remnant of the massive, dilapidated ships that filled the scrapyard.
She snatched it. Before the creature had time to stand she charged it again, beating the beam against it. It fell to its knees. She kept attacking, striking again and again, until the pole snapped and the creature was barely more than mush.
Amy let the rod slipped from her fingers. She stepped back, panting. Her whole body shook with adrenaline and fatigue. For a moment, everything was still. The world was silent but for buzzing flies and the far-off whine of compaction engines.
A moment was all she had. The creature's body was already beginning to knit itself together. She rushed off, taking a random path through the piles. If the creature caught up to her again, there would be nothing she could do. Just moving made her feel like she would collapse. Her run wasn't much more than a limping jog. Dark frames threatened to close off the edges of her vision.
She barely had time to react before the creature struck. It slammed into her from behind, launching her into a mound of trash. Clawed fingers wrapped around her throat. Amy stared up at a canine face, still half-smashed in, dripping with white blood. The creature smiled. And spoke.
“I've been waiting so long for you.”
Amy gurgled, struggling for breath through its grip.
“When you return, remember this. You belong to me.”
And then, between one blink and the next, the world was replaced by darkness. The grip around her throat disappeared. The garbage and stench vanished. She was no longer trapped by a monster but huddled in a featureless cell in total blackness. The only sound was her gasps and a constant, far-off scream.
In this room there was no time. No testing to mark the days or weeks. No meals to count off the hours. How long had she been here? A week? A month? More? At first she'd tried counting her sleep cycles. They'd begun to blur together before she reached five, the division between reality and unconscious slipping away. The only moments of clarity were when she was yanked away to another universe, hunted like an animal. Even if she escaped the creature, she always returned here. To the Foundation. She wanted to scream. She wanted to slam her head against the wall until she felt her skull crack. But it wouldn't do any good.
She may have been able to cope if it weren't for the isolation. The first time they'd imprisoned her, three years ago, the Witness' absence had relieved her. To finally have the voice gone, after it ruined her life- it was a small relief in the horror of the imprisonment. This time the Witnesses' disappearance felt like a missing limb. So she lay on the floor, day after imperceivable day, wondering when this would end.
The answer came in a brilliant light that bisected the darkness of the cell like a razor. Amy squealed as it flooded the room. She clamped her eyes shut, but she could still see the screen of flame-red burning through her eyelids. The sound that came from her cracked throat was less that of a human than a wounded animal.
Large hands grabbed her shoulders. A pair of handcuffs slid over her wrists. The hands yanked her up. Still blinded, she struggled to catch her balance and stumbled to one knee. Hands dragged her back up. Without waiting for another movement from her, they began to pull her forward. Amy struggled, struck at the hand holding her, she was still too exhausted from her fight with the creature. There was no choice but walk with them or fall
She risked peeking one eye open. At first, all she saw was a faint blur under the brightness. Slowly, that focused into a tile floor. She opened the eye the rest of the way and peered around. There were three guards with her, all dressed in identical grey uniforms. The one dragging her by the shoulder had the kind of bulk typically found only in bodybuilding competitions. Moving her barely seemed to be taking him less effort than dragging a suitcase.
The hallway they walked through was so similar to that of the last Site she had been kept at— sterile white walls, featureless tiling, silver doors— that if it weren't for the signs labeling it otherwise, she would have thought they were the same. The guards guided her through the maze of corridors, taking seemingly random lefts and rights, occasionally doubling back, at one point walking in a large loop for five cycles. She imagined it was meant to confuse her. But after finding her way through the shelves of the Library, memorizing the route was instinctive. She doubted it would do much good. If she was trying to escape, the last place thing she wanted was a route back to her cell.
The halls shifted slightly as her group travelled. The difference was only in atmosphere. She felt her captors tense as they turned to enter one hall, relax as they departed. She saw how the flow of people swelled and shrank from one corridor to the next, how traffic could go from pushing against the walls to nonexistent after rounding a single corner. She heard variations in ambient noise, the far off sounds of lab work, testing, occasional training. Amy committed each detail to memory, building her mental map one line at a time.
They stopped in front of a metal door identical to every other in the facility. As it swung open, Amy glanced at the placard on the wall. Procedure Room G-10. Beneath it was a block of smaller text, which she didn't have time to read before the guard shoved her through the entrance.
The room reminded her of her high school science lab, if it had been redesigned by a dominatrix. The only surfaces were polished black and chrome. Shelves running along the walls held equipment that could have been scientific tools or instruments of torture. In the center of the area sat several beds that looked disturbingly like platforms for dissection.
Another set of guards was already in the room. Between them stood a boy who couldn't have been older than 14. His dark skin was covered in pale scars, and his black hair had been shaved to stubble. The pale blue jumpsuit he wore was identical to Amy's in everything but size and the number printed on its breast. He looked away as Amy entered the room.
Rows of lights flickered to life along the ceiling as the door slammed shut behind her. The guard released her shoulder and yawned. Across the room, one of the Warden's guardians leaned in to whisper something to his partner. They both chuckled.
With as little movement as possible, Amy tested her handcuffs. The chain linking them wasn't longer than her pinky finger, but she could tell it was strong. Two thin wires snaked between the links. They probably functioned under the same principle as the collar. She saw identical shackles on the neck and wrists of the boy.
There was an opportunity here, but it would be like trying to throw a bullseye while swinging upside down. If she didn't time everything exactly right, if the guards were a bit too quick on the uptake, if her calculations were just a bit off… well, she'd just end up back in the cell. Or dead, she supposed, but that wasn't the way these people operated. She doubted they would kill her until she forced their hand.
Behind her, she heard the door open, and a pair of footsteps enter the room. A man stepped into her vision, a tall, dark-haired doctor she'd never seen before. He posted himself between the two sets of guards. He stared at the wall in front of him, as if thinking, but Amy couldn't shake the feeling that he was perfectly focused on her.
“There's been a lot of discussion about what to do with you,” he said. He paused, as if waiting for a response. When the room stayed silent he continued, “Especially you, 4521.” He pointed at Amy without looking at her. “Several people thought the project should be scrapped. That trying to utilize two humanoid objects, especially ones who had been so… damaging to our organization was foolhardy. I disagreed.”
Amy glanced at the guards. They only seemed to be half-paying attention to the speech. The one who'd dragged her through the halls was standing with his arms crossed, eyes seemingly unfocused. She tried shifting in place slightly. He had his arm in his grip before she was even aware he had moved, his brown eyes staring into her. He glared at her for a moment, then dropped his grip and resumed his stance.
The doctor's eyes glittered above his smile. “We've had… unfortunate results from utilizing the anomalous in the past. It's understandable that so few are willing to entertain the idea. They don't realize the nature of this war is changing. To leave you locked in a cell would be a waste.”
He walked forward until he was inches away from her. Amy fought the instinct to step back. She hadn't realized it when he was on the other side of the room, but he towered over everyone else. The labcoat he wore looked so tight it might burst. His arms, hanging by his side, almost touched his knees. “So. Will you help save the Foundation?”
Just like that, all resistance left her. It was like being slapped in her face. Amy blinked. Once. Twice. Played the words back in her head. Looked for the hidden meaning. There had to be something, right? Because just taking the question at face value… it was ludicrous. They'd held her captive for years. Chased her through entire universes. Threatened her family. And now they were offering her a job? She struggled to think of a reply, but could only come up with “Are you fucking serious?”
“Entirely.” He gestured behind him, to where the boy stood. “The Warden has already accepted our offer.”
Amy looked over at the boy. He looked away, expression unreadable.
“What happens if I don't?” she said. “You throw me back in the cell?”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “But if you do accept, we'll give you new quarters. Not a cell. You'll be free to roam the site as you please, with most of the privileges of a normal human agent. Full use of site facilities. Training with a Mobile Task Force. Just to start.” His voice rose with excitement as he spoke. “Prove yourself sufficiently, and we may even allow you off-site privileges. Do enough for us and you may see your family.”
Amy jolted back. Her expression must have changed when he said that, because he almost seemed to pounce forward.
“They'll be rewarded for your work, of course. Enough to live comfortably for the rest of their lives. Provide for your brother's schooling. Ensure your parents never have to work again, if they don't wish to. All you need to do is say yes.”
Amy swallowed. It felt like someone had shoved sand down her throat. “What if I don't believe you?”
The doctor shrugged. “Your only other choice is the cell. And the next time we put you in, you don't come out. We'll keep you alive, don't worry about that. We'll lock you in the dark and extract every scrap of data that we can. And when that's finished, we'll forget about you. Keep you in the dark so long you'll forget what it is to see light. Believe that.”
“Oh,” said Amy. A feeling of revulsion rose in her. The thought of working with these people, helping them in any way… She thought back to the testing they'd done on her for years, the slaughter of the Warden's village, the fear those in the Library spoke of them with. Being a part of that? In any way? It would be selling her soul.
And then she thought of the cell. Of going back into the dark.
“What do I have to do?”

« ... And When They Catch You They Will Kill You... | Hub | Ride the Dragon»


I once knew Aaron Siegel — a mathematician, a physicist, so many more in his brief flare of a lifespan — and yet at the end of it all he was a teacher, a man attempting to spread the fire he stole among the branches before he burnt out. He was the man who found the first loose thread in the laws of physics and we were left behind to pull at the tear, revealing an entirely new cosmos of gears and levers behind the patchwork tapestry we'd held sacrosanct for so many years.
His gift was an endless appetite for exploration, for experimentation. Other men might have found the path and reserved it as a curiosity, blamed it on a trick of the imagination, turned it into a cheap novelty for cash: instead, he experimented. He took it apart with pendulums and compasses and theodolites, akin to conducting surgery with a flint knife and a burning fire. Yet at the end of it all, he came away with equations and observations and a mind unparalleled until its death.
A match can start a fire, and I will admit there was no other man who could have bootstrapped the Foundation around himself as he did. But it burns out too fast to sustain, and years before he died we found ourselves loose and adrift, the kind of absent wandering that too many resources and too much time breeds. We'd started with goals to reshape normality and had settled for mundanity, taking our wonders and horrors and hiding them away, afraid of the public eye.
I was surrounded by people with the power to sculpt destinies, yet they had grown so enamoured with the clay that they forgot what they were constructing. So I created goals for us. It was blindingly simple – you always start with small goals. We were an unstoppable force only so long as we preserved our monopoly on this information, and the root of the anomie I detested so much was this omnipotence.
So I created an aggressor for us to fight. In the summer of 1915, I went to Detroit and gave Aaron's papers to a young man named William Boeing.
In retrospect, perhaps it was a bad idea to let the group know about him so early – Boeing had neither the time nor the resources we possessed, and his own research was limited. Still, there was a kind of genius to his work that James and I came to admire, a single-minded devotion to his work and his cause – a cause we lacked in our flighty pursuits.
By the time the rest of the group took him seriously, James and Carlos had started to doubt their allegiance to the group, and were this close to joining Flyboy (or Prometheus, really, a matter of semantics). On the other hand, Thomas was furious that we'd allowed an outsider to not only take our research, but profit off it. We convened in New York. Me, James and Carlos voted against the plan Thomas had set out. The rest sided with Carter, and our first motion as the Overseer Council passed 9-3.
I watched from Staten Island when we sent him hurtling into purgatory, New York.
From then, I knew what my goal was — to provide one for the others. Thomas had grown embittered with his fortunes as Boeing prospered, and it was a simple matter to engineer his defection with Jeremy as they formed their old boys' club. Carlos wanted more from our group, wanted to return to the old aspirations of happiness and scientific progress, and I wholeheartedly (and perhaps sincerely, though I no longer deserve to use that word) supported him in his venture. He died in Laascaanood a happy man, with James by his side at his last moments.
Caldmann grew shaken in the wake of his friend's death and began sinking his research into what lay after that — he dug up Boeing's old cryonics tanks, began mounting expeditions to recover fragments of holy artifacts from Gods mechanical or otherwise, and found himself at the center of an Initiative a decade later. Stimson retreated to America with a briefcase full of papers and amnestics, his life in the FBI spent chasing after spirits he couldn't convince anyone else to believe in.
The Foundation continued, even as it fell apart from the inside. Redundancies were there for a reason, and ready employees filled the places of the ones that came before, Lights and Manns and Masipags alike cycling through the great machine. But I remained – I had bodyguards to take care of the outside, 500 to fix my body's failings and 006 to ward off time.
Years passed, as they do, and I find myself once more at Aaron's laboratory in Essex. As I look back on my career as the Administrator, I find that there is only one redundancy in this machine: namely, me. The Foundation believes it has a purpose, as does the Insurgency, as did Prometheus, and as the Arcology will, yet I've grown disillusioned over the years maintaining this very illusion.
So this is my final letter to myself. When I found Aaron's body on the path, lying somewhere between the n and the (n+1)th rotation up the hill, I found his last words. He claimed that everything required a sacrifice, and maybe he was right: his life for the amnestics, mine for the Foundation.
But sometimes there's nothing to receive the sacrifice, no god up in the clouds – there's only ever been nothing, nothing we haven't created. And I intend to change that today.
You gave up your life, Aaron, and now I give up my control over it all. Let's hope something out there's willing to take it.


"... And then flushed the rest of them down the goddamn toilet."
Dr. Pearl Watkins, lead scientist at Aquagene Pet Shop, hung her head as she slumped in her chair. She wasn't sure what to feel. At the moment, it was a mix of guilt, for the fact that they had caused the EPA such trouble, horror, for the fact that her employee's little stunt had grown into a monster, and most of all, exasperation, for the fact that said employee was an absolute jackass.
"If we find that man again, I swear to God." Dr Marcus Nakamura, head Aquagene scientist, was bristling with indignation his former employee's carelessness. To add insult to injury, it was he and Watkins that were now under fire from the government, and not Perkins, who was probably off at another company doing all sorts of stupid to that new poor business.
The man questioning them arched his eyebrows, disbelief etched in every crease of his face. "I'm sorry?" he said.
"Oh, my, fricking, God," Dr. Watkins' voice squeaked slightly as she ran her hands through her hair, accidentally dislodging her hair clip and causing her vision to be obscured by curtain of pink. She always dyed her hair according to upcoming Aquagene set themes. Pink was the new craze, with the new release of the insanely popular Gumball Guppies. She thought those little guys were absolutely adorable. "Mr. Liu, I— We are so, so sorry, for the trouble we've cause you. You— It looks like you were able to capture it?"
"That is correct…" Foundation Researcher Matthew Liu still trying to process what these two people had just told him.
How in the world is this company able to have a clean record? He thought. If they get into these messes all the time how the hell can they—
"So, um, Mr. Liu, is it possible we can, um, take a look at this fish now?" Watkins asked nervously, biting her lip.
"I'm…sorry?" Liu blinked.
Watkins flushed, realizing how stupid those words sounded. Their company was directly responsible for this mess, and the last thing this man would want was for them to—
"What I mean is," she began. "We, um, well, we're the company with the original techniques for creating—"
"That's right, Mr. Liu," Mr. Nakamura piped in. "If it's possible for us to examine this thing, we might be able to help you find a way to—"
At that moment, Researcher Liu's comm flared to life.
Liu, you still with those two? A male Jamaican voice spoke in a hurried tone on the other end.
Liu picked up his radio to dial back. "Excuse me," he said to the pair of scientists. "Yeah, Morgan, talk to me. What's going on?"
We've got a situation with the bananafish. It ain't pretty. The man's voice sounded slightly confused when he said "bananafish", as if he wasn't sure that was the correct term to use.
"What's going on? Did it grow again?" Liu's brow furrowed in concern.
Uhh, yes, yeah, Matt, it did. But, it, uh, it grew because it… Matt, man, there's no easy way to put this, it ate a D-Class and now it's walking around on its hind legs.
There was a brief moment of silence in the room. Matthew stood still, once again not quite believing what he just heard. Watkins and Nakamura on the other hand, looked confused.
"What?" Liu groaned. His day was about to get a whole lot worse.
"Um," Watkins managed to get out. "What's a D-Class—?"
"Morgan, what's the damage report? Did it get out?" Matthew spoke rapidly, looking back and forth angrily between his comm and the two Aquagene scientists sitting on the couch across from him.
What? Oh, no, no, it's still in containment, Liu, all locked down, but—
"All right, thanks," Liu interrupted. "Morgan, please note, I'm bringing the two persons of interest back to Site-71. Notify the guard stations so they don't try to mind wipe 'em when they cross the door."
"What?!" Watkins squeaked.
"Um, Mr. Liu?" Nakamura asked nervously. "What do you mean by—"
"You two, shut up, you're coming with me," Liu snapped, as he pushed open the door and began walking out. "And you're gonna help us figure out this hot mess of a so-called fish you made. Follow me downstairs please, we're gonna have to speed back to base."
The two Aquagene scientists sat still on their couch, not sure what to do at the sudden turn of events.
Matthew looked back and stared. "Now!" he barked.
The pair jumped, then hurriedly followed the Foundation agent out of the room.
As they rushed down the hall, all three people's heads were filled with confusion. But one thought was felt by all of them as they made their way down to the Van that would take them to Site-71. Everyone's day was about to get a whole lot more interesting.
Liu bristled. This is ridiculous.
Watkins whimpered to herself. This is crazy.
Nakamura bumbled behind. This is bananas.

Bananazilla Begins, Part II »


LORDXVNV

Deus Volt! by LORDXVNV

LORDXVNV's Author Page

It was an absolutely beautiful day, and Michael was overjoyed that his daughter Charlotte was finally getting married. It had long been time since his brood needed to be expanded, but Charlotte, to Michael's eternal joy, was a good Christian girl and was waiting until marriage. After that, like all good Christian girls, she would "be fruitful, and multiply." It was what the Lord commanded, after all.
The wedding seemed like it would be eminently joyful, and soon the bride and groom were exchanging vows.
"I do."
"…I do."
"If there is any objection to this marriage," intoned the preacher, "then speak now, or forever hold your peace."
Michael would have been the happiest father alive, but then he saw a groomsman that he had never met before. This was odd. He was quite close to his now son-in-law, and had personally vetted each and every one of the participants in this union of the flesh so as to birth new vessels to be shaped in the image of the Lord — sorry, in this ceremony of Holy Matrimony before God — and he had never seen this groomsman at any of the rehearsals or in any memory of the past.
The more he looked, the more wrong it seemed, and the more certain he became that it wasn't human. Now, some would have accused Michael of having a rather questionable history when it came to human rights, but he knew, in the pits of his sacs of flesh, that there was nothing human about this particular groomsman. It was a deeply unnatural shade of orange, and its chin seemed to melt off of its body as if housing a venom sac in its throat. Its hair seemed stiff and dead upon its scalp, and its eyes housed predation. Among the relatively youthful, supple bodies of the other groomsmen, it stood bloated and wrinkled, unnaturally aged yet completely ignored.
Michael stood, fighting an unnaturally soothing buzzing at the limits of his hearing.
"Daddy?" said his daughter, shocked.
"Who is that man?" said Michael, controlling his voice as he pointed at the chitinous (he was sure it was chitin, now, for that was a gift given to him by the Lord) monstrosity.
"This, dad?" said his now son-in-law. "Come on, you know who this is! It's Cousin Donny! Don't you remember him?"
"SAD! I get the best, the best marriages. I love you. I love you all. Sad! Marriage is a very successful chance of success. Total knockout. Sad! When you're a god they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the marriage. Sad! Losers and haters won't get it! Sad! Bigger and bigger is the esophagus of negotiation. Too much winning!"
Everyone cracked up. The bride was crying tears of joy. The groom was doubled up in laughter. The fucking thing had this stupid smug grin on its face, like it had just won some stupid argument.
"I want you out of this building," said Michael. "I want you away from my family. This is a house of God, and I'll not let you defile it any further."
"Come on, daddy," said his daughter. "Don't be like that. It was just a little raunchy, that's all. He didn't mean anything by it."
"It's just locker room talk," said his son-in-law, which caused Michael to feel a sudden and profound pang of regret.
But there were much more important things at stake. He stepped into the aisle, ignoring the hysterical crowd, and made his way to "Cousin Donny."
He grabbed it by the arm and was about to force it out, when—
He was staring at the smallest shadow of something that transcended vision. It stretched beyond all comprehension, for it was older than mankind and older than the faith he knew to be true. It was the primal insect, that had roamed the skies above the dinosaurs, the great Cicada, that was reborn from every death, called Khepri by the Egyptians1. It would live forever, rising from nothingness and returning to it, while the humans that now infested the earth would pay it lip service, knowing nothing of what they worshipped. He was insignificant in its shadow. He could not fight it. He would go back and accept the payment his child was due to render. He was nothing. He was scum. He was—
He was Michael Richard Pence, follower of Ion, devout of Yaldabaoth. He was an heir to the true god of the earth. He was a master of the flesh, for he was a Zend of the Nälkä, and he knew the secrets buried deep within the Bible, the secret Christianity barely spoken of in the waking world. He was a man of ambition of vision, and he would not bow before a false idol. He had already resisted the terrible demons of gear and wire that claimed to be the gods of tomorrow, but a being of flesh? Of discarded chitin and muscle?
Why, he couldn't have asked for a better canvas.
As a Zend, he wasn't given the same level of power afforded to the Karcists, but his superiors had seen to meld his flesh with that of the electric eel. When he had first received his gifts, he had despaired, thinking them a curse of the Machine. Oh, how wrong he had been. Even the most instinctive beasts pulsed with lightning in every motion. Instinct was lightning, the God-given fire of Yaldabaoth. The power he wielded was as divine as that of more traditional fleshcrafters, and possibly even more versatile, as he had learned in his experiments with all those young men.
"Mike Pence Electroshock: 10,000 Volts!" he shouted, involuntarily, as lightning discharged from his hand into the chitin and flesh of the homunculus before him. It screeched deafeningly, but Michael didn't care. His baby girl was in danger. The flesh needed to sustain itself, and no god would stand in the way of that.
He could feel the tendrils of an ancient god striking through concept-space at him. It didn't matter. The lightning purified. It culled. It was an eternal cure for all that ailed. That was his role in the Faith of the Flesh. Some bred, some built, some sculpted, but he changed. Beneath the veneer of rationality, the mind was nothing more than instinct vaguely shaped by cosmic coincidence, nothing more than the primal creation of God, the one true God, and that no matter what anyone might try, His Will would not be denied.
As the homunculus chittered, Michael created an electrical skeleton, arching throughout the homunculus's body. The creature had no recognizable brain, so the circuit would be imperfect, incapable of higher thought; the creature would still be incoherent, most likely, but it could now be programmed, nudged in specific directions at his discretion. With luck, it would keep its anomalous properties; if so, its ramblings could sway even larger crowds. That horrid cicada demon had yielded to the might of God.
"Daddy?" said Michael's daughter, blinking confusedly. "What just happened? Why are you up here?"
Michael looked out at the crowd. The laughter had died down, and everyone… everyone seemed as if they hadn't noticed anything strange at all. He suspected that it was the creature's effects, that something about it short-circuited the logic of lesser minds, and if that were the case…
"Nothing to worry about, sweet," he said. "It's… it's just your Uncle Donny. He's just a bit confused, but he's a good friend of the family! Don't you remember?"
Here was the perfect puppet, who would advance the holy cause of the flesh. Michael could only imagine what would come next. There was a Karcist, ruling in Russia, whom Michael planned on turning to for advice; and when their plans came together, all the world would be theirs.

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Footnotes
1. Khepri's only a beetle in the myths because Egyptians didn't have the words to describe cicadas.


The following is a collection of all relevant documentation regarding the conflict between Foundation personnel and agents of Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd. over the purchase of SCP-2253.

_
Records and internal correspondence of Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd. concerning SCP-2253.
_
Inventory Statement

S73V3/N5C6K/83ER5

Status
Acquirable

Demand
High

Value
Not for Sale

Availability
Unique

Identifier
Stephen Crane's Pub and Brewery

Description
Item is a relatively small brewery located in Springfield, New Jersey, in the United States. Alcohol produced on the premises will sometimes have a stronger flavour.

Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

_
Initial Report

Author
Francis Connelly
Date
████ ██, ████

Interest
High
Identifier
Stephen Crane's Pub and Brewery

While on holiday after another assignment, a number of locals directed me to the item of interest. Though it is no small artefact, the rather odd name and abnormal flavour and colour of their product warrant further investigation. Possibly a Foundation front.

File Opened Under:
S73V3/N5C6K/83ER5

Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

_
Electronic Correspondence

S73V3/N5C6K/83ER5

Sender
Francis Connelly
Recipient
Gideon Branson

Good afternoon, Mr Branson.

We spoke earlier this week about the purchase of Item S73V3/N5C6K/83ER5. I was wondering if you had completed the draft, yet.

Respectfully yours,
Mr Francis Connelly

Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

_

RE: S73V3/N5C6K/83ER5

Sender
Gideon Branson
Recipient
Francis Connelly

sorry for any delay, mr Connelly

I am not really a master of words myself so iI gave the job to a mate. she is very good with writing letters!! oh & sh e can b trusted shes in the same business as us. no hard feelings mate, right??? haha

Gideon Branson
Celebrating 20 Years in Sales!

Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

_

RE: S73V3/N5C6K/83ER5

Sender
René Dermott
Recipient
Francis Connelly

Mr Connelly,

Our mutual associate contacted me. I accept the task and have attached the letter you wanted. No payment over unsecured networks, please.

Sincerely,
René

Attachment: SALE_LETTER.txt

Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

_

WARNING: An error occurred when accessing data. Do you still want to open?

Close document

RE: RE: S73V3/N5C6K/83ER5

Sender
Francis Connelly
Recipient
Gideon Branson

Mr Branson,

DELETED TEXT: What on Earth were you thinking?! Do you really want to split the prestige about this find three ways? I have no idea how to get it into your thick skull that LESS PEOPLE MEANS MORE FOR US.

I received the letter. Thank you.

Respectfully yours,
Mr Francis Connelly

Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

_

RE: RE: S73V3/N5C6K/83ER5

Sender
Francis Connelly
Recipient
René Dermott

Ms Dermott,

Thank you for the file. I will send it immediately.

P.S. I have not heard of you before, but it seems we are both acquaintances of Mr Branson. Perhaps we could have a lunch sometime?

Respectfully yours,
Mr Francis Connelly

Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

_

RE: RE: RE: S73V3/N5C6K/83ER5

Sender
René Dermott
Recipient
Francis Connelly

Mrs Dermott.

Thank you for the money.

P.S. I have not heard of you before, but it seems we are both acquaintances of Mr Branson. Perhaps we could have as little contact as possible in the future?

It's never going to happen,
René

Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

Log of Conversation Between Owners
_

Please input credentials.

Accepted.

Messages obtained through the ████████ chat service.

** Connected to user JerseyBoyz
*** Current time is: 04:37:20 AM
<brewmeisterUSA (04:37:20)> heyyy man whats up??
<JerseyBoyz (04:38:10)> Nothing much, u?
<brewmeisterUSA (04:38:53)> got a wierd af email
<brewmeisterUSA (04:39:06)> hang on ill send it to you
<brewmeisterUSA (04:39:40)> work adress ok??
<JerseyBoyz (04:41:02)> Yeah that's fine.
<brewmeisterUSA (04:41:41)> k
<brewmeisterUSA (04:42:11)> lol your never gonna believe this shit
<brewmeisterUSA (04:42:36)> you think its a con???
<JerseyBoyz (04:44:09)> Hang on I'm looking at it…
<JerseyBoyz (04:50:17)> LOL WTF
<JerseyBoyz (04:50:34)> This is hilarious! "To the proprietors" LMAO!
<brewmeisterUSA (04:50:51)> i knwo right??/?
<brewmeisterUSA (04:51:12)> its some kinda scam. gotta me
<brewmeisterUSA (04:51:15)> be*
<JerseyBoyz (04:51:32)> IDK man, this looks legit.
<brewmeisterUSA (04:52:08)> you really think so???? hmm hang on ill do some digging
<JerseyBoyz (04:52:31)> Okay. Hey, did you meet Diego last night?
<brewmeisterUSA (04:53:04)> did i ever!!!
[IRRELEVANT DISCUSSION OMITTED]
<brewmeisterUSA (05:07:23)> k so you were right they look legit but kinda shadey??
<brewmeisterUSA (05:08:40)> like theres like no presense online or site or nothing
<brewmeisterUSA (05:09:14)> but some ppl talking about "Professionalism" or some bull
<brewmeisterUSA (05:09:23)> idk what to make of it tbh……
<JerseyBoyz (05:09:37)> Damn, that IS shady…
<JerseyBoyz (05:09:53)> Hey, be right back.
** User JerseyBoyz is AFK - reason: idle
** User JerseyBoyz is Active
<JerseyBoyz (05:11:36)> I was thinking. Should we tell him?
<brewmeisterUSA (05:12:10)> lol YESS this is limey AF he'll love it
<JerseyBoyz (05:12:27)> Haha okay! See you soon, man!
<brewmeisterUSA (05:12:43)> bye dude
** User JerseyBoyz is Offline

Foundation documentation regarding the incident on ██/██/████.
_
Field Report 2253-V
_

WARNING: THIS DOCUMENT IS ONLY ACCESSIBLE TO THOSE WITH LEVEL THREE SECURITY CLEARANCE AND ABOVE.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR (WILLING OR OTHERWISE) COMPLIANCE.

DATE OF INCIDENT: ██/██/████
LOCATION OF INCIDENT: Springfield, New Jersey, USA
ANOMALIES INVOLVED: 2253
EXTERNAL ORGANIZATIONS INVOLVED: Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd.
CASUALTIES: No deaths, one hangover (treated with aspirin).
KILLED/CAPTURED: 3 agents, two male and one female.
RESOURCES USED: Standard equipment, Class-B amnestics for fifteen police officers, 3 shot glasses

TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW 2253-V-4
Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████, director of the Metanormal Occurrences Committee, conducted an interview with Sgt. Diana G█████████ (MTF-█████-██) about the events of ██/██/████.
Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████: Please state your name for the record.
Sgt. Diana G█████████: Huh? Oh, yeah, sure. Diana G█████████, MTF-█████-██.
Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████: And you were present during the events of ██/██/████ in Springfield, New Jersey? Is that correct?
Sgt. Diana G█████████: Yes, sir.
Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████: Right. Well, then, would you explain what happened there? Please be specific, this is going to be included in the final paperwork.
Sgt. Diana G█████████: Leans forward in chair. Okay, so I'm eating lunch when I get the call. [Deeper voice, mocking tone] "Get off your ass, Di! Some nutters are trying to take the place!"
Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████: Mhmm.
Sgt. Diana G█████████: So then I say: "Who would be stupid enough to assault here of all places?" That place is paradise — the best assignment I have ever had. Right next to this incredible deli that made my sandwich that day-
Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████: [Interrupting] Who?
Sgt. Diana G█████████: The Parker Brothers Deli. Real nice guys, the folks that own it-
Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████: [Interrupting] No, I mean who assaulted it?
Sgt. Diana G█████████: Oh! Oh. Okay, so I get my gear on and hop over there, and I see three bastards from Micky Dee's arguing about something. There was a lot of p-
Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████: "Micky Dee's"?
Sgt. Diana G█████████: You know. Marshall, something something.
Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████: Oh, I see. Please continue.
Sgt. Diana G█████████: Right. So these three whackos are there. Already secured the building, some civvie called the cops, a total clusterf[EXPLETIVE OMITTED]. I go through the back door and hug the walls until I reach the front, and all Hell breaks loose.
Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████: What do you mean by that?
Sgt. Diana G█████████: I'm getting there — so the first visual I get is these nutters taking cover behind a table that they knocked over or something. Glasses, beer, those little novelty hipster bottle openers — all being flung at them. There were maybe three or four customers cowering behind anything they could find, too.
Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████: Is it true that the apparition in question was-
Sgt. Diana G█████████: [Interrupting] Who? Steve?
Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████: Yes.
Sgt. Diana G█████████: Oh, yeah. He was pissed. Kept them busy while I got around and detained the intruders.

[Long pause, no talking]

Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████: You're f[EXPLETIVE OMITTED] with me, aren't you?
Sgt. Diana G█████████: I swear it's the whole [EXPLETIVE OMITTED] truth.

[Longer pause, no talking]

Mr. A█████ K██████ S██████: [EXPLETIVE OMITTED]

_
René Dermott, Francis Connelly, and Gideon Branson had been monitoring the target for weeks, now. Their rival was good, no doubt about that. Outwardly, the place seemed like a normal business. Sales and tax records showed no suspicious activity, and the background checks on the owners came up clean. No one would suspect a thing if they didn't know how they operated. Arrogant, always arrogant. Too obvious with their cover, and, in the opinion of Mr. Connelly, terribly ordinary. This business required finesse — the sort of skill unique to their organization. Evidently, Francis' colleagues disagreed with him, because they were preparing to capture their target by force. Their usual methods had fell through, and his partners, being unaccustomed to field work, chose to risk it all and vanish rather than continue operating in the open.
"You good, Fran?" Gideon Branson said with genuine concern, a rarity in his line of work.
"Terribly so, Mr. Branson, thank you," replied Francis.
"You talk like you are from a movie, Connelly," René Dermott commented with unconcealed distaste.
"Why, thank you, dear René," Francis chided with concealed distaste.
"Ahh, that's just how Fran talks, Mrs. D. He don't mean nothing by it, I swears," said Mr. Branson.
They continued to prepare themselves in silence. Each had a small firearm in case things came to that, though only one of them knew how to use it. Gideon parked their stake-out car in an alley across the street, and all three met and casually walked into the brewery. It was empty, save for a young man behind the counter and a few customers sitting and enjoying their drinks. Almost immediately, the hanging lamps began to sway slowly. Then, the light bulbs exploded and the building was thrown into darkness. A few people screamed when the lights went out, but there was only a moment of blindness.
A soft green glow radiated from behind the counter. As it grew brighter, tables and chairs began to levitate. The faint outline of a man became distinguishable in the eerie light, and shot glasses hung in the air with the furniture. René Dermott, Francis Connelly, and Gideon Branson barely dodged a table when it sped toward them without warning. They sought cover behind it after it landed to protect themselves from an onslaught of cheap dining furniture.
"Shoot it, for the love of God! Shoot it!" Francis yelled.
Several shots were fired into blackness, until no bullets were left, but this only seemed to increase the speed of the projectiles.
The green glow crept closer to the three intruders. Just as Sgt. Diana apprehended them, a ghostly voice filled their ears…
"Tell King George that this is how we party in America."