“Mister President, fifteen minutes ago, the Foundation detonated a nuclear device on American soil.”
1. SOMETHING WICKED
11/26/2009
Inwards flows the smoke, the rot, the charnel current of unreality. Seven, the chosen, the holy, stand in opposition, in mythic struggle. They chant sacraments from spittle-flecked lips and the dead chant with them. Twenty-thousand feet in the air they stand, braced against the gates of Hell.
“Our father, who art in heaven”
Arak-nesha, ara-tho, tamarin-tesh, rakem
“Preserve us against-”
Tamarin-tesh, blavin rath, arak-nesha, arak-nesha-
Sweat dribbles down creased, white-haired brows into starched collars now all askew.
“Lead us not into temptation”
el khasham kamzu
“Unto all evil-”
Hell scrabbles and screams and bites but faith suffuses them, burns them, turns mortal muscle to steel, mortal voices to holy fire.
nathzar raz shamkash seth-
“-commend thee”
-avarika-avarika-avarika-avarika-
“-who ART in heaven’
The door is holding- holding-
“Fox-2.”
The AIM-9M bursts into a cloud of hypersonic tungsten off the cabin’s starboard side. Holy struggle resolves into red mist. Theology becomes physics.
SCP-616 splinters into flaming hail over the skies of Colorado, and Hell follows with it.
FOUNDATION WEBCRAWLER OSV4.4499FF INTERCEPT OF PHOTO TAKEN IN MEEKER TOWNSHIP, COLORADO 2033GMT11272009
Two men in black, a woman in white, and seven gray monitors stare at each other over a glass table. The mood is grim.
“Shoki failed.”
The one who speaks first has hands of gold. As he talks, his fingers quietly scrape against each other- skntch skntch skntch- and gleaming slivers fall, tinkling against the table.
“Cause?”
One of the monitors responds, SCUFFLE filter rendering its voice dull, anonymous, and utterly banal.
“This is a deviation. Someone interfered.”
The scraping stops.
“Damnation. Are we looking at an XK?”
The woman, thin blonde hair pulled back into a tight knot, clears her throat.
“Thankfully, no, not yet. Forensics says we got lucky. Population density along the crash zone was just below minimum viability. Initial casualty projections-”
“Sorry to keep you all waiting.”
Faces turn. A man is in the doorway. There’s soot on his clothes, and his footsteps leave the floor blackened. Not burnt- a careful distinction, that.
“One. Good to see you.”
The man takes his seat, brushing ash off of the shoulders of his overcoat, and the others orient towards him, turning in place. It is a round table, this quorum of the Overseers, but it has a head nonetheless.
“We are, at this moment, theoretically in violation of the Montreal Protocol1.”
The woman in white lets her glasses drop from shaking fingers. “PENTAGRAM has made overtures, then?”
One shakes his head.
“Not yet. Notice I said theoretically. Although a failure to maintain Shoki is grounds for the nullification of the protections afforded to us under Montreal, that provision assumes that said failure would’ve either resulted in an XK, or in the detonation of nuclear devices over major American population centers. To my knowledge, neither of those events have taken place.”
O5-6 frowns, golden fingers clenching rigidly.
“That’s a thin fucking line to rely on, One. Borders on technicality.”
“I disagree. As I understand it, the situation at the crash site is… uncertain, but practically amenable. Seven?”
Heads turn. The woman in white rubs at her temples, hair coming undone.
“Potentially- potentially yes. At this point, the hellgate should be self-sustaining, diminished but self-sustaining. There couldn’t have been enough souls close enough to the crash site to have immediately allowed for first or second-order traversal.”
“You’re certain?”
She almost smiles.
“Well, last I checked, the sky isn’t bleeding, so yes. Reasonably certain. At this point it’s still possible for the aperture to be sealed, but it’d take, god- it’d take every mage we have in North America. Me included. The logistical considerations alone-”
Gold fingers tap against glass, rhythm inscrutable.
“-and we’d have to be guarded throughout the process. There’s no telling how many lower-grade entities are coming through as we speak, and-”
“I’d be willing to authorize usage of the Helian Door.”
Murmurs rise from the monitors, overlapping atonal voices blending into staticky incomprehension. Seven stops mid-sentence, brushing strands of blonde hair out of her eyes.
“Thank you, Six.”
One steeples his fingers.
“Returning to the subject at hand, it seems to me that we are facing, at the moment, a containment breach. One of significant proportions, yes, but a simple containment breach nonetheless. Part of the status quo- a status quo protected under the Montreal Protocols. I believe that if we act quickly and decisively to resolve this crisis, PENTAGRAM will not pursue annulment.”
“You cannot be certain.”
Impossibly, the interjection cuts through SCUFFLE as a vitriolic hiss. Seven winces, clutching at her head, turning to stare daggers at the offending monitor.
“You would trust PENTAGRAM to act in good faith?”
“I would trust PENTAGRAM to act in its own self-interest.”
Six laughs, golden fingers running through thinning hair.
“You and I both know that’s almost as bad, One.”
“I see no alternative. Would you have us resort to Ganymede while a hellgate escalates in plain daylight? Turtle up to weather against hypothetical retaliation when a very real threat to our mandate is right there to be dealt with?”
Six scowls. “I do not like the shape of this. A pitfall at every turn. It stinks of interference.”
|>UNCLEAR PROBABILITIES DIVERGENT UNCLEAR
The voice echoes from the walls, resonant. An eighth monitor rises soundlessly from the floor, black and featureless, a column of basalt. It serves no real purpose other than conversational courtesy. The thing it represents no longer has use for such frivolities as perspective. One turns to address it nonetheless, dipping his head politely.
“Three. Glad you could make it.”
|>TWENTY-THREE PERCENT OPERATIONAL CAPACITY PRESENT AND RECORDING
The last man in the room twitches. Copper-corded limbs convulse and dead eyes shift subtly in a chalk-white face, pulled too taut over the skull.
“It is the opinion of the Counterintelligence Directorate that there has been no significant compromise of deterrence systems concurrent to the present incident.”
The factotum’s voice is baritonal, deep and gravelly. Seven shifts in her seat uncomfortably.
|>AGREEMENT SIXTY SEVEN PERCENT CONCURRENCE
“Thank you, gentlemen. That simplifies matters.”
One leans forward in his seat.
“I clarify my proposal. The creation of a temporary Amalgamated Task Force with the sole directive of containing the hellgate-”
|>PROVISIONAL SIX ONE SIX DASH THREE
“-yes, thank you, to be directly overseen by Seven. The commendation of all necessary non-garrisoned personnel and logistical assets for this purpose, until such time as containment has been established. Extraordinary Mobilization.”
“You are calling for the expenditure of our entire North American rapid response capability on a single anomaly.” Six scoffs, incredulous.
“I am.”
“You of all people should understand how singularly vulnerable of a position that’d put us in.”
One stands, beginning to pace the room. The monitors turn to follow his movements.
“I would remind this chamber that the Foundation’s continued existence has always been dependent on remaining, in the eyes of the world, slightly more palatable than the alternative. Part of that is due to our deterrence doctrine, yes, but, I’d like to think a larger part is due to the work that we do, the sacrifices that every person here has made and continues to make towards the cause. We are presented with an opportunity, gentlemen, to once again demonstrate our value- to persevere against the darkness that none other dare to touch.”
He’s emphatic now, gesticulating, in his element.
A monitor chimes in, corroborating.
“It does seem particularly unlikely that PENTAGRAM would arrange for the creation of an active hellgate on American soil solely to fabricate casus belli to act against us. And even so, why now?”
“My point exactly.”
Six turns towards One. Blue eyes meet brown, challenging.
“Shall we put it to a vote?”
MOTION FOR EXTRAORDINARY MOBILIZATION
PASS
7-4 (1 ABST)
FOUNDATION ORBITAL ASSET NCAVSAT3993 IMAGE OF PROVISIONAL SCP-616-3 TAKEN IN MEEKER TOWNSHIP, COLORADO 1433GMT11282009
11/28/2009
Meeker Township, Colorado
Population: 1,866
The Foundation’s best fall on Meeker with the luminous gaze of apportated advance teams stalking haunted streets in lethal silence. Grid-squares are secured block by block, chthonic wails silenced by suppressed weaponry and muttered incantations.
The noose tightens.
On a whispered signal, the Helian Door hisses open in a plume of superheated gas. Walls of plasma bloom on the outskirts of Meeker, golden gates bright as the inside of the sun disgorging soldiers, vehicles, prefab watchtowers and concertainer.
Cast in the blood-light of the hellgate’s shadow, they look almost like heroes.
Above them the sky bleeds and below them the earth distends with horror but they are the Foundation at war. Demons howl and hellfire rains from the scarlet sky in hissing droplets but they are the Foundation at war, and so their fire is steady and their maneuver is swift.
Walls erupt from the blood-mist, knife edged, topped with concertina wire and spotlights. Hard-helmeted men with blue coveralls and determined expressions drive iron stakes into the flagellated earth as black-kevlar regiments hold the line with tactical sacrament and blessed gunfire mere feet away. There is none of the mechanized brutality of a Coalition fire mission, the esotericism of a Psychotronics intervention, the heedless overkill that is PENTAGRAM’s penchant.
The perimeter forms, the perimeter holds, and the perimeter expands.
This is the Foundation at war.
2. UNDER THE GUN
O5-7 ducks out of the helicopter, brushing thin blonde hair out of her eyes as the dry wind snags at her ponytail. The air stinks, petrochemical reek and gunpowder fumes mixing into an eye-watering miasma that has her retching, coughing into her fist, almost doubling over. Footsteps hurry towards her across the tamped dirt, and a black-gloved hand presses a respirator into her fingers.
She accepts it gratefully, clipping the mask on over her nose.
“Sorry about the, ah, atmospheric situation, ma’am. The techies say the skip’s mucking with the airflow. Something about environmental resonance.”
The trooper shuffles apologetically, gas-masked gaze scrupulously avoiding her face. There’s a distinct unease to his stance, and his arm hovers awkwardly at his side, as if unsure whether or not to offer her a hand.
She gives him a reassuring smile, following him down the makeshift staging ground towards the first of the barricades. Periodically, chattering gunfire cuts through the scarlet smog, followed by echoing, resonant shrieks that linger uncomfortably in the black between her eyes. She grits her teeth, shaking her head irritably.
The command tent is a buzzing hive of fluttering white coats and blue coveralls punctuated by the shrill screams of power tools and the bassy thrum of thaumoelectric generators. Two guards flank the entrance flap, snapping to attention as she approaches. She takes a moment to shrug off her heavy greatcoat, nodding gratefully as the trooper considerately moves to receive the mass of warded fabric. Stretching her shoulders, she reaches for nonspace with a twist of will, pulling against the air. Laminated white polyester slides into her hand from the gap between atoms.
Slipping on her labcoat, O5-7 steps into the command post.
“OVERSEER ON DECK!”
The shout ripples through the room. A hundred pairs of feet stand at attention, a ring of stoic faces following her every move, encircling her like sunflowers facing the sun. Bile rises in her throat, but Seven bites it back down. She gives them what she hopes is a winning smile.
“Could I have a word with Commander Jefferson? Everyone else, back to your stations.”
The room mutedly resumes movement, voices hushed, a hundred pairs of ears straining to grasp at the edict of a demigod, the command of an Overseer. Even the power tools sound sullen, whirring anxiously.
“That would be me, ma’am.” A voice calls from the back of the room, deep and baritonal.
Seven turns to take his measure. Dark brown eyes set in an alert, clean-shaven face, marred by an impressive scar distorting the corner of his mouth into an exaggerated, downturned scowl. Nondescript Foundation BDUs, ironed crisp, polished boots and a holstered pistol at his hip. She knows the type. She's seen a thousand of him in her tenure, across a dozen different sites and half a hundred task forces.
Sometimes, she wondered if the Foundation really was cloning people.
One had never quite given her a straight answer when she’d asked.
“How is the situation on the ground?”
Jefferson’s face sours.
“To be frank? Not great.”
There’s a sustained burst of gunfire, followed by a succession of concussive blasts that rattle the tent, as if to punctuate his point. More ephemeral screaming. Seven tries to keep the wince off of her face.
“We’ve secured the perimeter, constructed defenses, gotten basic operational infrastructure up and running. The boys from Nu-7 are working on bringing the nuclear contingency online.”
He hesitates, shoulders slumping slightly.
“We’re beginning to encounter insurmountable logistical issues. They’re coming from the gate at a rate that’s eventually going to outpace our ammunition supply. I’ve had the suppression teams working in shifts since day one, but everyone’s on edge. It feels like we’re going to be overrun.”
Jefferson meets her gaze fully for the first time.
“To be honest, ma’am, I think the men are expecting you to pull a rabbit out of a hat.”
After a beat, he blanches, quickly looking down. “N-no offense.” Seven notices sudden perspiration gleaming on his forehead and sighs internally.
“None taken.”
The entrance flap rustles. A balding, potbellied man in a disheveled black rubber apron bursts through, scanning the tent apprehensively. Jefferson waves him over.
“That’d be Doctor Jameson from Beta-77. To my understanding, he and his team have been waiting for you.”
“Thank you, Commander. That’ll be all.”
He salutes her again, snapping his heels together.
Seven turns to go, then hesitates. Facing the room, she raises her voice, trying her best to sound authoritative, calm, to project control the way One does so effortlessly.
“I’ve been told that some of you here have been expecting a miracle. The good news is, that is my department. Carry on.”
Her voice sounds wavering, even to her, but the room gives an appreciative cheer nonetheless. Swallowing nausea, Seven follows the doctor out of the tent.
There is work to be done.
A demon’s severed head drips orange ichor onto the blue tarping of the lab bench. It’s vaguely selachian, mottled gray skin streaked with phosphorescent blue stripes. Two jagged arcs of obsidian curve from its forehead like antlers, glistening wetly. As Seven watches, serpentine pupils dilate in lidless sockets, swiveling up to look at her. The thing’s mouth twitches.
Seven slides another silver needle into its skull.
Jameson stands next to her, bearded face furrowed. Sweat pours off of his bald scalp and runs down his face in perspicuous droplets. Occasionally, he mops at his face with a yellow handkerchief, though it barely seems to help. Seven doesn’t mind. At least he hasn’t tried to salute her yet.
“We’re uh, pretty sure that the instances coming through the gate are, for all intents and purposes, fully substantiated. If you would let go of the probe, ma’am?”
Seven nods, stepping back from the desk. Jameson taps rapidly on the keyboard cradled to his chest, then hits enter.
The lights of the mobile laboratory flicker, the background hum of ventilation fans sputtering to a halt. The demon’s head twitches, eyes rolling back as each of the seven silver spikes buried in its skull flare a brilliant, blinding blue. There is a smell like rotting eggs and abscesses. Seven turns away, sleeve pulled over her mouth.
“If that thing had been a normal manifestation, it would've been disintegrated by the disvocation matrix we just pumped into it.”
The head is still there, faintly steaming, clotted orange ichor leaking slowly from each eye. It no longer twitches. Jameson’s mouth curls with distaste, and he moves to dislodge the silver spikes, sliding each out of the demon’s flesh with a wet squelch.
Seven nods, comprehending.
“Instead of being matter from our reality held together by will from the outside, the demon has crossed over fully, body and bowel. The hellgate isn’t just manifesting them. It’s translating them into our dimension.”
Jameson slides the head into a biowaste crate and sighs, sealing the lid.
“Precisely, ma'am. I'm sure you see where the problem is.”
“We can’t just seal off the breach. They’d just force their way through, regardless of the warding schema. We actually have to close it altogether.”
Seven peels off ichor-slick gloves, rubbing her hands together, beginning to pace the room.
“I want this laboratory to myself for the next twelve hours. Access to every scrap of data you’ve collected about the hellgate, about Meeker, local geological and thaumaturgic readings. A thaumoelectric generator. As much coffee as can reasonably be had. And a whiteboard.”
Jameson looks up from wiping down the bench, face pale. Seven realizes a slow grin has spread across her face. She lets it sit there until Jameson looks away.
“Yes ma’am, uh, O5-7 ma’am, of-of course. Right away.”
“One more thing, Jameson.”
“Yes?”
“Bring me more of their heads.”
The little things are running.
Asveth Korgaul, twenty-eighth to taste the true blood of the Tree, nineteenth of the Mighty, he-who-is-favored-in-murder lifts a head the size of minor moons and sniffs at the bloodsoaked air of Upper Megiddo. A hemisphere's worth of sanguine, sulfuric atmosphere draws into cavernous nostrils, deep and dark as holes in space.
The little things are running.
The plain beneath him crawls with infernal activity. Lines of the lesser squirm like maggots in writhing columns, trailing into a blazing horizon eternities away. Asveth Korgaul stretches his many, many arms. Obsidian mountains turn to slag and blow away. His movement sets the little things to flight, all scurrying away, all fleeing in the same direction.
This observation is sufficiently interesting.
Claws like the death of the sun dig kilometers deep into the ashen turf as he makes his stately way across the black plain of infinity. Trillions of the lesser lie dead and dying in his wake, a blooming sea of ichor dotted with pale islands of tartarean ash. He pays them no heed.
The horizon speaks to him of war.
3. TRAUMA RESPONSE
O5-6 watches the latest numbers scrolling across his screen and decides to take another shot. Liquid fire, silky smooth, trickles achingly down his throat. Golden fingers fiddle with the plastic safety cap of the Armageddon Button, flicking it up, then down, up, then down.
It’s not actually a button, of course, more of a switch, really, and truth be told not particularly apocalyptic compared to some of the other ones at his immediate disposal. He sits nestled at the center of Site-01, enshrined in the shining, sterile, utterly secure heart of the Foundation. He is the only living, breathing thing within ███ kilometers. He is, practically speaking, the loneliest man alive.
Seven left by apportation thirty minutes after the meeting ended. One had kept him company for a little while longer, gossiping of this and that matter of state, before cheerfully stepping into the fireplace and turning to ash. Off to his bunker in the Mojave no doubt, off to beat gods at dice and host devils for dinner and delegate everything actually important to everyone else.
Wiping at his mouth, Six reaches for the nearest keyboard.
INITIALIZING O5COM_v14.3 SECURE TELECOM INTERFACE
INSTANCE 3455 LOGGED
WELCOME, O5-6
O5-6: Just received hourlies from Meeker. Not good.
O5-1: I saw.
O5-6: PENTAGRAM’s going to notice soon, if they haven’t already. Only a matter of time until something big comes through.
O5-1: Seven has it under control.
O5-6: She’s been on-site for eighteen hours already. Hasn’t responded to pings. Contacted local command, says she hasn’t been out of the lab since she arrived. She’s fumbling, One.
O5-1: Trust me, she’ll pull through.
O5-6: And if she doesn’t? Only option we have left is Ganymede. No way in hell PENTAGRAM doesn’t respond after that. Don’t like how they’re keeping so quiet in the meantime anyhow. Unusual.
O5-1: PENTAGRAM is handled, for now. You have my word. We’ll worry about Ganymede when and if it comes to that.
O5-6: We don’t have a lot of time left. Hours, at most. I ask again, are you certain?
O5-1: Seven will pull through. She’s one of mine.
O5-6: Understood.
O5-1 DISCONNECTED
INSTANCE 3455 TERMINATED
Six fills another glass with amber flame and drains it dry.
The numbers on the monitor tick steadily higher.
Sgt. Calvin Freedman is having a smoke break when the Morris counter starts beeping. And doesn’t stop.
“Shit. Mount up!”
He clambers into the open hatch of the Bradley. Old springs, long gone stiff, dig sharply into his back. He winces.
The damned things were relics, dredged up from the dying days of the Cold War. Their arthritic engines had practically given the pit crew a nervous conniption upon inspection, and traversing the turret for any length of time filled the basket with the agonized screeching of neglected servos. There was a reason Hammer Down hadn’t deployed in force since the eighties: the arsenal beneath Ruby Mountain was practically a boneyard, half of it stolen from other boneyards.
At least the bushmasters still worked.
The backline clamors with activity, vast auto-censers vaporizing industrial quantities of frankincense and myrrh over a pyramid of piled ammunition crates as black flocks of conscripted vestry recite tactical sacrament with a fervor comprehensible only to the damned. Gun crews scramble up and down the palisades, skidding into foxholes, rapping atop sigil-touched turrets rotating as one to face the very mouth of Hell, white-hot on their thermals.
Morris counters up and down the line simultaneously crescendo into ear-splitting screeches that rise into frequencies inaudible, before shorting out altogether in sparking bursts of static.
Freedman looks towards the burning horizon, swallows his Zyn, and pre-sights the main gun.
The last belts are loaded, the last hatches are sealed, the last pieces of chewing tobacco spat ignominiously into the rusty earth.
There is a terrible, breathless, aching silence.
The earth shifts, boils, shatters.
“Weapons free.”
Hell follows.
Asveth Korgaul is close now, so terribly, achingly close. The plain beneath him writhes with a living carpet of the lesser, like red water flowing over and under his limbs, biting at adamantite scales, crushed by the millions beneath every quaking step.
He sees now the reason for their congregation.
There is a tear.
A small one, a pale bloom of pink stretched against the undersky, a galactic teratoma compressed into a pulsing, wrathful singularity by exquisite agony. It leads, he sees now, it leads to a lesser world, already spindled by threads of red and black, balanced on the very precipice of order.
He bends his head in supplication to the Wounded Lord of Heaven and his prayer sounds with the thundering chorus of high-altitude thermonuclear detonation, with the hiss of cosmic background radiation, with the cries of children in pain.
He sheds many of his arms, for the lesser world cannot bear them as they are. He sheds his adamantite scales for ones of mere graphene, his supernova claws for ones of base enchantment. He sheds his black crown and places it reverently on the ground, where it immediately begins melting its way down into the crust of Upper Megiddo.
Naked, supplicant, purified, he ascends towards the undersky upon winds of slaughter.
His pilgrimage awaits.
tamarin tesh asham korgath turnal tamarin tesh avashin tomath vaten ela ela ela tamarin tesh
Before him, the lesser flee, maddened with terror, and behind him they flock in untold billions. Eagerly, they await their chance to spread the good word.
The obsidian khopesh glides through 25 mm of composite-wrapped steel plating like so much wrapping paper. Sgt Calvin Freedman feels it slice through his plate carrier, hook up into his ribcage, and pull.
He coughs, a small, surprised noise. His face feels sticky and warm and blood runs down the plastic screen of the FCS display in front of him in black rivulets. Offhandedly, he feels a moment of sympathy for the cleanup crew.
Golden claws gleam through the gash in the hull, widening the gap in a screech of tortured metal. He coughs again, wetly. Something in his chest pops and deflates.
A figure stares down at him from the breach, black on red, bipedal, covered with a dense carpet of wriggling tendrils like the underbelly of a millipede. Six insectoid arms grip the edges of the cut, pulling. The side of the Bradley falls away into ribbons of twisted steel.
It’s grinning at him.
He grins back.
Blood-slick fingers reach for the detcord of the claymore mine strapped across his chest, pulling the pin.
Fifteen minutes into the battle sees Commander Lionel Jefferson realize that all is lost.
The command tent rattles with the blast of the handful of ancient Paladins that consist of the sum total of the Foundation’s artillery corps. Privately, he doubts that even ten times their number would’ve been enough to make a difference.
If he survived, Jefferson resolves, clenching his teeth, he’d have the Logistics Division lined up against the wall and shot. He’d do it himself if he had to.
There had simply been too many of them. Sheer volume of bodies had nearly instantaneously overwhelmed the output of the first killzones, a red wave pouring over concertina wire and trenches to slam liquidly against the first set of palisades. Almost half of the Bradleys had been lost in those frantic first minutes, dug-in outside the walls. There simply had been nowhere to retreat them to, not after the primary fallback routes had become entirely inundated by swarms of blue-feathered, multi-headed pangolins that spit acid, ate metal and ran at highway speeds. He’d ordered them abandoned instead, scuttled with blessed thermite and satchel charges, and personally watched from atop the concertainer as the bonfires flared up one by one, each briefly illuminating the scuttling, crawling stream of bodies before snuffing out.
Not a single crewman had belayed the order.
Not a single one had made it back behind the walls.
The emplacement itself would hold for a while longer, at least. He’d ordered the M113s, alongside the remaining Bradleys, up onto dirt ramps, depressing their Vulcans over the palisade to fire point-blank into the horde as they scrabbled and scratched at the base of the walls. Jefferson was confident that they’d manage to keep the demons at bay for as long as the ammo held out.
By his most generous estimates, they’d last for another half-hour.
Staring through the blood-mist at his crumbling frontline, Commander Lionel Jefferson comes to the terrible realization that the Montana National Guard genuinely might’ve done better in his position. For the first time in twenty years of honorable service, despair sets in.
There was only so much you could do with a scalpel, however sharp, when arrayed against an exploding volcano.
“Priority one is making sure the Overseer makes it out alive. Send five men from my alpha company to the lab. Make sure she’s on the first truck out of here. Start evacuating the backline staff to the minimum viable fallback distance alongside the remaining garrison force. Send anyone left to the front. Ping Overwatch, flag STARFIRE BRAVO NOVA, and tell the nukies to get the bomb ready. We’re going to take out as many of these fuckers-”
“OVERSEER ON DECK!”
Through the din, through the artillery, the sounds of slaughter, and the screeching of Hell, those three words cut like a prayer.
Jefferson turns towards the entrance of the command post.
O5-7 is standing there, a flock of white coats trailing reverently in her wake, faces cast in supplicant admiration. Her thin blonde hair is unwound, falling around her shoulders in scraggly streams, and she’s smiling.
There’s nothing nervous about it this time, no hint of uncertainty or doubt. It’s a smile that casts a shadow, balanced on the knife’s edge of wild, unconscious charisma and cackling madness. It’s a smile that cuts like a tungsten rod dropped from orbit.
It’s the smile of one about to do the impossible.
Against all experience, all rational belief, all smatterings of common sense, Jefferson feels his heart beating with wild hope. His arm is raised in salute. He doesn’t even remember doing it. The tent is quiet. The battle is quiet. Hell itself seems to have gone quiet.
The Overseer’s command rings out like the edict of a demigod.
“I need to borrow your nuclear bomb.”
4. SHOCK AND AWE
The lesser world is close enough to taste and indeed he tastes it now, wild and heady, incensed with smoke, heavy with blood, thin and tender and sweet with slaughter.
Asveth Korgaul throws back his head and ululates with many mouths, singing in blessed supplication to the Almighty Lord of Pain. He rends at Time with many hands, cuts at Space with many claws. The tear in the undersky bleeds and the space between is awash in red.
Below him the lesser join in infernal chorus, a billion, billion feet stamping upon the face of the abyss, a billion, billion prayers rising like screams into a sky that splinters and cracks, a clamor that is legion, sevenfold.
URATH UDAL TAMARIN TESH ASVETH KORGAUL RASHIM UDAL URATH SADDAKT TAVIN
Slowly, slowly, the undersky opens, weeping ribbons of red.
Conquest awaits.
The woman that is seven of thirteen, that is ████ █████, that is Overseer, that is Hierophant, that is Blasphemer, that is uncertain, that is unclear, that is nonetheless bares herself to the world and prepares to bring forth miracle.
Her right hand holds a silvered knife. Her left hand is hidden.
White-coats stand in tabernacle chorus, faces bent in supplication. They read an incantation from a teleprompter, voices ringing with conjoined power, and it is thus.
Miracles are paid for in blood.
From the crumbling frontline, from the desperate struggle that yet rages scant feet away from the convocation, ichor flows in a red river over the rusty earth, the life-blood of a hundred good men twisting in the air to form the base of a circle, ring within rings.
The seventh raises her anathame blade in salute, then slides it softly across her palm.
Hers is the blood of an order that bestrides the earth, that has bound gods and brought them to heel, shattered nations and remade them. It flows from her palm and forms a sigil, the sigil, hovering in the center of the martyr’s circle.
Three arrows, facing inwards, intersecting a ring.
Miracles are paid for in blood.
Here is the voice to call down thunder, to sunder the earth. Here is power, resonant, coruscant, writhing and rabid. Here is the woman that brings it to heel.
The seventh’s voice joins the chorus in ringing, clarion assertion.
Foe’s crown,
Law of steel,
Circle unbroken,
I rescind your invitation,
Worm-that-is-king,
Emperor-of-snakes,
Nothing-and-nowhere
This is a gauntlet thrown, and it must know an answer.
There is a rumbling, a deep tremor in the bloodsoaked earth. The ranks of Hell still, turning as one to face the burning pit, kneeling in the dust. The defenders left atop the wall rally, cutting them down in their unmoving hundreds. This is no matter.
Asveth Korgaul is come.
From the hellgate a black arm erupts, ten stories high, trailing gouts of baleful flame. The blood-mist thickens, congeals, dripping into respirators, choking, sickening, rancid.
There is a terrible, triumphant, trumpeting howl, and it is thus.
tamarin tesh asham korgath turnal tamarin tesh avashin tomath vaten ela ela ela tamarin tesh
shomaush shomaush, shomaush teshet raketh
<oh red lord, oh red lord, oh victorious red lord>
The contest is met.
~
An old man and a young girl stare side-by-side at a shaky chalk diagram drawn onto the concrete floor of a cell. The old man smiles toothlessly, and flashes a thumbs up at the fisheye lens that watches them both from the ceiling. There is a pause. The silver-and-steel explosive collar wrapped around his neck hisses with pneumatic release and falls clattering to the floor. He rubs at his neck where the skin is raw and red and breathes in, deep. The girl stares up at him in sympathy.
The voice on the intercom blares an order. The old man picks up a scalpel, carefully peeling back the sterile plastic sheathe. He makes an incision on his index finger, holding it over the center of the chalk outline. The girl watches, fascinated, as three red droplets fall and splash into the center of the diagram.
There is a whisper that glides over her skin like a breeze.
Miracles are paid for in blood.
~
The chanting continues, thesis and antithesis, assertion and assertion. The earth roils and fractures. Sections of the barricade are brought to ruin, its defenders dismayed, dismounting their vehicles and running for shelter, knowing themselves as ants in a titanomachy. High above, in the upper atmosphere, the air crackles and snaps with thaumoelectric discharge. The wind comes, dry and hot, smelling of ozone and blood. Some of the white-coats drop to their knees, crumpling to the ground like paper dolls. The rest continue the incantation, blinking sweat from bloodshot eyes. They cannot stop now.
The seventh reveals her hand at last.
Martyr’s blood,
King’s blood,
Stolen dawn,
Law of flame,
Glint on glass,
SUNRISE
At the center of the circle the alpha warhead detonates in a plume of searing light.
The seventh has bought her miracle with the blood of the sun.
She should be blind, seared and skinless. She should be ash, less than ash, molecular debris floating on radioactive wind. She clenches her fist and the nuclear plume rears into the air, bound ineffably by the circle into a spear of light a mile high. The white-coats are weeping tears of blood, broken lips still moving in recitation of the incantation seared into their skulls by atomic flame.
The seventh breathes in, breathes out, brings her fist to her chest with a final shout. The miracle flows into her like the breath of God.
For a moment, for an eternity, she is astride the world.
She spares the hellgate a single, smoldering glance, and calls down the sun.
O5-6 lets the glass slip from his fingers, shattering thousand-dollar liquor over billion-dollar floors.
“Holy fucking shit.”
“Mister President, fifteen minutes ago, the Foundation detonated a nuclear device on American soil.”
Asveth Korgaul feels the tear slam shut on his arm, sundering it in a great gout of ichor.
He is falling, falling, falling back onto the black plain of the abyss.
His body crashes back into Upper Megiddo with the force of celestial impact. The crust shatters. Chains of magma wrap in iridescent tendrils around his many, many arms, pulling him down, down into the mantle, down into the infinite red that pulses at the heart of the abyss, colder than the gulf between stars.
The master is displeased.
Seven totters to the ground, smouldering, labcoat splaying around her in a pool of half-melted laminate. The rest of Beta-77 follows shortly after, slumping into the dust. Dimly, she’s aware of medical teams rushing the field, someone shouting orders.
“I’m okay”, she manages, through bruised and bleeding lips. “I’m okay. See to the others first.”
It’s raining over Meeker. The blood-mist washes away, extinguishing the lingering flames. Wounded are recovered, the dead gathered where they lie. What’s left of them, anyway. Those that can be identified are body-bagged. Graves are dug for those that can’t.
In the downpour, the second half of the mission begins.
Containment.
Hard-helmeted men with determined expressions and blue coveralls move into the town first, carefully navigating the glassy ruins left by atomic miracle. What concertainer segments remain intact are recovered, the rest reduced to rubble by acetylene torches and demolition charges. Concertina wire is respooled, foxholes and earthworks concealed and flattened by a small squadron of bulldozers.
In the end, the hellgate itself proves almost a mercy. Burnt out Bradleys and brass casings are collected, then piled en masse into the gaping maw. The first shovelful of dirt falls into the pit accompanied by rousing cheers. It’s bitter work, but spirits are high.
After all, they’ve just saved the world.
Foundation webcrawlers scour the internet, corrupting data, erasing files, deleting photos. Dusty departmental archives are raided, certain files defaced. A careful story is floated to select media outlets. Municipal, state, and federal officials disjointly receive word of some kind of disaster, a fire, maybe, or an earthquake. The reports are unclear and contradictory. What they are unanimous on, however, is that help is already on-site.
The situation is under control.
A select few families receive knocks on the door in the middle of the night by faceless men in plain suits and dark glasses with official-looking badges. Their reach isn’t omnipresent nor omnipotent, not nearly so, but it doesn’t have to be.
Meeker is a small town, and it is made smaller.
Twelve hours after the hellgate closes- on the dot- it is as the adage goes.
Nobody who knows, cares, and nobody who cares, knows.
1,866 people cease to exist in any way that matters.
SCP-616-3 is reclassified as neutralized by order of Foundation High Command as of 0100 GMT 11/30/2009
11/29/2009
Langley, Virginia
Four large meat lovers’ with extra Italian sausage and bacon on the side. Three vegetarians’, hold the onions, hold the pepper, extra olives. Two anchovy and blue-cheese thin crusts, wrapped separately. Twelve assorted sodas and a milkshake.
Terrence and his manager exchange knowing looks.
“It’s one of those orders, isn’t it?”
The manager gives a subtle nod.
“Up or-” Terrence leans in close, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “-down?”
Down.
Racing down the 495, midnight wind blowing through his hair. Eighties radio blares from clapped-out speakers as the scent of grease fills the cabin.
Down.
He takes a right, onto the service road that bends between the trees, dark and deep. Past the escalating warning signs, past the soft perimeter of artfully concealed pressure plates and infrared cams, past the hard perimeter of retracted gun emplacements and the JSOC counter-assault team watching him through thousand-dollar thermals, past the steel gate that slides open, smooth and silent.
He parks just off the road, takes the stack of boxes, still warm, out of the trunk, and heads down.
Down, into the unassuming unmarked concrete access tunnel.
Down, past the recessed blast doors, past the bedrock, past the geomantic wards layered thick enough to bite.
Down, until his breath catches in his throat, short and sharp, misting the air.
Down, until space wraps around itself like a garrote wire, down into hypothetical N-space, down into everything that Langley ever was and everything Langley will ever be.
Welcome to PENTAGRAM. They’re good tippers.
The end of the passage opens up into an expansive entrance hall. Terrence makes his way to the reception desk, boxes balanced precariously, fastidiously avoiding the important looking people criss-crossing the marble floors in patent leather shoes.
“Hey Clark. Busy night?”
The blue-uniformed guard smiles tiredly and slides another twenty across the counter.
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“No sir, this would not constitute an act of war.”
“Yes sir, the casualty estimates are accurate to the best of my knowledge. Yes sir, I do believe the risk is commensurate.”
“Yes sir, the Joint Chiefs stand ready. We’re waiting for your order, sir.”
The last graves are filled, tamped down, smoothed seamlessly into the rusty earth. Thaumoelectric generators are silenced, ritual engines doused with mare’s blood and serenaded to sleep, then bundled, cloth-covered, into a small fleet of M939s.
Seven sleek medevac helicopters descend from the slate sky, scrambled from Area-14. There’s a small dispute when Jefferson insists that O5-7 be seated on the first outbound flight.
“The wounded go first. There will be no more unnecessary deaths today. I will not allow it.”
Jefferson hesitates, then meets her gaze, nodding. Seven sees the reverence blooming in his expression, and hates herself a little for taking pride in it.
“Understood ma’am. I’ll make preparations for your presence in the convoy. ETA to Site-8 is seven hours and thirty minutes.”
“With respect, sir, we need your decision now.”
“This is it. Make or break.”
The sun over Meeker is just touching the horizon when the convoy sets out.
They are not the first to leave. Much of the work of the day was spent mounting and securing the remaining Bradleys atop a series of flatbed haulers departing for the railroad junction at Glenwood Spring under the guise of an Army field exercise, and neither will they be the last. There is a garrison left behind, token perimeter security and a squad of glum-faced researchers who, having drawn short straws, will stay on-site for another three months, monitoring spacetime integrity and any lingering tartarean contamination. Seven attempts a pep talk, reciting the platitudes One bade her memorize by rote. The words feel plastic, artificial, but she sees their backs straighten nonetheless. She walks away before they can attempt a salute.
Seven stretches out in the mercifully empty backseat of the Humvee, letting out a shuddering breath. Thaumic exhaustion roils beneath her skin, flaring into painful spasms that leave her wincing, rubbing at her arms. She wonders at the lengths Jefferson must have gone to reserve an entire vehicle for her personal use, stifling a guilty smirk as she pictures a squad of grim-faced operators sitting stoically in each other’s laps.
Her eyes slip shut, just for a moment.
Cigarette smoke curls dimly in the blue light, spun into a slow vortex by the ceiling fan. The cuban is almost gone, dim orange embers scattering onto white-knuckled fingers with every quiet exhalation. It goes unnoticed.
His other hand presses an obsidian-black aetheric transmitter to his ear. He’s holding his breath. The dozen black-suited men and women watching his every move hold their breath as well. There is a pause.
“Yes sir. Understood.”
The Apache screams over the rolling hills, black against the night, dragging a plume of dust and shredded shrubbery in its wake. It buzzes a copse of willow trees, stripping leaves from branches, sending a foraging jackrabbit scurrying for cover down an abandoned gopher hole.
There is a moment of silence. The jackrabbit pokes cautiously out of the earth.
Eight additional rotors sound in the Apache’s wake.
The rabbit scampers deeper into the burrow.
“eagle one reporting convoy sighted square november fife four dash two clicks southbound on the I-5 tally twenty two request clearance to engage”
Connor O’Malley, Director of PENTAGRAM, lets a broad, shallow smile crawl across his face and exhales a cloud of fragrant smoke.
“Strike.”
There is a microsecond bite of shrieking terror burrowing at the underside of her subconscious. O5-7 snaps bleary eyes open, pulse suddenly racing.
She is about to die. She is about to die. She is about to die.
The magic in her blood is screaming at her.
Without thinking, without pause, Seven shouts a word in a language unspoken for nine thousand years.
Half a second later the AGM-114L Hellfire slams into her humvee and everything becomes flame and noise and ruin.
The eagle screams into the stratosphere, then higher still, engines burning blue. Vapor coruscates off the airframe in white contrails that unfold into pleated petals of mist as the air splits once, twice and still the engines roar. Steady hands grip the joystick as the cockpit quakes and outside the vista turns from sunny sky-blue to indigo black. Higher, yet higher, until the horizon line falls away and below spins blue marble. Breathe in, five-hundred pounds on your chest, breathe out, hissing and spitting, blood pounding in your ears.
Release.
From the eagle’s belly a line of shining silver flings itself into the black.
5. COCKED PISTOL
This is an automatically generated entry documenting breaking events. Situation type: SCRAMBLE. Affected systems: ORBITAL ASSET RELAY. Affected personnel: TECHNICAL, COMMUNICATIONS, DOL, DOS.
This entry was generated on 20██/11/30 15:42 GMT by O5-3 [pcs.nimda|35O#pcs.nimda|35O]
Incident #: 20██011300███
Severity: High-Critical
Possibility of Foundation Casualties: High-Critical
Risk of Public Dissemination: Moderate
Incident Status: In-Progress
Affected Sites: Output Error: List object exceeds 10,000 characters.
Live Relay Integrity: 0.0% (0/███ CAVSAT assets responsive)
“What the fuck is happening, Three?”
|>UNKNOWN MASSIVE NETWORK DISRUPTION ATTEMPTING REROUTE DIFFICULT 99.4% OPERATIONAL CAPACITY INSUFFICIENT ASSUME EQUIVALENT AGENT LEVEL COUNTERFORCE
Golden fingers clatter desperately across three separate keyboards as klaxons echo throughout the empty halls of Site-01. O5-6 cycles through seven languages worth of profanity as he navigates through screen after screen of dead air and error messages.
“Can you turn those sirens off? I’m the only person in the Site!”
|>ACKNOWLEDGED
The sirens snap off mid-squawk.
Six rubs at the bridge of his nose, trying to head off the migraine he feels building deep in his temple.
“There are five general intelligences operating within an order of magnitude of your capacity that we know of. Can you rule out any of them? Incidentally or otherwise.”
There is a momentary pause.
|>NO ATTEMPTED INTRUSION INTO DATABASE NO DISRUPTION TO CORE PERSONALITY MATRIX NO KNOWN AIC BREACHES
“That rules out the Nornir, and both of the Maxwellianists.”
|>MINIMAL VEIL DISRUPTION OBSERVED THUS FAR
“Not the Engine then, that abomination wouldn't give a damn about keeping the Veil, were it capable of acting on this scale. That leaves-”
|>MAGISTER SEVEN THAUMOCOGNITION SYSTEM
“-the Americans.”
Six leans back in his chair, heart racing.
“This doesn’t make any sense. This doesn’t make any sense at all. We contained 616-3. We sealed the hellgate. We did our goddamned jobs. Nothing incentivizes them to act- not now- unless-”
Six sits up, breathing hard.
“Seven’s ritual. Damn them. Damn her. Fucking witch, fucking hellspawn, they think we used a nuclear bomb, Three.”
Six stands, pacing the room.
“No, no, even then, even then, that changes nothing. The Deterrence Doctrine was built to allow for the eventuality of a nuclear contingency being used- there’s still nothing justifying annulment, not on this scale-”
O5-6 stops mid-stride.
There is a figure standing in the doorway to the command room, which is impossible, as O5-6 is the only living thing within ███ kilometers of Site-01. Sunken gray eyes set in pallid flesh braided with cords of sanctic copper stare down at Six.
There is a slow sensation of simultaneous unravelling and rearrangement, puzzle pieces falling into place like a twisting knife.
The factotum’s jaw unhinges with a wet tear, revealing the recessed speaker embedded in its throat.
Six makes a decision that saves his life.
Stuffing golden fingers into his ears, he grits his teeth and pushes. His eardrums pop, warm blood trickling down the side of his head, just in time to defend against the truly virulent stream of verbal cognitohazards erupting from the corpse-puppet as it lunges at him, pale hands outstretched.
The impact knocks him to the floor, air rushing from his lungs as the thing wraps icy, implacable fingers around his neck and squeezes. The dead eyes staring back into his own glint with malign consciousness. The factotum doesn’t smile, not with its jaw dangling loosely by copper wire, but there’s an impression of one nonetheless.
He claws uselessly at dead flesh, golden fingers scraping bloodless rivulets into its cheeks. Blackness creeps into the edges of his vision, his grip slackening. Six feels his pulse thumping in his temple, a pounding echo in his skull.
Gasping, choking on a mouthful of blood, Six spits in the thing’s face.
Sulfur, sharp and pungent, wafts through the air, mixing with the scent of iron. Where his blood splatters against the factotum’s skin, great black strips of flesh crumble, rotting off of the copper scaffolding, spreading inwards. There is a spray of sparks as the disintegration hits something critical. The thing’s grip slackens.
Six slides the inert factotum off of him, scrabbling on hands and knees towards the central console. Blood fills his mouth, vision gone spotty with distortion. He knows better than to try to breathe. Golden fingers pry open a metal panel from the bottom of the console, revealing a thin metal syringe.
With the last of his strength, Six injects 20ccs of synthetic Paramecium directly into the side of his neck.
He feels his eardrums reconstitute, then screams in agony as his shattered throat pushes itself back into position.
In a voice made raw by reknitting vocal cords, Six gasps into the air.
“Counterintelligence. Sold us out.”
|>CONCURRENCE
“PENTAGRAM knows the deterrence outline.”
|>CONCURRENCE
“Goddamnit they might actually win.”
|>CONCURRENCE
Pulling himself to his feet, Six brushes himself off, wiping at the blackened viscera staining the lapel of his suit. Golden fingers run through thinning hair.
“The Foundation is at war.”
|>CONCURRENCE
|>INITIALIZE DETERRENCE DOCTRINE?
O5-6 takes his seat in front of the central console. He breathes in deep, and out, flipping up the safety cap of the Armageddon Button.
“Do it.”
There’s a moment of hesitation, golden fingers clenching, digging grooves into the leather armrests of his chair.
“Where the hell is One?”
6. CRESCENDO
CDRUSS STRATCOM CONPLAN 9633 SUMMARY “OPERATION BLOCKBUSTER”
PURPOSE- To eradicate the operational capacity of the SCP Foundation within the contiguous and territorial borders of the United States of America. To safeguard American citizenry from Foundation reprisal and additional sub-veil threat organizations. To preserve American paranatural dominance in the face of extraordinary threat to national sovereignty and liberty.
It’s morning in America.
Mason Gutierrez watches his breath frost onto the inner pane of the guard booth and sighs miserably, rubbing his hands together. It’s always cold in Site-19, doubly so in the surface wards. Drinks would ice over if you left them out overnight, cans of coke would burst, and the water came out of the faucets cold enough to burn when it flowed at all. He’d wear gloves, he ought to wear gloves, half the infirmary was full from frostbite this time of year, but the damned things made keyboards impossible to use.
He picks up his mug of steaming coffee, wrapping his fingers around it gratefully before taking a small, measured sip. He has to make it last. A refill would mean making the ten minute trek back across the outer perimeter into the barracks, through the driving wind that cut through layers like a knife, that blew gritty snow into your eyes and up your nose, through the cold that left your lips bleeding and chapped.
There is a flashing red light on the display. Mason sets the cup down, peering cautiously at his monitor. Something is at the vehicle gate.
Tourists, probably. There were always tourists here, coming up and down the highways across the tundra and they always, always managed to get lost. He accesses the gate camera, wincing as newly warmed fingers clatter against icy keys. Gray screen.
The bastards on second shift forgot to defrost the lenses, again.
Shouldering his rifle, Mason presses the yellow caution, just in case, bracing himself before opening the door to the guard booth.
“Hey! You folks gotta get outta here! Government prop-!”
His voice is cut by the sound of steel crumpling like tinsel.
Phase 1- Control
STRATCOM assets will mobilize in force nationwide to take control of major Foundation sites. Priority is given to the elimination of Foundation response infrastructure, Mobile Task Force deployment capability, and paraweaponry development.
Seventy tons of main battle tank rams through the chain-link fence of Site-19’s outer perimeter like the fist of God.
Mason scrambles back into the guard booth, frozen fingers slamming onto the panic button as he cowers beneath his desk.
“Fuck me.”
Due to varied threat terrain, cooperation between service branches is vital.
Doctor Maria Korrigan stares out of the porthole, mouth agape. Silicon wafers slip from her fingers, clattering softly against the floor.
“James, when’s the next shift change due?”
“Not for another… two months? Why do you ask?”
Maria points a shaking finger at the ceaseless gray plain of the Mare Imbrium.
“Then who the fuck are they?”
James peers through the tempered glass, then takes a startled step back, face gone pale.
“Holy hell, are those guns?”
Phase 2- Capture
An index of relevant High Value Targets is to be collated and produced by joint initiative of PENTAGRAM and the Directorate of National Intelligence. Veil-safe variations are to be distributed to relevant law enforcement personnel.
Director Tilda Moose hurls another fireball down the breach, simultaneously bursting a pressurized overhead coolant pipe with a flick of her wrist. The hallway fills with flame, automatic gunfire replaced by shouts of alarm. Cautiously, she levitates a shard of polarized glass around the doorway, wincing as suppressive fire resumes, shattering the makeshift mirror.
Something small and metal skitters through the doorway, bouncing at her feet. Snapping her fingers, she sends it skittering the other way before ducking behind the wall and plugging her ears. There’s an earsplitting bang.
“That one wasn’t a flashbang. I think they’re about done trying to take us alive.”
She reaches for a pouch on the bandolier strapped across her chest, producing a fistful of bees.
“Fly, my pretties!”
Behind her, the remnants of Sigma-3 cower behind a bookshelf, furiously incanting. The chalk doorway scrawled onto the wall in front of them remains frustratingly opaque.
“What’s taking so long?”
There’s a brief scuffle among the circle of researchers before one of them, a dark-haired man bleeding from a scrape across the bridge of his nose, stands, clearing his throat.
“Ma’am, our library cards aren’t working.”
Priority assets are to be acquired unharmed if possible, however, in some circumstances this may prove untenable.
|>Alexandria.aic: Hello? Who is this? What is going on?
|>UNKNOWN/ADMIN: Kill yourself.
The Joint Chiefs will recommend temporary suspension of Executive Order 12333 for the duration of the operation.
Site Director Leonard Hauz swears at the flashing red-and-blue lights in his rearview mirror. He pulls over to the side of the road, already reaching for his wallet. Deft fingers slide a white priming card into the ID display before he forces an unassuming smile onto his face, rolling down the driver’s side window.
“What seems to be-”
Two gunshots.
The Securities and Exchange Commission will halt all transactions pursuant to the following tickers for a period of ten trading days: $SCCP, $PCS, $SNCP, $SCPZ, $SPPC, $SPC.
“You people have nothing on me. Nothing.”
“Mr. Fitzgerald, please understand-”
“Seventeen years of legitimate business, by the book. By the book! Line by line, word by fucking word, goddamnit Georgie, what the fuck is going on?”
The gray man sitting across from him purses colorless lips.
“It’s over, Fritz. This is the big one. Let’s not make this any harder than it has to be.”
Jeremiah Fitzgerald, CEO and majority shareholder of Sentinel Capital Partners LLC, twenty year veteran of MTF-Mu 3, and three hundred and fifty-first richest man in the world, slumps back into his seat, ballpoint pen slipping through trembling fingers to clatter against mahogany flooring.
“God, at least tell me the charges. Least you could do.”
For the first time since he can remember, Jeremiah sees the gray man smile, eyes flat and cold and cruel.
“Wire fraud.”
Phase 3- Denial
A comprehensive multi-phase occult security cordon is to be established around critical infrastructure.
Petty Officer Andrew Graham lets out a croaking gurgle and drops to the ground as the ritual dagger glides across his neck, smooth and silent. Lifeblood flows down the basalt column, into the recesses and grooves of the black room carved by secret order of Ronald Reagan on October 31st, 1986. Around the altar sixteen senators chant the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence in High Daevite, interspersed by screaming eagles and a recording of the first bombs falling on Baghdad.
Three hundred feet beneath the Oval Office, a disembodied black heart beats for the first time in forty years.
In the skies of Washington, the strongest geomantic warding scheme ever devised flickers into luminous existence. Sunrise over the capital dawns pale, thin, and red.
Across the country, thirteen year old Samantha Wilkins has a dream about killing the President.
She stops breathing thirty seconds later.
Embedded covert assets are to be activated in conjunction with continual suppression operations.
“Are you certain the order is legitimate, Matthews?”
“Scipnet is still down, so there’s no real method of protocol verification but sir-”
The room shakes, dust cascading from the ceiling. The overhead lights flicker maddeningly and there’s a great groan of agonized steel as the ventilation fans slowly spin to a halt.
“Sir, I have to ask, at a certain point, does it even matter? I mean-”
There’s a sound like the sky falling atop their heads, a deep whistle followed by a calamitous detonation that sends the room stumbling to the floor, hands clapped over ears. Monitors topple, crashing down in showers of sparks and broken glass. There is a round of muffled cursing. Klaxons blare, and then the fluorescents cut out, replaced after a beat by the red glow of emergency lighting.
“I’m pretty sure they just dropped a bunker buster on us.”
“Point taken.”
Director Richard Xythinien wipes his nose, blood smearing the back of his hand. He pauses for a moment, considering, before reaching into his breast pocket to produce two silver keys.
“Never thought I’d actually have to go through with this. Even the nuke seemed more likely, looking back. Working for the Foundation thirty years, you get the idea-”
The room shakes again. One of the supports groans ominously, cracks spiderwebbing the concrete. The director stumbles, then catches himself, shaking his head.
“Same procedure as detonating the warhead. You know the drill. Both keys turn within twenty seconds or the system freezes, locks us out.”
He tosses one of the silver keys at Matthews, turning towards the console.
“This is the big one. This releases everything we have, vents, cells, blackwater, everything. You understand, Matthews?”
“Crystal. For the record, sir, it’s been an honor.”
“Like-”
The snub-nosed polyurethane .38 in his hand kicks twice, barrel shattering with the recoil. The director is dead before he hits the floor.
The rapid acquisition of a complete Foundation database archive is imperative. Priority target locations include known DEEPWELL facilities, Site-17, and Archival Site-07. Resistance presumed heavy.
A second sun blooms off the Alaskan coast, bought by the lives of seven good men. Northerly winds carry the fallout south.
Phase 4- Assertion
The Department of State will release sub-veil communications to all relevant paranatural actors, informing them of the state of war existing between the government of the United States of America and the SCP Foundation.
A handsome, brown-eyed man wearing a heavy greatcoat sits in front of a shivering, blonde-haired girl. There’s a corpse cooling on the ground behind them in a spreading pool of blood. The girl is trying very, very hard not to look back at the body.
The man reaches out with gentle fingers and turns her face towards his. His touch leaves streaks of soot on her skin.
~
Seven wakes to the dim impression of rushing water.
The cell is small, sparsely furnished. There’s a cot and desk bolted into the concrete floor and a fisheye lens gleaming in the corner of the ceiling. It’s an uncomfortably familiar arrangement.
Seven turns her head, wincing. There’s less pain than she expected: a dim ache in the pit of her stomach coupled to a sense of comprehensive emptiness, and a gnawing hunger grown to proportions beyond simple sensation. Her hands are bound behind her back, and something cool and metal presses loosely around her neck, shifting as she moves her shoulders.
The walls of the cell shine with a steady sheen of running water, cascading from floor to ceiling in laminar sheets that splash into grates lining the perimeter of the room. The air is heavy with geomancy, aether tainted with the runoff of a dozen cascading wards.
There’s a moment of faint irony.
She’s familiar with the theory behind the cell. She wrote most of it herself.
There’s a loud thrum that echoes through the cement floor, and the flow trickles to a stop, leaving the walls glistening with moisture. The door to the cell opens, swinging on heavy hinges.
A woman walks in, flanked by two grim-faced men in plainclothes with assault rifles slung over their shoulders. She holds a briefcase in one hand and a folding chair in the other.
“You must realize who I am.” Her voice comes out as a rasping croak.
“We do.”
The woman sets the folding chair down. One of the guards moves to stand in front of the doorway. The other circles behind Seven, rifle raised.
“Then you realize what utter folly it is to have taken me alive. I am an Overseer of the SCP Foundation. They will come for me. They will find me.”
The woman takes a seat, one eyebrow arched. She looks faintly unimpressed.
“My name is Tabitha Jones. I’m from the State Department. We have a few questions for you.”
Seven opens her mouth to respond. Nothing comes out. She looks down to see a circle of runes set in the floor around her flaring with dull crimson light.
The guard in the doorway produces a camcorder, red light blinking.
“It would be best if you cooperate.”
The State Department will exert all possible diplomatic measures to deter Foundation allies and the paranatural community at large from attempting aid.
Six stares at the still frame, eyes burning with exhaustion. It's her. Haggard and bleeding and filthy, but it's her, unmistakably her. There is a sense of terrible dissolution.
“Who else did they send this to, Three?”
NOTICE FROM GOLDBAKER-REINZ LLC
To the SCP Foundation,
Due to information that has recently come to light regarding the conduct of your organization in Meeker Township, Colorado throughout the week of November 26th, 2009, we have unilaterally elected to temporarily suspend clauses I, II, IV, and MMXVII of your coverage for this fiscal year. Please contact our liaison office at 511 West Avenue, New York, New York if you wish to file any dispute.
Best regards,
Claudia Rain, Vice President of Corporeal Operations
“Ma’am, the Nornir are in agreement. The tape is authentic.”
“Should we submit a response?”
“Understood. The Council is being convened as we speak. I’ll make arrangements right away.”
The Engineer opens her eyes, smiling. She’s just had the most wonderful dream.
7. DOUBLE TAKE
“Six. The substitute.” The aether-pict wavers, distortion flaring through the image. “I was expecting One.”
Six grits his teeth. By any reasonable measure the composure of the woman on the other side of the scry would be unthinkable, infuriating arrogance.
D.C Al Fine is many things but she is not arrogant.
Arrogance is for those with something to prove. Arrogance implies compensation. Al Fine does not compensate. Al Fine declares, and the world leaps to obey. This is not a gift- though she has many gifts. It is a fact of her position- the irrefutable gravitational pull of uncontested power.
“My apologies.” The words taste like nightshade. “He is otherwise disposed.”
One was missing, had been since morning. Three had brought him pictures of a smoking crater in the Mojave, paired with rumors of nuclear detonation in the desert.
There were rumors everywhere, a million of them rising from the shadows, suffocating. Site-19, fallen. A hole blown into the surface of the moon. The American flag rising over Three Portlands, Site-64 broken from the inside.
Six closes his eyes and empties them from his mind. He forces himself to look at the truth, and only the truth, then clarifies further. There is a particular, mutual truth to this conversation.
He meets Al Fine’s gaze through the wavering aether.
The truth is thus. They are not equals.
He knows this. She knows this.
Swallowing his pride, O5-6 begins to beg.
Flame dances in the refraction of the fused, glassy dunes that line the sides of the crater, highlighting the smoke that rises invisibly into the night. Even now red sand slowly slithers into the breach, the sides of the pit hissing with the soft skittering of scarlet dunes sinking into the earth.
O5-1 watches his bunker burn from the edge of the pit and breathes in, deeply.
“ אֱלֹהִים, two thousand years hence, charnel yet smells the same.”
He turns away from the smoldering waste, looking up towards the endless Mojave night.
The stars above gleam high and cold, uncaring.
He reaches, and plucks one from out of the sky.
“Enough. Your Sites are aflame from coast to coast, your armories are plundered, your armies broken and scattered. No more bartering.”
For the first time, there is a note of annoyance in the cast of her face. “No more bartering. No more hypotheticals. Convince me. What do you have to offer to my Coalition, as you are now?”
Six stands, golden fingers clenched into shining fists at his side. The mask of calm falls from his face.
"You would rather have PENTAGRAM in our place for the next hundred years? PENTAGRAM?"
Al Fine scoffs.
"PENTAGRAM is beholden to an empire. You are an empire, and beholden to nothing but yourself. What's the measure of the Foundation's GDP? How much does it export? Import? How many trade guarantees is it a part of? Is it a signatory to the Geneva Conventions?"
"Are you?"
"The Council of 108 meets directly underneath the Hague, Overseer. We don't have to be."
There is a moment of silence.
“We won’t go quietly. You can count on that. We haven’t emptied our vaults, not now, haven’t even come close. You, of all people, understand what I mean when I say the Foundation will not go quietly.”
A smile spreads across her face.
“To me, Μίδας, that sounds like acquiescence.”
O5-6 watches the aether-cast fade away. Golden hands reach for a fluted crystal chalice, crushing it to powder.
“Three.”
|>PRESENT
“One is dead. Seven is a traitor to the Foundation.”
He watches the amber spilling from his hand, drop by drop.
“Summon the council.”
« STRIKEFALL || RED QUEEN'S RACE || GASLIGHT »
