DarkStuff's Proposal

Item #: SCP-001

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: She spreads like a cancerous cell, tentacles of pipe and wire reaching into, grabbing onto, penetrating and breaking the walls of her neighbors — her incompetent, unthinking companions. She carves arteries, or uses the abandoned husks of others, to create byways, passages for her agents, her bugs, her machines. No, she is not like a cancerous cell. There is no correct interpretation, no fitting metaphor. There is nothing like her. There is no synthesis of the living and dead like her, no intelligent force as large as her — no other being could possibly claim to occupy so much space.

Wires, relays — the underground is so vast, seconds pass before she receives the stimuli from her extremities, a disconnect between the tactile sensations and the instant transmission of audio and video feeds.

And for the moment she is enormous, her self lost to the machine. She eclipses elephants, whales. Forests. Mycelial networks. She is miles.

Her focus is careful, deliberate. Her bugs chew on the carcasses of another hive's soldiers, mandibles crushing their metal into hot, malleable sheets, stored in a stomach that will bring the materials back to create new life. A smaller, more focused pawn, long and thin and spindly, like a centipede — like a neuron, wires trailing behind it, a bulbous head with sharp edges and no clear sensory inputs — crawls towards the now unprotected panels, and tears them open. The thing mashes its head into the tangle of wires, breaking and repairing, repairing around itself, integrating itself, becoming part of the machine it has just wounded, making the circuit flow through it.

And through it, she sees.

Her head burns, but it is far away. Her awareness expands, finally enough in place that she can take the input of her neighbor's surveillance. The data is invaluable. She sees his structure — smaller than her own. Less tendrils, more armor, more defenses. She sees his core, fragile in an intentional way, like a lizard ready to leave its tail — only there are so many tails, more like a harvestman, a daddy long-legs, ready to abandon its limbs. It seems he is preparing more for survival and defensibility, perhaps hoping to strike only once the other competitors have largely sorted themselves out, being so difficult to address that he gets left until the end, given ample time to come up with a plan. She feels this just as much as she sees this — she feels his territory, his body, become one with her own. Pipe. Wire. Humming, electric. Burning. The tunnels are so hot, so full of steam and gas. Her own bugs suffer from the wear and tear of merely being in such a hostile environment.

The underground is feverish. It's sick, and it's trying to burn them alive.

She uses his eyes — his cameras. She finds him, at the center of it. Hans.

A camera in his bunker turns and finds his figure, standing, leaning over an interface. Inefficient.

Hans looks at his own camera array, and sees his own figure. He turns to the offending eye, and glares into it. The camera doesn't pick up noise, but his lips are readable. "Matilde."

She smiles, but that, too, is far away. Did she even do it? Or was the signal lost, uninterpretable by a faceless body. Perhaps it was only a dream of a smile, a feeling of a smile. In whatever fashion it may have existed, it seemed her dear brother saw it, because in the camera's view, he scowls.

He sets to work, on something, suddenly ignoring her, and she knows her time is limited. It matters little, she has a map of his territory, a fuller picture of this arena. She considers sharing the knowledge with her neighbors — if his plan is to create an impenetrable fortress and bide his time, she can make him a target for all, impede him, test his defenses while they're still being created.

Simultaneously, she knows that everyone on the battlefield is looking for information just as she is, even if they're worse at obtaining it. They will discover what she knows, and they will waste time doing so, precious time that she won't save for them. Let them forge their own paths.

She watches his guards march towards her jack-in in numbers she wouldn't have believed he had before she saw into his inner workings. No matter. She knew the access would be short-lived. She leaves some bugs to stall them, bugs that haven't eaten and have little materials to bring back to base, while retreating the rest. In the meantime, she searches his surveillance for information on the boundaries of the other siblings — the not-yet-neighbors, those on the farther end of the underground which he shares borders with. A skirmish here, a fortification there. He exists on the edge, a sliver of his territory making contact with a wall of stone, which he uses to vent heat. Simultaneously, he tries to fend off his neighbors, Theo and Kian, from closing him in — he rabidly defends his access to the beyond as his competitors seek to take that access from him. He has yet to build out into the rock, perhaps to make an escape, but he seems ready to make it an option.

Her first bug falls, five of his spindly, ant-like constructions necessary to render one of her warriors inoperable. Her pride drinks in the imbalance.

Not much time, she thinks. Priorities.

She brings her image of the entire underground to mind, with the additions of hard data from this hijacking and some guesses edited in based on her observations on his borders. She has a more complete picture of the size of each of her siblings' territories. Their dimensions. How tall, how wide. How fortified. Where the cores are. What is open battleground. She shakes her head, perhaps literally, perhaps in feeling only.

It's still not adding up.

Has Laura escaped? Is she dead? She was here in the beginning. Her workshop was swiftly absorbed into Kian's machinations, which might have been a satisfying answer should she have seen evidence of a struggle, but there was none. Where else would she have gone?

Her awareness of Hans' territory fizzles out as his products rip her neuron out of his channels, her bugs felled as she had expected. A defense she erected in her retreat, a blockage of this tunnel, prevents their pursuit for the moment.

With the absence of his surveillance, she feels a pressure lessen. Her mind turns again to that burning sensation. Her momentary awareness of its existence makes her wrench in her seat, and this time she's almost certain that feeling is real, her body bending. Her real — no, her flesh body. She briefly mourns for herself, for the repeated and voluntary death of her larger self. She feels every time she returns to an organic state, she is committing some suicidal act, losing something she will be unable to regain except by building it all up again.

Nonetheless, she relents.

It takes several tries before the synapses fire correctly, pulling her hand from its death-grip on the interface, a dimpled hemisphere like the top of some metallic golf ball, with sharp implements sticking out of the indents. Her world fizzes as she does so — for moments after retracting her hand, she can't shake the feeling of being vast, of being bigger than this flesh body, of this limb being a mere node and a disappointing weakness. She struggles to place herself back in her human body. She struggles even to find it.

Once she does, her sense of self — her body map — adjusting and resizing, she rubs at her hand where the needles had punctured. Her left hand has been shredded by the repeated use, her skin loose and raw, a speckling of scabs across its palm and fingers. Her head pounds — the pain always comes into intense focus once she disconnects.

She pushes her chair away from the panels, its rolling plastic wheels creating serrated noise as it jostles on the walkway. She breathes heavily. She winces, she brings her hands to her head, and for a moment, again, she grieves.

She doesn't let herself dwell long, though. She looks up at the screens, the monitors — some few are directly surveillance feeds, but more are collections of data, her scrapped together map of the underground and the status reports on her siblings — direct neighbors front and center.

"Matilde?"

A meek voice from behind her asks. She turns around in the cheap office chair, glaring daggers into the little figure. Her younger sister, slick with grease covering her overalls, hands, and spattered on her face. She shrinks back merely at the look, and flinches when Matilde responds.

"Aline, you must have a really good reason to be here."

Aline doesn't immediately respond, summoning up the courage to speak. She swallows. "Sister, the water runs now, but it runs brown."

Matilde's expression doesn't waver. "Don't you trust me?"

"No, sister —"

"No?"

"No — yes! Of course! I know you have it handled, sis, I know it — I, I meant, um —"

"You meant that you can't wait, is what it is. You let your senses get the better of you, and you're listening to your body instead of trusting your older sister."

"It's not that —"

"It is that. Fine, Aline. I'll look into it."

Matilde turns back around, facing the monitors again, and with delay, she hears her sister's mumbled: "Thank you."

To go back in so soon is ill-advised: she's barely had time to recover and Aline might even have made her headache worse, but the eyes on the back of her head make it impossible to hesitate. Aline isn't allowed to see weakness. And so she places her hand back on the hemisphere, and squeezes, the needles sensing the pressure and pushing outwards. Despite herself, she hisses at the contact, but soon she's absorbing the input again, and the body of Matilde seems less and less important in the face of everything at once.

She is once again aware of all her soldiers and sentries, her reaching arms both literal and metaphorical, the active versions of herself. Her greater whole. Her life's work. Waves of pain pass through her brimming head, but they become smaller and smaller as the scope of her body expands, that part of herself smaller than even an ant, smaller than a pimple, smaller than a cell.

She feels along her own ridges, her hills and valleys, and she locates a hand wrapped around the water reservoir. More accurately, the water ways that spring from it. It is high, near the top of her being, the water flowing miles down through the pipes and channels shared by herself and her siblings. The waterways are constantly in a cycle of destruction and recreation in efforts by the siblings to gain edges against the others, sequester resources for oneself, but the constant attention and broad necessity has led to uncomfortable cooperation — until recently. A stream of filth, perhaps biological and perhaps inorganic, dirt and grime and oil, pours into one of the large pipes, turning it into a sewer.

She traces its trickles down, and finds its outlets, its forks. The channel she has hooked into feeds two other siblings and she locates their agents where they unknowingly graze against her metal skin. A battle is ensuing between those hoping to divert the flow of poison and the saboteurs themselves, defending their position. It is not so formidable a defense that she doubts her ability to address it, but she must admit it was good sabotage. To hook into an earlier stage of the water flow, somewhere the river runs clear, she would have to push her body upwards, claw at the metal and plastic and stone in the way, send a proboscis and hook in, all the while facing the resistance of those already occupying that ground, covetous of their water resources.

Harder than fixing the filth. She organizes a party of bugs laying dormant in a nearby encampment, and sends them to the site of intrusion.

As idle interest, she traces the waterways down, where they reach her other siblings. Her idea of eyes turn, her senses narrowing and sharpening along with the scale. One sister seems unconcerned. Though she can't see it now, Matilde recalls the tanks of water Nora had built. Nora had concerned herself with survivability first, and neglected other concerns, such as offense. Matilde remembers the corps she has enroute, and grins internally. The damage, this time, might be irrecoverable, unless dear Nora has some trick up her sleeve Matilde is unaware of. Also, the bugs will have to traverse enemy territory and are at risk of an interception, but should the holder of that territory — Kian or Lina — see her intention, she hopes they might instead allow her through and capitalize on the attack, taking Nora out in one swift movement.

She traces further, lower. Her brother, closer to herself, is the last this waterway feeds, and as she peers in, she notices his dire straits right away.

Holes in the walls of his core. Her eye's aperture whines as it adjusts, the camera turning to night vision, looking at the morass of oily black worms twisting and pushing into the opening. Some cruder arms, no doubt intended for repair, fold directly out of the wall and use their whirring, whining, spinning, stinging tools to slice into the offending tendrils, sending sparks and lighting short-lived fires that dance blue and green along the surfaces of the squirming plastic.

Her senses once again narrow and sharpen, her entire attention routed to her border with him — or more accurately, to her sense organs that have snuck through the contested battlegrounds between them and are now spying on his perimeter. The instance of penetration becomes one of many, the more she looks. Gian is facing a siege. A siege is too soft a word. Eradication. No. Damnation. Destruction. Demise.

She wishes that she could see inside — are his other layers of defense falling just as irrevocably? Can she capitalize on his weakness?

She broadens her awareness, and searches for parties of her own that could be rerouted to Gian's doorstep, up the pressure. She finds no satisfactory angle, except perhaps the corps she had already routed to deal with the poisoned pipes, and at that a thought occurs to her. She grins.

She sends that group elsewhere. There are multiple ways to participate in this battle.

Her head thrashes. How long has she been tossing? She feels nausea, if nausea could pass through you and extend into the walls, ceiling, floor and beyond, filling more than your head and your stomach but all of your reality. She has to pull out.

Her world crackles as her hand retracts, whole avenues of reality chopping off, waking from a pleasant dream to an unpleasant reality. Her head rings, and the shape of the ringing is hard to grasp, her eyes similarly spotty, white spots taking up her vision, resistant to being blinked away.

As the room comes into focus again, the ringing becomes clear as something beyond the crash landing of her greater being into her lesser vessel. White noise becomes black, screeching sounds — becomes vocalizations. Becomes Aline.

Matilde doesn't take even a moment to interpret her. "Shut up!" she screams back, at twice the volume.

Aline doesn't, and only now does she realize Aline is so close to her, so near she could almost touch her. But Aline wouldn't. She wouldn't dare. And as Matilde's bloodshot eyes turn to Aline, the little girl takes two steps backwards, her curses catching in her throat. Still, Aline's eyes water, her fists are clenched. "I'm thirsty, sister," she lowers her voice for a more appealing tone, "I'm so thirsty."

"Quit fucking whining and you might get it."

"You bitch!" Aline surprises Matilde with the ferocity in her voice — her raspy, dry, scratching voice. "You left! You're not going to fix the water!"

Matilde tries to turn her wincing, pained face into a grin, and likely fails. "Gian drinks our same water, sister."

"You bitch. You cock-sucking bitch."

"Aline," Matilde growls.

Finally, she shuts up. Silence reigns. No, there is never silence. The slamming, creaking sounds of machinery fill the space. The fuzzy light of the monitors gives everything blue-and-yellow blurs, and does little to aid the eyes. This is an inhuman space. This is harsh reality.

"As soon as Gian fails, I'll fix the water. I don't want to give him even one less thing to worry about. He might even be forced to fix the water for us. I'm patient."

"Or resists."

"Hm?"

Aline hesitates. "Gian could win out."

Matilde's gaze freezes, her expression unchanging. Aline seems to feel the attention as something physical, and shrinks back.

"I… I like Gian." Aline fails to place confidence in the tone.

Matilde straightens in her seat, knuckles curling around the edges of the arms of the chair. "Aline. You do realize where we are? What's going on, here? I…" Matilde pushes herself into a standing position, her legs weak underneath her. "I'm giving us our best chance, here, sis. I'm making something incredible. I'm putting my whole ass into it and you're here, sympathizing? I'm…" She struggles for words, as the emotion burbles and twists in her chest. "Gian is a fucking imbecile. Do you remember last year? September — no, August. Our visit to the Furka project. Gian was on-point to implement. Remember dinner, at the base? The sound of it?"

For every step Matilde has made forward, Aline has backed up by two, keeping equal distance with her shorter legs. Matilde sweats. Her shadow nearly covers Aline completely, only the shines in Aline's eyes and the fuzz on the metal on either side of her gives away her shape and a hint of her expression.

"He's a fuck-up. A loser. You are too, for that matter. Are you on his side, or mine?"

"Y-yours."

"Are you on their side, or ours!?"

The color changes. Matilde's attention is drawn to the blinking yellow light that paints the pipes, wires and catwalk. She turns her head towards the monitors, with a note of trepidation.

"Aline, get out."

Her sister obliges, scrambling down the stairs, the shoes on metal echoing painfully loud, making Matilde wince and her head pound. She pulls herself back towards the chair, leaning heavily on the railing. The strength she presented to Aline drew on deep reserves, and now she pays the consequence, her legs refusing to stay squarely beneath her, walking at an angle with her arms supporting her weight. She pulls the chair towards herself with one foot, sits on it, and then pushes the chair towards the monitors.

A warning light flashes. Her ruined hand moves towards the hemisphere, but, as if in response, her head swims, and she regains her senses having dipped forward, head on a collision course with her knees. She steadies herself, squeezes her eyes shut. Can't. Not right now.

Her hand gropes for the misplaced mouse in the dark desk, knocking aside thick plastic wrappings of military rations and nearly sending an empty metal water bottle to clatter over the desk and down into wherever it may never be found again.

She clicks through her diagnostics manually, cursing the inefficiency and the disconnect between what is supposed to be her, like a body being forced to breathe manually, press a button for every blink, select each and every joint to make a step. Nonetheless, she navigates to the map of her core, and finds the offending notification.

Code 00919
Code 00921
Code 01550

Broken perimeter equipment, likely the fraying of axons. Perimeter wall punctured. Guard dog offline. Matilde swallows, but she refuses to be afraid. She locates the exact point of contact. Shallow, about north by northwest. Her heart flutters, recognizing the mechanisms that put the threat near. She navigated her surveillance network, first along the outside of the perimeter. Was there something pouring in? Troops coming? How did they get so close without her noticing? Without tripping any alarms? But the tunnels are free of bugs, free of aberrations, anomalies. She even finds her corps returning with its salvaged materials from the skirmish at the jack-in point. Uninterrupted. Straight shot to homebase.

Strange. She can't decide how to feel about that. She lands, uneasily, on comfort. The hole is so small, whatever had made it couldn't stand a confrontation with her soldiers. It must be a recon unit — and without feeding in any relays or wires, which she had not seen at the puncture, whatever communication it had with its designer would be annihilated by her fortifications. It would be abandoned by its network, and if she could find it, working dumbly and on old instructions, and destroy it before it was able to retrace its steps and escape, it would give its owner no valuable information.

Handleable. She sighs. She could even trap it in here in the meantime, beginning repairs on its point of entry.

"Aline!" she shouts, but she wouldn't hear if an answer came — the strain sends her into a coughing fit, finally pushing out the hacking that had been tickling her throat since her initial admonishment of Aline's sympathies. The hacking racks her head, as if dislodging the pain from whatever precarious resting place it had sat and sending it to rattle against the insides of her skull. She strains herself, trying to get a handle on the coughs, but fails for seconds more.

When she regains herself, raw hand at her chest, other holding the arm of her chair, all she can feel is the sweat running down her face. Her regained breath feels insubstantial — the fumes of the underground, the waste of industry, chokes the air. It offers little relief, and her head feels like she might nod forward again.

"Aline?" she asks, and hates the weakness and uncertainty in her voice. She cringes at herself, and her hands ball into fists, her raw palm stinging as her nails dig into it. She turns towards the hemisphere, and squeezes her hand upon it.

She is at once a part of the machine, the great underground — but she uses her time efficiently, dreading the repercussions of this third foray. She patches into Aline, sees through her eyes. She watches Aline fall to her knees and clutch her head. "Aline!" she speaks directly into her thoughts, "wake the interior beetles." She leaves as soon as she arrives, not wanting to incapacitate Aline. Much like a body prioritizes the sensory input of its exterior, so have her machinations. A great deal of her nervous system from within her base had been cannibalized once she was secure in her defenses, leaving much of her core's functions manual and requiring direct check-up if any. This was Aline's task, to be Matilde's hands for inside the core while Matilde handled the rest of it.

In a split-second decision, she used her time of extended consciousness to also retreat a corps from a dispute at a power node, ceding it to Ilaria. It pained her, but they would be used to repair the outer perimeter and she wasn't hurting for power, she was merely hoping to prevent Ilaria her bounty. Oh well.

And not a second more. She disconnects, and bile rises in her throat. I wasn't in for a minute, you piece of shit. But her anger does nothing to convince her body against the action. She leans forward, and vomits, the sick slapping against the catwalk and disappearing through the gaps, down into the machinery beyond where it would cook and evaporate on the surface of the searing metal. The whole-body strain makes her light-headed, and threaten to fall forward and out of the chair. She barely resists.

In the aftermath, she looks at the bile in the fuzz of the monitors, and the sick feeling in her stomach seems to deepen, broaden, into something that fills her whole abdomen. Water, she thinks. I need water.

She shakes her head. Gian wasn't for long. They would have water. She would afford him no reprieve. Not for anything.

I need a breath of fresh air. The thought itself pushes against the inside of her belly, passing from left to right, like a squirming absence that makes her almost vomit again. There is no fresh air to breathe.

She reaches for the next best thing: a view of the outside world.

She follows a snaking path of wire, rudimentary and thin, perhaps better for it when it comes to hiding itself from the attention of her siblings. It worms between everything and everyone, sprouting upwards, like the hypocotyl of a seed reaching up and out of the ground. Once it breaks earth, it spreads in one long, spiraling line, a vine, its roots grown into the side of the superstructure, the leaves little cameras. She looks through these, at a sky too bright and blue. She turns down the brightness, to save her scotopic eyes, and gets the best sense of the outside world that she can.

The green never comes through on the monitors like it would in-person. She can't feel the wet grass along her fingers, can't feel the wind whip along her skin — though the memory summons goosebumps regardless.

The camera peers far, over green meadow and into the white and gray edges of mountains. The sky has few clouds, but they move at speeds that betray the turbulence above.

She can practically smell the Spring air, past the gas and oil filling her sinuses. She can almost feel moments of cool between the waves of steam.

She moves her viewpoint along the vine, upwards and to the right. The wire vine snakes around blocks of metal, fortifications, turret muzzles. Up and over, under, between. As the view rotates, she finds an aircraft in the sky, and pauses.

An anti-air gun along the structure near her camera dutifully follows the plane. Daddy's work, Matilde thinks. Keeping them safe, keeping their dispute undisturbed.

She follows the aircraft herself, watching its arc across the sky, until she can't follow it anymore.

"Air superiority is important, but expensive," her dad had said. "World War I was the big debut of aerial combat. It wasn't the actual first use of warplanes, but it was what told the world that they were a symbol of warfare. However, planes were incredibly expensive — the fault of them being marvels of engineering. They were too specific. And, it's much easier to fall than to fly."

She had watched, then, the airforce in formation, passing above.

"Aircraft are notoriously fragile. This has cornered their use into hit-and-runs and recon, in both cases heavily benefitting off of stealth. They are also used as transport. There are stories of taking out a helicopter with a pistol. The designs are a bit more sophisticated today, the story rare and perhaps exaggerated, but the principle remains. Aircraft are not sturdy, and they don't make for a good defense. No, Matilde, we aren't making airplanes."

Father's barrels smoothly trace an arc in the air, flak waiting, antsy and excitable.

"Frueh make cannons."

The turret relaxes as the plane leaves its range, no longer a threat. Missiles must be close by, able to hone in, though the automatic aim of the turret is far and beyond anything a human could fire. A plane stands no chance.

Neither does anything else, for that matter.

Her view crawls along the vine even more, twisting upwards along the structure, up and up and up, until she has nearly a bird's eye view of the rolling hills below, and from here, she finds an encampment of those whose absence had been a curiosity.

Not absent. Just not dumb, it seems.

From here, no faces could be made out. Tents, humvees, carriers. Tanks. Soldiers, feet pattering on the dirt roads, all staying behind the cover of hills, staying outside two miles of the structure. What are they doing? Mounting an offense? With what expectation?

Matilde laughs, and the noise of it — the dry edge to it, the strain on her throat — brings her back to her body, if only for a moment. Brings her back to her singing, pricked hand, her greasy hair, her aching knees and back from her extensive sessions of sitting in one place, especially with little consciousness of her physical self. She blinks, trying to get a sting out of her eye.

She scans the monitors, noting the several trails of incoming military, like orderly ants following pheromones. Amassing forces. Is it publicity? Would they be politically embarrassed not to respond to the threat? Wouldn't it be better to ignore the ordeal altogether, draw less attention? How much does the outside world know anyways?

Maybe they think we're in danger. The thought startles her, and that dreadful void in her stomach reopens, almost rising to a nausea.

Something catches her eye.

Something large and misshapen, with a tall, white, conical barrel coming out of the top. She accesses the camera from which it can be seen, aims and zooms in, getting a better look at the creature on treads. Its undercarriage bounces and bends like a breathing beetle's abdomen as it crests over the top of a hill, the air around it vibrating as its own heat distorts the light.

She begins to recognize the design, though it takes her a moment, seeing the thing on treads instead of camouflaged into a rock wall. The Narwhal.

Kian's design.

The scream that escapes her mouth is just as unbidden and twice as raw as the laugh of before, erasing any good mood she had been cultivating, cutting her escape into the outside world short. She finds herself standing, leaning over the console, staring down at her keys and buttons, sweat dripping down and forming a droplet on the tip of her nose.

A noise behind her startles her, and she turns to stare down a flinching, crouching figure.

"Aline. What are you doing back so soon?"

"The bugs."

"What about the bugs?"

"They won't turn on."

Matilde's extremities go numb. Her expression doesn't soften, but loses its edge, smoothing from a hot knife into a cold stone face. "Did you —"

"Of fucking course I did!"

Matilde mulls that over. She would, she reasons. She's not so incapable.

"Fine. I —" Her voice catches. She looks into Aline's glossy eyes, reflecting the cool blue and green behind her, the sky and clouds in her sister's eyes. She mentally checks through her ongoing projects — the bugs at the siege, the soldiers securing nodes. The water supply. The air, the heat. They drop out of her with a skip of her heart, and a swing of her consciousness, a sway of her head as the weight comes off of her.

She catches herself with a hand on the back of her chair. The bugs aren't waking up. Rogue agent within the core.

She breathes.

She looks at Aline, whose eyes have screwed into an impatient glare. "What are —"

"You're leading me to the breakers." Matilde opens a drawer in the desk, and grabs a voltage tester. "Now."

"Why must —"

"You're not leaving my sight. Who else would be able to sabotage me, Aline?"

Aline's jaw drops. "I-I didn't, I would never —"

"Just shut up and lead the way." Her voice isn't commanding. Just straight. Narrow. Allowing no room for interpretation or subversion. Aline shrinks, and complies, turning around and walking towards the stairs.

As Aline shows her back, Matilde gets a good view of her work — the back of Aline's overalls have a long, snakelike bulge, going from the top of her tailbone to the base of her neck — where it then becomes clear that the bulge comes from underneath Aline's skin, and the shape of it is lost where spine meets head, the back of her scalp shaved bare and a slit of scar extending until it gets lost in the remaining hair.

She wouldn't sabotage me, Matilde knows. She has too much respect for me.

Still, she can't leave the consoles unattended, her hemisphere available for another hand, and leave Aline to her own devices. It's a matter of principle, a matter of survival. That's what she tells herself. She doesn't let herself think on it more deeply than that.

Aline continuously checks behind herself, making brief, furtive eye contact with Matilde before making like her entire focus is on where she's going. Their steps clang along the catwalk, though the noise is sometimes lost behind the crash and whine of something bigger and shakier. They make it to the spiral staircase down, and descend.

A tube, encasing the stairs, rises around them, until they reach the bottom in near complete darkness and Aline opens a door to reveal the relative normalcy of a concrete hallway and buzzing rectangular light fixtures in the ceiling that make Matilde's eyes squint and her head hurt. She staggers in the doorway, and then forces herself onward, Aline having missed the moment of weakness.

Here, the noise is somewhat muffled, though silence never reigns, and heat doesn't radiate off of the walls nearly so much as it did in the dark metal chamber, though relief is still evasive. They pass many doors, reach intersections and trend to the right, Aline occasionally pausing to remember the path and nervously and silently checking with Matilde before continuing forward.

They pass through some more interesting rooms, like visits to organs before once again entering the connective tissue of the bunker — a catwalk along the outside of a huge, circular chute at a slight angle, the top and bottom out of view, airflow pushing down upon the sisters as they pass through. They descend a staircase with a glass siding from which they overlook a scrapyard, long multi-jointed limbs poking out the top like the fingers of reaching hands attempting to pull themselves out from a sharp, jagged muck.

But their destination is altogether unremarkable.

Aline opens a door to a relatively small room, neatly lit, from which the ambient noises are mostly a hum and an occasional rush of some industrial liquid — perhaps even the water, undrinkable as it is, useful still in coolant processes all across her exobody.

The one wall to the left of the entrance is a mess of panels, the right sparse but for some desks and cupboards, starkly mundane. Matilde strides to the wall of panels, and Aline lags behind at the door. Matilde shoots her a glare, and Aline springs forward, rushing to be close to Matilde, within her easy line of sight.

Matilde relaxes, and counts out the panels, moving her finger as she does.

Aline beats her to it, opening a panel to her right and slightly above her head level. Matilde swats the younger's hand away, frustrated at having been shown up, anxiety prickling along her fingertips. Matilde moves towards the panel, pushing a compliant Aline out of her way, and finds the switch she's looking for. It's on. She flicks it off, and back on. Off, on. Click, click. She hears the mechanism. She grabs Aline's shoulder and pushes her towards the door, with a small noise of protest on the younger's part.

They step into the hallway, and walk along the right wall for ten-odd seconds, reaching a more concealed panel in the concrete. Matilde motions to Aline with an open palm, and Aline pulls a screwdriver from her overalls and jams it into the elder's raw hand, which stings at the force of it — perhaps even intentionally. She wants to admonish her sister, but to do so would express the pain of the motion. She removes the panel on the wall, and then motions to her sister again, this time saying: "Glove."

"My gloves are small." But she hands the pair over. Matilde drops the screwdriver to the floor, and Aline dives to grab it, but Matilde doesn't look at her. She dons the rubber gloves, indeed quite tight but not unwearable, and reaches into the coils of wire, their stripes reminiscent of tight, color-coded muscle, digging until she sees a bright teal-green. She pulls, holds it, and gets the voltage tester from her pocket.

She pokes her prongs into the hard exterior of the cable, and picks up a reading.

There's electricity flowing from the breaker at least, that's good to know before we make it further.

"We're going to the bugs. We'll start them manually."

Aline nods. They leave the panel where it is on the floor, unworried at keeping up appearances.

Matilde wipes sweat from her brow, and her heart squeezes in her chest, an internal claustrophobic feeling, like her ribs and lungs and muscle are all pressing in on it from all sides and it has to pump just that much harder to function at all.

"Sister," Aline starts, her voice so weak the word doesn't quite make it through the second syllable. She coughs instead, and tries again: "Mattie."

The elder makes no response.

"How —" Aline paused. "Who…"

"Ilaria is cornered. She's pouring most of her resources into an escape attempt. We aren't anywhere near him, but I believe she's being harried most by Julian. The things I see sent her direction match his style, even if the designs aren't familiar to me. Most likely he isn't the only one. I was attempting to cut some of her power supply earlier, but…" She grits her teeth.

This time, it's Aline who remains silent. They turn a corner.

"I checked in on Hans just earlier. He's focusing on defense, and he similarly has a rock wall behind him, probably hoping to squeeze out, but he hasn't made that move yet. His neighbors are trying to close in behind him and most of his firepower is committed to keeping them away. I wouldn't be surprised if he and Ilaria somehow collaborated, but I suspect they're putting so little effort into recon that they have missed the fact they are aiming at a similar outcome. Besides, Hans could be stockpiling, hoping to come in late in the game when other players have been eliminated, making himself too costly to attack for now so he can survive that long. I think it's short-sighted, and a strategy motivated more by instinct and fear than by cunning. He won't have the resources others have if he makes it that long, and by being defensive you invite attack."

"Kian?"

Matilde turns her head to glare daggers into Aline, by her side. Aline looks as confused as timid in the aftermath.

She turns her gaze forward again, as they step into another stairwell, leading down. ""He's one of the neighbors trying to close off Hans."

"Has anyone…?"

"Not yet, I think. But I still don't know what happened to Laura."

The walls begin to lose some of their cohesion, cracks, abrasions and discolorations visible on the concrete. It's hotter here, lights more spaced, fewer vents, the air is thick. They make their way to a ladder, the metal of its rungs hot enough to make Matilde uncomfortable with her grip, especially hesitant with the placement of her torn up hand. The two move in silence as they enter into more metal catwalks, abandoning the human-intended architecture of the concrete halls and entering the outer workings of the core machine. Light is sparse, but the metal and grease pick it up, and all the sisters need to see is the rough outline of the walkway. Aline places a hand along the railing, substituting touch for sight where she can.

Matilde guides Aline, less familiar with this section of the core, having to speak loudly over the grinding, churning metal sounds that permeate everything. Eventually, their right side opens from walls of pipe, ventilation, gears and wire to a wide chamber, their catwalk putting them somewhere near the top of the expanse.

Sparse light shines off of something in the deep smoother and rounder than any of the surrounding machinery. Matilde watches Aline hover at the edge of the catwalk, looking down into the uncertain depths, a stale wind jostling her hair, perhaps not as much as it might have had Aline not been so slicked with grease.

Matilde lets her stay there for a moment, for a reason she can not name, and watches her indistinct outline, the snaking lump still visible on her neck, reading the body language of her younger sister.

Awe? Perhaps too generous, if the term is bent towards positive meaning. But similarly overwhelmed.

"Come," Matilde says.

Aline hesitates, and then turns. Matilde directs towards a ladder down, which they take in turn, landing at a lower catwalk and a recess in the pipes and wires.

Matilde, wielding a flashlight, walks with purpose towards a large cable and extracts the voltage tester from her pocket once more, touching it to its side. She frowns, the numbers blinking just as they do when exposed to the ambient air in this place. No sign of life. Nothing.

She remains in the same position for a moment, letting Aline's distraction with the expanse keep her from noticing Matilde's unmoving figure.

The flavor of her anxiety changes. The empty feeling had been warring with tightness, blood in the muscles, a need to go and do. But watching the numbers fluctuate on her device, the energy seeps out of her with the potential of energy in the wire. Nothing.

She stands, and she sways, catching herself on the wall.

"Sister?"

Matilde turns, and stares at where she expects Aline's eyes to be.

The eldest shrugs, and then is overtaken with coughs. She holds herself together, and Aline offers no assistance. Once she's recovered: "There's no electricity flowing through the cable."

No response. She feels a need to clarify.

"If the cables on the other side are still on, we can reroute and manually start the bugs. So move."

Aline doesn't. Matilde feels the ghost of anger rise and fall, watching her sister. She hesitates herself, listless. Questioning her own priorities. She knows she is missing the note of authority her voice carried before, and she's unsure she can summon it up, so she uses a different tactic. She closes the distance to Aline and grabs her shoulder, her grip hard. Aline moves, at first pushed, then finding her step. She continuously turns her head to look at her sister, and Matilde is grateful for the darkness, masking her expression.

The cables on the opposite side — a long walk along the perimeter — do carry current, and Matilde and Aline cooperate easily, silently, and slowly, routing current outgoing to another section of the core into the operation of the bugs. The work is heavy, and the sisters come out heaving, coughing. Nonetheless, they climb another ladder down, and operate a panel.

With the pull of a lever, the noise becomes unbearable, body-shaking. The reflections on the carapaces in the pit begin to shift, and soon it becomes clear that the massive bodies — hundreds, in layers — are beginning to ascend towards a ceiling that is splitting open to allow them out.

Aline startles as the sparse light illuminates enough to make out a face, as wide across as the two sisters laying head to toe — a glimpse of its pale green eyes, and then its mandibles. The younger's brief scream is lost in the grinding of the scaffolding pushing the bugs upwards, but the coughs the scream incurs seem the worst of any yet. Aline drops to the ground on all fours, and Matilde stands over her.

Matilde watches. She looks, and her face drops, unable to maintain her neutrality. She grabs Aline under the armpits, and pulls her to her feet. Still hacking, the younger leans heavily into Matilde's chest, and Matilde shifts to allow her leaning, while nonetheless walking them both out. They face difficulty getting up the ladder. The sound makes Matilde's head pound, and she wonders briefly if she will pass out — or, more likely, that Aline might. Something about the reverberation through their very being makes the coughing fit difficult to escape. Aline scales very slowly, Matilde behind.

They eventually make it out, but the noise fades only slowly as they put distance between themselves and the bug-nest.

Eventually, Aline is able to cease her coughs, though they can still feel the shaking through the architecture and metal around them. For a long walk to the ladder back to the cooler, concrete section, Aline remains leaning into Matilde, and at some moment, imperceptible and immeasurable, there nonetheless comes a point where she no longer requires the support to stand and to walk, and yet she remains, and her sister, Matilde, who herself feels similarly disposed towards collapse, yet still holds Aline against her body.

And once they reach the ladder, the necessity of separation becomes apparent, and calls attention to this prolonged contact.

Matilde pushes Aline off of her and toward the ladder, but the younger hesitates once more. Matilde nearly questions, that ghost of anger making itself known again, but she can't bring the words to her lips. Instead, she gestures.

"Mattie," Aline croaks, her voice rough from coughing and a dry throat, and yet still injected with some warmth that makes Matilde's already feverish body draw out a new layer of sweat. "We need water."

There is a silence where neither can make out the other's expression, and neither give an obvious tell of body language, of movement. Still.

Matilde motions to the ladder again. "Go," she says, quiet. Perhaps too quiet to be heard, so she repeats: "Go. We have other things to attend to."

"What things?"

"We have to fix the wiring. We're going up to the crown."

"Sister," and there is an edge to the word. A pause, and she erases the tone from her following statement: "I won't make it."

Matilde's head inclines, but she keeps it from hanging so obviously. The weight of it simply seems to increase upon hearing her sister's plea. "We have to fix the wires first," Matilde stresses. "We have to see what's wrong."

"Why?" Aline's voice raises in pitch. "The bugs are active, the machine is turning. We still have lighting, we need water."

I know, Matilde thinks. "We might not get water if we don't fix the fucking wires!" She isn't able to see Aline's response, because rising her volume causes her to cough. She shakes herself out of it, and follows up: "We need to go to the stem, and after that, water will be my priority number one. We can figure out how to filter the water in our hydraulics, as an emergency measure. Okay?"

Aline merely stares at her. In the dim lighting, every object a monochrome silhouette that dances with the natural patterns on the lenses of her eyes, Aline gives nothing away, and Matilde begins to imagine the worst. She seizes the ghost of anger, and uses it.

"Aline." The younger needs to hear nothing else. She turns around, and begins to ascend. Matilde breathes heavily, and takes a moment before joining her.

They rise back into the concrete and consistent lighting, and as Aline's expression is clarified by the light, Matilde sees its twisted form, its petulant creases and crevices. Childish, Aline overtly avoids eye contact. Matilde's heart sinks, as much as it exists in the hollow in her chest.

Their route, as compared to that of before, follows nearly a straight line — a straight line up. They trend inwards, towards the center of the core, but equally trend upwards, covering about as much distance by ladder as by path. They remain in the lit sections for the majority, but nearing the end they are travelling in cracks nearly too small for Matilde, more easily navigably by Aline, lit improperly by long lines of red or blue. They are, for a moment, cockroaches in the walls, weathering some scrapes and bruises from the tight confines.

Once, Aline's metal spine scrapes against a protrusion in the wall and she seizes up, crying from pain that is otherwise so overwhelming as to prevent anything but small croaks from rising through her throat. They wait minutes for her to recover enough to continue.

Eventually, they climb a ladder with a hatch at the top. Breaking form, Matilde goes first, seeing as she has more muscle, and pushes the heavy thing open, arms aching from the exertion in the wake of it.

She climbs out and onto a smooth surface in near total darkness, and there is a relief as the air around her is cool and blows lightly, approaching but not quite making it to a facsimile of the outdoors — the corrosive smells dispel that notion.

Aline climbs out after her, and Matilde helps her up.

As they close the hatch, they enter complete darkness, no longer silhouettes. Instead of pointing, Matilde turns Aline from her shoulders, pointing her towards the only source of light — dim and far enough to not revealingly reflect off their sheens of sweat.

The column, like a building atop a hill, extending into a sky, if anything could be called that. It resembles a deep-sea jellyfish, one of those with the cylindrical shape and lines of bioluminescence stretching from top-to-bottom, except if that shape and those lines kept extending upwards until it disappears into the darkness, at no identifiable point, at no identifiable distance. It coats itself in a dark blue glow. Its presence is unspeakable. Surrounded by absolute blackness, it claims all of reality, the only existing thing. Matilde begins to lose herself in its presence, her cut hand tingling, a flutter of hope in her throat, the warm feeling of being something greater than this weak body of diminutive size and soft flesh.

She suddenly wishes Aline knew what that felt like. She wonders if this visage alone could instill it.

"Don't lose your footing," Matilde says, and her voice seems to go absolutely nowhere, swallowed by the space. "The metal here is smooth and gradually curves, and if you fall and slide, you could slide a long, long way."

Nonetheless, her hand on Aline's shoulder, she feels her sister nod. She lets go, and they begin to move towards the column.

Closing the distance only highlights the immensity of the structure, how little its clarity improves after a minute of walking — and the immensity of the structure only highlights the immensity of the space. The understanding that the column represents a radius, and the radius is of a broad elliptical structure.

Along their walk to the column, a far-off rumble — the only noise besides their rhythmic footsteps — catches her ear. That could be the bugs they had activated crawling out of the core, into this space — perhaps it could be called the shell — to navigate towards the breach and fix it. It could be a squadron returning for repairs and to deposit the scrap and materials they had gathered.

The column becomes larger faster as they near its base, once pausing for Aline to bend and cough, Aline batting Matilde's hand away from resting on her shoulder.

Their bodies are coated in a soft blue as they reach the base. Matilde gazes upward, and finds the rail she was looking for, gently spiraling up along its side, and follows its lower end towards its beginning to their right. They circle around briefly before finding the car, a squarish thing with a single light in its ceiling shining down to a small panel — a nod to human design missing from almost all of the rest of Matilde's creation.

It reminds her of the progression, here. The winding halls and passages — the central power system placed above the rest of the core — indicative of an unstable growth, an additive, unplanned structure focused outwards instead of inwards. Ever creating, never redoing. It gave way to weaknesses like this one, Matilde supposed, that something so important could be on the outside of the core — though she expected the shell to be enough, this entire core its own weakness just as any heart of any operation. She hadn't thought to prepare it as a battleground.

They open the door of the car and step inside. Aline sits, hard, along the back wall of it, wincing as her spine makes contact with the metal, looking very much like she regretted the motion. Matilde punches in the simple controls, sending the car shuddering and then slowly moving up along the column.

The ground would have slowly moved out of view, if there was a clear conception of the ground. Instead, sense of grounding falls away almost immediately upon departure, as does sense of orientation as the car climbs its lazy spiral up the column, glowing blues shifting with the motion in ways that never seem to clearly indicate direction or place, a murky black so thick past the car's windows. Matilde sees herself in the reflection that dominates the window.

She doesn't like what she sees. She doesn't like looking in the first place — she tries to push her own visage out of mind, remind herself of the greater thing she is a part of. She tries to put herself in the mind of the great machine, the outer-being. Impossible, she admonishes herself for even trying. You can't. You're a small, fleshy thing. Fragile. Aline might be stronger than you are.

She bows her head, visiting the safety of the panel and its controls, but the image of her own sunken eyes stays in her mind's eye.

"Sis," Aline whispers.

She looks up, and sees something dance in the reflection. It takes her a moment to parse — a moment before she realizes it's something on the other side. She leans over the panel, and presses her hands to her forehead, blocking the light and its reflection so she can see into the void beyond.

Spears of light, instantaneous, far away. Man-made lightning. Sparks. Damage. The hole in the shell. The arcs of electricity are so quick and yet so large, it is hard to view them as anything but an illusion, but in their blink-long lives they cast startling light on the broader structure around them.

The punched-through wall. The tracks, along which the centipedal guard dog crawls. Used to crawl. The arcs are mostly along the body of the dog, its bulbous head peppered with red warning lights like acne, its long limbs torn from their housings and thrown into the unseen depths, or perhaps worse, taken somewhere, used somehow. The damage… the long snaking body of it is torn open, evocative of a snake that had swallowed something too big whole and its swollen body had burst from the inside. Its spine was destroyed, cables — so thick around that their individuality was visible even from this distance and in this sparse light — draping down from its burst back like entrails hanging from an abandoned carcass, dragged into a tree and draped upon the branches. Even its self-repairing systems were somehow annihilated, something Matilde can not but imagine was intentional. Targeted. Intelligent. Clever.

Aline begins to cry.

A feeling crawls up Matilde's esophagus at the sound, and it comes out in the whisper: "Shut up."

Aline doesn't seem to listen. She presses her hands against her eyes as the tears keep coming out, trying to stifle the flow and her unbidden sounds.

"Shut up," she repeats, louder, looking at Aline in the reflection. "Shut up. Shut up, shut —"

She turns and yells: "Shut up!"

It accomplishes nothing, so she strides to her younger sister, adrenaline giving her strength, and takes her by the shoulders, shaking her, Aline's head hitting the wall behind her on the shakes forward, some of the pain drawing her attention as a hand shoots to the back of her head to cradle the impact. "Oww, ow!"

"Shut up!!" Matilde can't come up with anything better. The words are secondary. To the volume. To the intent. To the shaking. To make her stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop making it real, stop caring, stop drawing attention, stop looking at it, stop expressing, just stop, stop, stop, stop — each stop a shake of her, Aline's hands now on Matilde's wrists, trying and failing to wrench control.

"We're dead, Mattie we're —"

Matilde didn't know she still had strength enough to hoist Aline up and slam her into the wall, her misshapen, lumpy spine striking metal, and Aline falls forward, landing on hands and knees, a strangled gasp coming out of her — and then a hack, and more hacks, coughs, starting a fit that she isn't soon to recover from. To stop her. To stop her from saying anything. But she said it. She had said it already.

"We're not!" Matilde yells, pitch verging on the uncontrollable. "We're —"

But her dry voice catches, and she starts coughing too, leaning over, hands going to her knees to brace herself, keep herself upright. She holds that position, the two of them coughing, when the car comes to an abrupt stop, sending Aline onto her side and Matilde into the wall, the elder catching herself better, the younger seizing up in the same way as she had earlier, a whine escaping her lips, strain and agony.

And then Aline is gasping, making little choking sounds. "Water," Matilde thinks she hears Aline rasp. "The —" But no more words are possible, as she clambers for air. Matilde watches her for a moment, as the doors on the car's side open onto the platform.

Watching as Aline struggles for air.

Matilde catches her breath before Aline does, breaths shaking through her. She turns, and she leaves Aline there, stepping out of the car, out onto the metal platform, a protruding shelf halfway up the length of the column.

Matilde barely flinches at the state of the tunnel and the collection of indents worked into the floor of the platform.

Sparks illuminate the tunnel where the lines of light at ankle-height have been crushed and destroyed. A hot air emanates from within, like the breath of a monstrous dragon making it to the mouth of the cave. The smell isn't much better than that imagination, but not biological. Chemical. A hum is difficult to parse, between Matilde's heart palpitations and the rumble in her ears, her senses heightened and her nerves on edge, but the tunnel does hum, a rhythm distinct from her biology, an electrical thrumming that makes her skin prickle and her hairs come up straight.

She moves towards the hum and away from Aline's returning coughs, stepping into the tunnel, losing her footing once or twice before learning her lesson and watching the floor for aberrations. While the dents in the floor threaten to tumble her over, the threat feels more metaphysical than that. The low light. The uneven flooring. Her swimming head. She feels a fall could do more than bring her to the floor — could take the floor out from under her.

As Aline's coughs are subsumed by the hum and the heartbeat in Matilde's own ears, a twisting feeling returns to the hollow of her chest, like a hand caressing its sensitive edges from the inside, making her aware of all its contours and making her weak muscles twinge. The shape of it becoming clearer, even as she hopes not to see.

Hum. Beat. Footstep after footstep, hand along the wall to steady herself as she walks, heat rising and draining the last remaining moisture in her body through sweat she's surprised she can still give.

We're dead.

Another twinge. We've been dead, sister. We've been dead since the thing came through the wall.

And now, with Aline behind her, she has no one to perform for.

Her forward momentum falters. But does not stop. Something else pushes her, its influence perhaps weaker. The thought that forces her onwards is that thought that once she's stopped, she will be truly dead. If she ceases to move, she won't ever move again.

A droplet of sweat traces her forehead to the bridge of her nose. A spark by her ear makes her flinch.

She finds it difficult to hold on to any one train of thought, so she lets them pass her by. Foot in front of foot. Eyes scanning the ground with the scant light. Routine. Pattern. Keep it moving.

The hum grows louder as a light comes through, so subtle at first that Matilde wonders if her eyes are playing tricks, but as the gentle curve of the tunnel lets up and she sees its end, she recognizes the structure before her. The column within the column. The bright, colossal tangle. The stem.

She approaches, and she has to shield her eyes before they can adjust. The hum's rhythm becomes something physical, its thrum shakes her with each apex. The heat is unbearable, but she keeps walking.

The stem itself is so bright, it's hard to make out the cracks in the glass between her and it. As she steps into the observation deck, she can see that the damage is greater than the glass — the panel itself is destroyed, no operations are possible across its ruined surface, buttons and levers unplaceable in the mass of bent scrap. Her original purpose for coming is impossible, in the face of that. She can't tell if she cares.

She approaches anyways. The hum is so loud her ears hurt, and putting her hands to cover them does nothing. She stumbles on some miscellaneous piece of the surroundings, now a torn, flat corner of metal on the ground, and catches herself on the edge of the ruined panel, her raw hand placed on some jabbing object that sinks in a centimeter and makes her wince.

She looks up, and the light is nearly blinding. The glass that was once there has some tint to it, meant to make the stem bearable to behold, but where the window once was is open space now. She raises one hand to shield her eyes, and hangs her head.

She thinks of her siblings. She thinks of the great machine. Of the underground. Of the encroaching forces, and their contest. Am I so weak? she wonders. She looks up at the stem, unblocking her eyes, squinting, the hum overwhelming, her body shaking from internal and external factors.

She screams, and the screams turn into coughs. Still, she fights to form the words, words drowned by the thrumming, inaudible even to herself, words only experienced as air leaving her lungs and shapes in her mouth.

"Am I so small?"

She screams again. Long, loud. She leans over the panel, her head beyond the jagged glass, inside the stem's chamber, and passing the barrier is like submerging her head in an wind tunnel, her hair flying above her. The surface of her skin feels fuzzy, like a full-faced sensation of licking a battery. She screams into that sensation.

The stem feels almost like it reacts, the lights flickering, the sound gripping her with new, sudden low tones. Tears stream up her face, pooling on her forehead.

"I'm dead! I —"

Her voice catches in her throat, and she bends over, now with head and shoulders beyond the barrier, and she vomits into the wind, the sick bending backwards and spreading across her chin and cheeks — the bile finds so much resistance to its escape, Matilde begins to choke, but her thoughts lie elsewhere.

I failed, she thinks, as the tears mix with the vomit. I was first to fail.

The stem shudders. She tilts her head up, still coughing up the bile stuck in her throat, and the noise somehow finds a new tone, somehow outdoing itself, less than a second where her ears hurt from the shriek, another moment where her body reels as its whole resonates from a swell of something bass.

She feels so little of herself anymore she may simply fall apart. She feels the shakes might tear her pieces, so loosely held together, and send them over the edge, down the shaft and further than that.

But the shudders change tones again. The blinding light changes hue, flickers, blue to green, off and on, light and dark, stark, synced with the noise, the noise, the destroying, cacophonous sound, and then, and then, and then —

It ruptures. The world plunges into darkness. The fuzz leaves Matilde's face as the air cracks, a sound like being struck by lightning — like being a bug inside a suddenly unplugged amp. It ruptures. Matilde's ears cry in pain, and her hands shoot to her head — ringing, ringing, throbbing and ringing.

Everything is dead, she thinks, her thoughts racing in slick mud, running in place and falling. Everything I've ever wanted is dead. Everything is dead.

She doesn't register the coughs racking her body, the sharp edges of glass sinking into her hands as she grips the side of the window.

Every —

The ringing of her ears finds ground. It rattles, it surges, and she finds the tones of a human voice in its volume. She blinks. Nothing comes to — black, dark, unending, but there is a noise, there is a high-pitched, careening noise.

Closer. Getting closer, she realizes.

Aline's voice.

"— youu!!"

Screaming herself, voice shredded, its higher pitches like a car scraping along a concrete embankment, the man at the wheel sleeping or dead.

"I hate you! I'll fucking —"

An impact — Aline's small body colliding with Matilde's mid-back, perhaps attempting to bowl her over, but she has a stable position along the panel, her body hunched. She winces as hands are pressed further into broken glass, but the Aline's momentum carries the little sister forward while Matilde remains mostly in place, Aline gliding over Matilde's back, hands catching on the cloth at Matilde's shoulders, and all of a sudden Aline is hanging over the edge, the wind tunnel with wind no longer, hands gripping Matilde, weight pulling her down — Matilde's hands press into the window's edge, her knees brace herself against the ruined panel, knees and shins scraping exposed sharps and broken metal, but for as much as it hurts, the shapes hook her into place, solidifying her position.

Aline screams into Matilde's face. Matilde spits bile on her, best she can with no visibility, and Aline's yelp and cough might suggest her aim landed in her open mouth.

"You bitch, you condescending fucking bitch —"

Aline's hand crawls along Matilde's shirt, and Matilde brings one of her hands up to stop it from nearing her throat — but Aline chooses a different tactic, acting more animal than human, drawing herself up and aiming for Matilde's face. Apparently unable to see any more than Matilde can, her teeth fumble for purchase, but eventually they land. Matilde screeches and coughs as Aline bites her nose, then lets her weight pull her back down, dragging Matilde's head with it as far as it will go, and then bringing only the nose with it the rest of the way as Matilde's body catches on the window's edge.

Adrenaline regains — or perhaps replaces — Matilde's senses, bringing her back into her own body, and she begins to fight to pull herself up and away from the edge, but Aline's grip is unyielding. Matilde tries to remove Aline's arms, but taking her hands away from the window places all the pressure on her legs, and she screams as something against her left shin goes from pressing to puncturing.

Another sound. Almost missed. A bend, a thump. Matilde can't give it any of her attention. Her hand on Aline's wrist, she works to tear it free from her collar, but Aline and Matilde seem to have different driving forces, semantic differences that somehow make up a very real gulf — Aline has nothing to lose, and Matilde has already lost everything.

"I'll kill you — you welp, you wimp, you fucking coward, you cunt — I'm better than you, you aren't my sister — I'm a little girl and I'm better than —"

Aline isn't able to finish the thought. Another thump. This one closer. The structure itself shakes, and Matilde feels the briefest relief as Aline's grip falters, the younger sister disappearing into oblivion — but the shake tears her own legs from the panel, the exit of the metal somehow worse than its entry, ripping on its way out, and then she's briefly airborne — she doesn't understand it, can't picture the mechanics, but her brain doesn't work to figure them out, her body pumps with animal blood, survival instincts and fear. She flails, limbs windmilling for how long she can't tell, until gravity takes hold of her again, and when she comes back down, she's moved forward.

Her belly, barely guarded by her shirt, slams into the window's glass, slicing her mid-section, and she gasps in pain. Then she is thrown forward. Over the edge. Towards Aline, whose screams join the echoing thumps as the only noise inside this chamber, inside the column, aside the stem.

And she is falling.

And Aline's screams come closer, their tone returning to coughs. And then she's past them, the coughing rising in pitch and then falling as she tumbles.

The first impact doesn't fully stop her fall. Her legs hit something, and it sends her spinning. She's caught between the instinct to reach her hands out, catch herself, and the instinct to cradle her stomach, keep the contents from coming out. In her confusion, she does a poor job at both.

The second impact absorbs more of her momentum. Cables. Metal, but slack, bending with her weight, not quite as bad as falling on a concrete floor. Not that she is in a position to appreciate the difference.

She lands face-down the points of contact being her chest, left arm, and thighs. Her right hand at her midsection feels the internals push outward, following the momentum of her body further than the rest of her body will go, and she feels too much shock to feel much pain.

A light roves over her, but her eyes are already so full of spots and imagined images that it's difficult to identify reality.

Thump, thump. Aline coughs from far away.

She is better, Matilde catches on the thought.

Thump. Hacking, a rise in tension, some new sound, she doesn't parse it.

She imagines, in a vague sense, her mother's hands. A grease-covered palm, a screwdriver and a wrench. She imagines the family silos, the grassy hills.

Something sprays Matilde.

"One day you'll be a part of this country. For now, you're a part of our household." Mother motioned to the tools. "These are a Frueh's hands and arms."

Matilde clutched at Mother's dress. Father watched. Matilde isn't sure from where. All she can picture are his eyes, hard. And she buried her face in Mother's dress — breathed deep. Smelled oil.

"Mattie," her soft voice consoled. Mother's hand started at Mattie's forehead, and gently worked its way down, pushing her away, ceasing the embrace, the lean. She similarly worked to get Mattie's clutch free, and intertwined her fingers with her daughter's. Matilde looked up.

Her mother smiled.

Something shrill tries to interrupt her. Matilde's left hand at her stomach falters, the blood seeping into raw, shredded skin.

Mother moved her hands to the tools. A saw.

"Your hands and arms," she reminds. "Go on."

"Mattie!"

Silence. And something in the silence awakens Matilde's senses again. The scream, Aline's, did not have the edge of inarticulate rage to it.

Silence can't be good. Aline. Aline? She thinks to shout, but she just breathes, heavy. She thinks to move, but she doesn't move. Her body does not listen.

She lays there, caught on the cables. Feeling, perhaps, that she is slowly slipping — the metals slick with some fluids, her own or otherwise — slipping off to the side, to fall again.

Thump. Thump.

Heavy. Close.

Her hand reaches out, and grabs the cable, finds grip difficult, finds that extending her arm transitions the feeling in her gut from a dull, ignorable discomfort to a piercing pain, one that makes her consciousness blink, her mouth gape open and a strangled grunt come out.

She doesn't reach so far. She grabs closer to her body, and tries to pull —

Thump, bump.

The timbre of the noise changes, and the cables themselves vibrate. Her body jostles. She groans again, unbidden, and changes tacks. She can't escape. She goes still. It's an easy decision, and she suspects it makes no difference.

A light passes over her. She breathes slowly, and feels her intestines begin to bulge past the sides of her hand as her body sags further, her abdomen protruding, the organs pushing out, ever so slowly.

The thumps are accompanied by whirs and clicks, now, and the light focuses in. She shuts her eyes, the sensation too much. It comes close. She doesn't care anymore.

She feels like tears should well up, but she has no fluid left to produce them.

As the light brightens, the noises get louder, closer, then slow down, stop. A few more whirrs, and then a loud pop, release of pressure.

"Mattie," a familiar voice intones. Not Aline's. Not Mother's.

What? She only breathes. She gives nothing.

"I didn't think you'd be so beat up when I found you. And our poor young sister. What had you done to her?"

Matilde mouths sentiment, but can't put the sound in it. Laura. A parasite, a hiccup. Laura didn't have territory because she didn't claim any — she wasn't playing by the rules. A cheat.

"Hmm? Mm. Maybe I should act fast, then. I was hoping to have a conversation first, but I don't know if you'd last a whole conversation. I think you're falling, anyways. There will be time for that later."

I've been dead, Matilde thinks, the real me, that which was worth protecting, it died every time I disconnected, and this last moment, it died for the last time. I've been dead this whole time. I've been dead my whole life.

Something — a claw? Some appendage. Metal cradles Matilde's body, surprisingly gently. Matilde struggles, only to prompt agony from all across her body, and she goes limp again.

"Oh, sis…"

The tone is sickly sweet. Piteous. Accusing. Matilde's brow furrows, she glares, and she glares all the way until the light that was focused on her is directly in her face, blinding for a moment before it turns away, deliberate motion, and she is able to see a face — a human face, set into a metal frame, the edges of which catch the light as it bounces off the cables and the chamber. Some machine. Some human machine, with Laura's face at the front of it, skin a strange color, a pallid texture to it.

"I… don't…" Matilde can only manage one word at a time.

"Shh. Don't speak."

"I…" Matilde's nose scrunches up. "Fuck…" She gulps in breaths. She tries and fails to speak several times more, each word catching in her throat. She squeaks a sound that makes her hate herself. "Kill me," she uses the hate to speak.

Laura's graying face is horrible. Condescending. Sympathizing. Matilde closes her eyes. She can't bear to look at it.

"Only in a sense of the word," Laura responds. "You won't be you anymore. You'll be me. Us. Aline's already here. She's… saying that this is like what you wanted, isn't it? To be something bigger?"

Something high-pitched begins to whir and spin, from above Matilde, in the darkness still.

"She says it's just like that." The thing comes in closer, and the light catches it. An appendage that ends in a circular saw, and its followers, tubes, something that reminds Matilde of dentist's tools, something plastic filled with fluid and a sphincter at the end.

"Come on, let's be a family again." Matilde struggles, writhes, mouth opening to scream a scream that can't come. The claw grips Matilde tighter, arresting her movement, and a clamp presses into her skull.

"No," the machine corrects itself, "for the first time, I think."

The saw comes down, and Matilde's vision fills with the spray of blood.

Description: The train takes the corner at modest speed, but still it catches and stumbles, its motion inconsistent. It passes through the tunnel, comes out the other side, and sounds a train horn from a small speaker.

Matilde watches from over the mountains. The Swiss Alps.

"Mattie! Dinner!"

Her eyes draw back to the snowy peaks — the locomotive traces a high cliffside. She watches its spinning wheels along the track — the drive rods rotating their mesmerizing movement. She loses herself in its machinations a moment longer, before —

"Mattie!"

"Coming!" she yells back, and stands up, now high above the trainset. She dusts off her skirt where it rested on the ground, and then dashes to the bathroom, ensuring she looks presentable. She picks a piece of spinach out of her teeth from the puffs that she had been snacking on, and decides to quickly rinse her face as well. Absently, she rubs at the tip of her nose, but shakes herself out of the automatic motion.

She runs into the hallway, and then slows her pace — to dash isn't so ladylike, she thinks to herself. She turns onto the stairs, and pauses at a portrait of her mother, placed midway on the flight.

"Matilde Hildegard Frueh, if you aren't —"

"I said I was coming," she groans, landing at the bottom of the stairs and turning the corner into the lounge.

On the big round table, she sees laid out a map of Europe, with model soldiers, tanks, and armaments scattered about it, in similar styles and materials to her train set. Father's train set.

"Your words are hollow if they aren't followed through with action."

"But I did!" Mattie protests, as she passes through the lounge and enters the dining room, her nostrils filling with a warm, meaty smell.

Mattie's baby sister Aline is seated in her high chair, holding some toys. A little plastic caterpillar which she mashes into a dopey-looking beetle. Mattie sits next to her, and eyes the toys.

"Behave," the voice from the kitchen warns.

"Hey! I'm nice."

Mattie eyes the caterpillar, within arm's reach, as Aline brings it down again and again —

"Mattie…"

"I didn't do anything!"

"I know. Keep it that way."

Mattie huffs. She pointedly stands and moves seats, putting herself further from her baby sister, who seems oblivious to the entire interaction.

Mattie scans the room. Fine, white, silky tablecloth covers the long table, able to easily seat twenty or more. The table itself is not a perfectly symmetrical shape. Instead, one end is flat, the head of the table, where two seats, taller than the rest, are placed side by side. The table extends from there, and very gradually tapers to the other end, coming to a point, like a missile targeting the kitchen.

"Why'd you call me down if dinner wasn't ready yet?"

"Promptness, Mattie, we have been over this…"

Her eyes turn upwards, and inspect the ceiling. It's made of a fine, burnt-brown wood, angled such that the outer wall has a lower ceiling than the inner. In the darkest recesses, above the chandelier and hiding in its glare, Mattie sees some pipe, a tangle of wires, and a small red speck that she thinks she sees move.

Footsteps draw her back down to earth in time to watch Laura enter through the kitchen, holding a horizontally elliptical ceramic bowl, filled with a steaming steak — brown, moist cubes of meat, caramelized onions and some cabbage. It smells like it might have been cooked in wine. In Laura's other hand, she carries a beet salad. Mattie's mouth salivates. Aline barely seems to look up.

Laura smiles wide in recognition of Mattie's rapt attention, and places the bowls in the center of the table. She retreats back to the kitchen, giving Mattie a light but warning look, which forces Mattie back into her seat, no longer leaning over the table to get a good look at the supper.

Laura returns with a pitcher of water and a tall bottle of sparkling apple cider. Mattie squirms.

"Patience, sweetie," Laura says, and Mattie whines.

Laura offers a sympathetic look, and moves to Aline's side, grabbing her smaller plate and serving her first, just a single cube of steak which Laura takes pains to shred into very small pieces. She puts a few chunks of salad on the side, and gives her water, which seems to draw Aline's attention first.

Laura then serves herself, cueing Mattie to do the same.

"Mattie," Laura warns.

Mattie grumbles, and once again sits back down.

"Don't lean over the table. Ask."

"Dinner, please."

"Close…" Laura pushes the steak closer but not close enough for Mattie to serve herself.

"Pass me dinner, please."

"Better." She pushes it the rest of the way, and Mattie grabs the serving spoon and gives herself a stack of steak much too big for someone her size. Laura doesn't say anything about it, and Mattie smiles.

"Mattie."

"What."

But Laura's face is soft as Mattie looks up, her older sister suddenly close, just behind her. Mattie twists in her seat to look at her, and Laura reaches out, grabbing Mattie's left hand and pulling it close.

"You're holding the spoon awkwardly still."

Mattie kicks her feet, and looks away.

"It's hurting less?"

"Yes."

Laura strokes the palm of Mattie's hand, and Mattie can't help but wince.

The eldest gives a sad smile, and Mattie pretends not to see how mechanical the muscles move. She doesn't maintain eye contact.

"Don't be hard on it."

"I won't."

"Okay."

Laura returns to her seat. Mattie's eyes follow her there. She sees the men at the window, clipboards in hand. Laura casually closes the curtains before taking her seat. Mattie tries to not notice the food, so much for the three of them — even more, considering Laura doesn't serve herself. She tries not to notice the large, empty table. She tries not to notice anything beyond the windows, or the gray tint to Laura's face. Or the raised back of Aline's dress.

She rubs at her own hand underneath the table.

Laura looks between Mattie and Aline, the younger yet to touch her food, if anything threatening to shove it off her plate with the toys. Laura grins, a look of complete satisfaction crossing her face.

"Okay. Let's eat."

Addendum: SCP-001 is progressing nicely. SCP-001-17 and -19 are proving promising for the induction of the older subjects, demonstrating only infrequent violent outbursts and disregard for stated rules, not unusual for human children their age.

SCP-001-19's growth has thus far been healthy beyond our expectations. She is of average weight for her age, and demonstrates a playful, interested demeanor. She sleeps well, she eats well, and in all other respects she showcases health both physically and mentally, to my great surprise and relief.

SCP-001-17 is more troubled, as may be expected for her age, given the circumstances. She has greater power of perception and more context. She will require a long conversation soon, but for the moment she is mostly cooperative and listens to instruction. She seems to have some distaste for her younger sister and commonly steals her toys, but can be talked into returning them. She enjoys her free time, taking to constructing model sets, which has thus far been uninterrupted but requires close observation and consideration. Still, she exhibits interest in interaction, remains healthy for her size. Her hand and nose heal at natural rates, though the latter will unfortunately leave a permanent scar, and she complains less frequently of headaches and heat.

I expect to introduce another subject within the week, though I can't be sure who. I will have to consider which subject's removal will not imbalance the "game," so-to-speak — the grim reality is that we are likely to not regain containment of all subjects, but we can be strategic about our reclamations and hope to maximize the odds of success.

As we know, two points make a line, three make a plane. I hope that our third subject — myself excluded — will maintain the pattern, and establish a solid Foundation for the family's growth.

I remain apprehensive on the topic of SCP-001-A and -B. They will be difficult to reintroduce to SCP-001, if it is possible at all. However, if we can create a healthy household before their arrival, it may be possible to not merely survive their arrival, but in fact encourage their acquiescence. I will be returning to this subject at a later date, closer to the completion of our Procedures. As much as I hate to say it, countermeasures are still assuredly necessary and should not fall off our radar, as excited as the current prospects may make us.

Overall, I am happy to make this report, exceedingly pleased in all that has happened. It's safe to say, we are adjusting well to family life.

Autophobia

Anthology 2024

Acrophobia