Sophia.
Take stock of your office. Note the clock on the wall to your right. Raise your shaking hands over your keyboard and start typing.
You don't have time to indulge these moments of dissociation. That's a problem that the meds will solve later; right now you need to focus on the Thing beneath Yellowstone.
You've suddenly come into very sensitive, very fatal information. You don't expect your memory will survive the month un-amnesticized. So, you need to do what you do best: make a list.
Dr. Sophia Light
Leader of Mobile Task Force Alpha-9 ("Last Hope"). Will coordinate initial sub-team roster and spearhead the Yellowstone operation. Sub-team will act independently of Alpha-9-Actual and be disbanded if they complete their mission.
You do not envy her.
Fear is an appropriate reaction to the discovery of a dead Overseer, Sophia decided.
Ten was slumped face-down against the kitchen counter, ebony-black hair pouring unbraided over her shoulders and arms. In her right hand was clutched a bottle of 1950 Bordeaux liberated from Sophia's pantry, contrasted with the crumpled slip of paper in her limp left hand. There were no signs of violence or intrusion into her home. But, inexplicably, she was staring at the unmoving body of an Overseer.
Murder? Suicide? A trap? Sophia reached into her pants pocket, taking hold of the pepper-spray on her keychain, and slowly shut the door behind her with a soft click. She strode over to a panel on the wall and flipped a switch.
Lights ignited throughout the kitchen, and Ten's fist slammed down on the granite countertop. Her grip on the bottle was so strained Sophia worried the glass would shatter. Agonously, Ten raised her head, brushed aside a few intrusive strands of hair, and smiled at somewhere above Sophia's chin.
"Hello, Light. I was wondering when you'd be home."
Sophia nodded, shoving the pepper-spray back in her pocket. "You're not dead, then?"
"Of course I'm not dead; only thing that can kill an Overseer is another Overseer." Ten turned her attention to the wine in her hand, passing a hand over the neck indecisively.
Sophia scrutinized her from the kitchen's wall: tall, hunched over, dressed in a bizarre outfit of jeans and the top of a formal suit. It was all too much of a mess to be intentional. Ten might genuinely be in crisis, which would be even more terrifying than death.
"And sorry about the wine," Ten was saying. "We're not allowed to drink our own stores for fear of poison."
"You're not a factotum, are you?"
Ten's lip curled up, in an expression of equal disgust and anger. "What reason could I possibly have to send my body-double to break into your home and drink your wine?"
"What reason could you have to do it yourself?"
Ten's lip lowered, and she glanced down at the paper in her left hand. Her fingers fidgeted over it, tracing a crease along its edge.
Setting aside the bottle, Ten rose from behind the counter. Her expression seemed more sincere, suddenly, like she'd remembered something secret.
"Sophia. We haven't met before, properly — only through my factotum. In a roundabout way, you know who I am, but I've never talked with you before."
Ten extended a hand forward, suspended in the air for Sophia to accept. Her anxious face seemed softer in the new light.
"Hello, Director. I am O5-10, the creator of the Alpha-9 project. I hear you were almost killed last week, for acting under my orders, and I am very, very sorry."
Without taking her eyes off Ten, Sophia scanned the room for signs of reality-warping or hallucinations. None of the usual symptoms, unfortunately. So, she took Ten's hand in hers, and shook it. A little static pop stabbed her palm on contact.
"Hello, O5-10. I'm Sophia Light, leader of Alpha-9. What business brings you by this late?"
Ten sighed, releasing her grasp on Sophia's hand. "Classified business, Sophia. Bloody, confusing, end-of-the-world, classified business."
"But you wouldn't be here if I weren't cleared to know some of it."
Ten shrugged. "Semantically, you can't be debriefed on an anomaly which doesn't exist."
"Semantically, if you can discuss it, you can be debriefed."
"I'll concede." Ten's lip curled upwards again. "How much do you know about SCP-2000?"
"It's an empty slot; has been forever. I take it that's our non-existent anomaly?"
"Indeed." The toe of Ten's shoe tapped against Sophia's tile floor. "See, we had a big facility out in Yellowstone that we used to save the world — very high-concept, very anomalous — but it was lost in an accident. SCP-076 destroyed its primary component nine years ago."
Sophia raised an eyebrow at the reference to Able ben Adam. "Before or after he slaughtered the rest of Omega-7?"
"Immediately afterwards. The point is: SCP-2000 left our reality and took a few things with it. A few stray concepts, a couple questions which now have no answers, some far-flung stretches of history which probably never happened."
"And yet you've decided to debrief me on it."
Ten smiled grimly. "Indeed. Spreading out from Yellowstone, we're seeing a plethora of anomalous activity which suggests causal and ontological breakdown. It's happening slowly, for now, but without our last-resort, the Council doesn't have the means to put it down for good."
"And I do?"
Ten paused, look at her confusedly. There was a certain tremor in her eyes, Sophia realized — uncertainty.
Ten picked her words carefully. "Sophia. You're the leader of Alpha-9, the reborn Omega-7. Your job is to combat the anomalous."
"Not with anyone I have on the team, currently. Do you have anyone you'd recommend?"
Ten did not reply for a long while. Then, she broke out in a deep, toothy smile. She shoved the paper in her hand into her pocket and brushed past Sophia on the way to the door, actively covering her mouth with a hand to stifle a deep chuckle.
Sophia looked on in annoyance. "Are you quite done?"
Ten nodded, taking a moment to breathe in, and out, and relax.
"I am done. I have no list, Sophia; I trust you can handle that part yourself. Frankly, I wouldn't know where to start."
With that, Ten grabbed the knob of the door and pulled it open to the brisk night air.
"Ten."
The smile fell from Ten's lips. In its place came deep resignation, and sadness. "Yes, Sophia?"
"You seem troubled by something, other than the end of the world. Whatever it is, you'll get through it."
Ten stared out in the midnight dark. Her face was an olive mask, wiped clean of emotion. Then, she exhaled a cloud of frost into the night air and turned to face her.
"History does not agree with you, Light. The world's always been fucked up. And the people in power have just as many problems as you, which is why it's never going to get fixed."
Sophia nodded, stepping towards her counter to reshelve the half-empty 1950 Bordeaux. "Take care, then."
"You as well. My factotum will speak with you when you're done."
Her front door shut with a click, and Sophia Light was alone.
Field Agent Carlotta Deneb
Ex-UIU, semi-proficient in small arms. She's a problem-solver — thinks out of the box 24/7. New to Foundation employ but has extensive training with ontokinetic phenomena.
Get her opinion by any means necessary.
Carlotta had been dodging Sophia's calls.
More accurately, Carlotta had found a way to prevent Sophia from contacting her. Messages would be delivered to invalid numbers and emails would be sent to incorrect addresses (meaning poor Carlotta Denesh in Accounting had received a distressing check-in from RAISA). Her address in the Foundation's employee database seemed to update daily, meaning snail mail was similarly unreliable.
"… Unfortunately, that number is not in service. Please call again."
Damn it. Sophia shoved her phone into her front pocket. Her heels clicked against the tile of Site-81's colossal server room as she caught up with her guide.
"… But next-door's where you'd find our paper records, if you ever need them, Miss Light." Lurk twisted his head around to flash her a smile. "By the way, I do appreciate you moving me to Lambda-2. Site-19 gets up to an awful lot, and it starts to wear on you."
Lurk was a man who wore an Oxford shirt and slacks to a back-of-house IT job. Although he walked with a professionalism befitting someone in Light's position, his snow-white hair had a habit of standing directly upright. If you were getting to know him, you'd assume an electric current had run through his head just minutes prior.
Sophia nodded along and smiled at him, barely understanding his Scottish accent. She jerked her head at a server labeled "Da – De" and interjected, "This her block?"
"Yes, ma'am! Should be, anyways. So, you think she hacked in? Ha, that'd be a first."
Sophia frowned, and glanced down at her wrist before answering. 11:30. Already running late.
"That remains to be seen. Can you open it up, Lurk?"
Her guide's voice dropped a pitch. "It's Dietrich, ma'am. And yes, I can open her."
Sophia nodded and stepped back, watching as Lurk's fingers scraped at the sides of the rack. They pressed down on the sides of the metal grate, delicately removing the outer shell and revealing a large, black-tinted screen.
Dietrich rapped his knuckles against the glass. "Hey Alex! You there?"
Hidden fans behind the display whirred as the device turned on. In a spark of light, the smiling image of a woman with electric-blue hair smiled up at its caretaker. Beneath her, a chatbox opened.
Alexandra, λ-2 [Support]
Wednesday, Oct 24, 11:31
«Hello, Dee! Is that Sophia?»
"Aha! She's working!" Dietrich called over his shoulder, before turning back to MTF Lambda-2's resident technical expert. "Yeah, that's Sophia with me. Say, Alex, we were looking for info on a 'Carlotta Deneb'? Apparently she's new here, been having some trouble with her contact details."
The fans in the display kicked on again, louder this time. Dietrich frowned, pushing his body forward to feel around the back of the display; usually fan-usage meant overheating, which Alexandra wasn't supposed to do.
"Say, Alex, you're using those fans an awful —"
Alexandra, λ-2 [Support]
Wednesday, Oct 24, 11:31
«Keep talking. Move your shoulders to block my screen.»
«Don't trust Sophia.»
"— awful lot. You having some issues with response time?"
Alexandra, λ-2 [Support]
Wednesday, Oct 24, 11:31
«Dee, please don't be mad at me.»
«But I'm the one obstructing Light.»
Dietrich blinked slowly, then tilted his torso further into the machine. "No, it's not an issue. Have you got a diagnosis for me?"
Alexandra, λ-2 [Support]
Wednesday, Oct 24, 11:32
«I looked over the email Light sent to Carlotta. She wants her on the team for something big.»
«Carlotta's worked here for a month, and her only prior experience is with the UIU. She's not cut out for whatever Sophia's after.»
«And it looks like she'd be slated as "on-call" even after the sub-team disbands.»
Dietrich bit his lip hard. "Well, Alex, not to disagree with your assessment, but there's probably something else going on, don't you think?"
Alexandra, λ-2 [Support]
Wednesday, Oct 24, 11:32
— alexandra shrugs
«Probably something O5-related. Who knows?»
«Point is, if she wants out, I think she should have that choice.»
Dietrich stared at the burning light of the display, pouring over each of its pixels for an answer. He'd looked over Carlotta's file before Sophia had arrived, and she couldn't be essential to whatever project the director was putting together. A solid resume, but nothing incredible.
Just an ordinary woman trying to transition into a new job.
Alexandra, λ-2 [Support]
Wednesday, Oct 24, 11:33
«Please, Dee. Don't put her through this.»
So slowly that it would only be perceptible to the technological eye, Dietrich nodded. She's right, he thought as he pulled himself out of the rack. Just use some of your patented IT bullshitting. "Oh, there's an outage due to some maintenance going on." Heh.
Semi-conscious of how silly his position must have seemed to Sophia this entire time, he stood up, dusted off his pant-legs with immense care, and looked up to find himself totally alone in the server room.
"Wha…" the words died on his lips as he looked about for the missing Director, but they came up empty. Sophia Light was gone.
Two clicking heels on the other end of the aisle puncturing the silence, and Light rounded the corner holding a large manilla folder. She raised an eyebrow at Dietrich's newly-wrinkled shirt, then hefted the load.
"I visited Paper Records next-door while you were working," she commented. "Found Carlotta Deneb's address and email, among other details. Thanks for the help, but I think I'm done here."
She turned back the way she came, leaving Dietrich M. Lurk in the Site-81 server room with dusty slacks and a sense of unfulfilled justice.
"Well… shit," he muttered. The whir of Alex's fans signaled that she felt much the same.
POI-2408-351 ("Lucretia Popescu")
Ex-Black Lodge, contained at Site-57 after capture in Project Sitra Achra. Sarkicist body-shaper; demonstrates enhanced strength, some increased healing; primary benefit is offensive corporeal augmentation.
Can't figure out what her deal is. Has worked with the Foundation in the past but just seems… not there.
There were complications with the approach.
Sophia felt it coming as her transport crossed the Ukrainian border. It was an understanding, at first, a knowledge of things to come — but it soon became a hard rush of mental ocean on essential shore, flooding the transport's cab.
Her hand jerked into the bag sitting in her lap, scratching the insides for the container of pills. She came up empty, and the tide was rising higher, up to her shoulders. Sophia took a breath and dived, fingers jammed into the fabric until she felt the plastic cap.
She was raising the container to her lips as she fell through the floor and into the dark of something else's mind. She submerged, drowning, amidst noospheric currents of the soul.
And then she found an island.
Beneath Moscow, 2 years prior.
The stench of fresh meat and viscera struck Lucretia's unconsciousness. Her eyes shot open as she scrabbled among the bodies, grabbing hold of arms and legs and pulling herself up. The odor of the ones around her filled her nose and she gagged; impromptu mass graves were only ever tolerable as a spectator.
Air. Her hands grabbed at cool subterranean air; she was almost out. If only she could leverage herself with the —
Someone on the other side interlocked their fingers with Lucretia's. She suppressed a scream; instinctually, she twisted her wrists hard to snap their ligaments in two, but they resisted. They were pulling her up to the light, to more battle. A metallic scent assaulted her nostrils, and the world around her began to blur into a thousand fractals.
"Hey, Lucretia."
The voice. The voice of a friend.
Lucretia exhaled deeply as Michail pulled her out of the corpses and up onto her feet. She fell back, exhausted, cradling her knees to her chest. The smell was bearable above the surface.
But this could hardly be called the surface, she rationalized. They were thousands of meters below Russia's capital, surrounded by vast stone structures and walls. She and Michail were in the center of the Colosseum, where the Black Lodge spectated its bloodsport. Looking around at the blurry darkness, she noted that the building was beginning to feel familiar — both watching from its stands, and fighting in its center.
"You were a real monster out there," Michail said, meaning it to be a compliment. Lucretia squinted at him while she waited for her vision to return. It seemed like he was kneeling nearby, fiddling with something.
"I wouldn't know," she muttered. "I tend to black out after the first hit. The flesh-craft takes over after that."
She saw Michail's blurry head dip down and up at that. "That's good."
She raised an eyebrow. "It is?"
"Yeah." He stood up and pivoted towards her. "Means you're adapting well. Most of the bodies beneath us took too long to get in that head-space."
It was her turn to nod, but she didn't have anything to reply with. She just squeezed her legs closer and wished Michail would leave.
"Check this out."
"Hmm?" she mumbled, looking up at the thing he was holding out for her. Some kind of ornamented necklace… a fashion statement? "What've you got strung on there?"
Michail grinned ear to ear. "Teeth."
A muscle in Lucretia's cheek twitched involuntarily. "Teeth? Isn't that a little on-brand for this place?"
He shrugged, then looped the thing around his neck. "The people here like teeth; means you got in close after the kill. It's a sign of strength, especially if you can hold onto it for a while."
"And if they ask you how you got them?"
Michail's smile fell. "I'll tell them a lie. Looters get almost as bad as defectors, you know."
Lucretia uncurled herself, laying back on the heap and staring up at the stone ceiling far above.
"I know."
Sophia felt herself recede from the memory. She was no longer Lucretia Popescu, trapped beneath Moscow. She was somewhere more ambigious.
She knew how this song-and-dance went. She'd bounce between personas for hours at a time until something in the real world woke her up.
Fuck that, she thought to no one.
Sophia Light had labored for years to be at her current position, assassinations and anomalous dissociation be damned. She was the pilot of her own mind and no one else. Time to steer it towards something useful.
Carefully, she began to swim against the current.
Overwatch Command, just a few days ago.
Sophia fell into the new memory like a meteorite through the stratosphere, crashing and burning until she landed within the mind of O5-10's factotum, Salt.
"So, the assassination didn't come to anything?" Salt was asking.
The woman across the table shook her head, and Sophia drowsily noted that Ten seemed quite beautiful when sober. Her hair was done up in her signature braid, cascading down her back in an intricate pattern of spirals and straight edges. Sophia could feel the same braid running down her spine, and she found sympathy for Salt. Modeling yourself after someone else down to the stray hair must be close to hell.
But Ten was shaking her head at Salt's question. "No one has tried to assassinate me, that I know of. Functionally, the vote changes nothing that we've talked about; Alpha-9 is still a-go."
Salt nodded, causing a lock of ebony-black hair to slip out of place. She tucked it back behind her ear before continuing. "And what about Bright?"
Ten sighed. "We can't have him replacing Sophia this late in the game. If this operation runs smoothly, we'll open talks about moving her."
Sophia felt the mental world slow to a crawl. Suddenly every detail stood out sharply to her: The cozy room in which the two conversed was laden in occult paraphernalia; Ten had that same tremor of uncertainty in her eyes if you looked close enough; Salt was holding a map of Yellowstone National Park.
Salt opened her mouth to reply. "Are you sure? Bright's the more secure pick, given his condition."
There was no response. Ten stared down at her hands in her lap, eyes hidden by falling locks of ebony-black.
Salt gingerly flicked her own lock out from under her ear before leaning forward. "Ten? What's wrong?"
Ten shook her head firmly, turning her eyes away from Salt and towards a diagram of the Kabbalah on the wall. Her mouth hung open hesitantly.
"Ten?"
The Overseer refused to break eye-contact with the diagram. "Light was a mistake. If we replace her now," she started, "… the others will see it as a sign."
"A sign of?"
"Of… weakness." Ten's voice broke and she squeezed her eyes shut. "Of the second-youngest Overseer outing herself as the weakest link."
Her eyeliner was beginning to leak down her cheeks. Salt reached up and smudged it as best she could to match.
"Shit." Ten stood up, grabbing onto the edge of the chair for support. Slowly, she walked to the door on the far side of the room, and Salt stayed still in her chair.
Moscow, one year ago.
And then she ceased to be Ten's factotum and found herself in a cubic room hewn directly from stone. She was muscular, toned, imposing, and she was staring at a necklace of teeth.
Her host body was absorbed by the memento, but Sophia turned her thoughts to the sounds outside the room. There was gunfire, and inhuman screaming, and multiple successive detonations against the same material. Over the din she heard a man yelling Foundation codewords into a comm.
Lucretia Popescu inhaled and clutched the necklace in her fist, then tossed it on the ground. Jerkingly, she walked towards the door and the gunfire, towards a way out.
Sophia Light was herself again, a few hundred meters beyond the Ukrainian border.
She asked the driver to turn around. She could have one of her subordinates interview Popescu today.
???
| TO: ten.fpcs|thgils#ten.fpcs|thgils
| FROM: ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni#ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni
| SUBJECT: Declaration of Intent to Join a Merry Band of Heroes, Odd and Old, on our Quest to the Utopic Land of Yellowstone
Salutations (and eventually Farewell), Dr. Light!
My name is Dr. Irving Gat, accomplished containment specialist-and-enthusiast from Site-⌘. I expect that my reputation proceeds me, but if it does not, I declare the Overseer Council to be utter scoundrels for keeping you from the truth.
My accomplishments are many, but these are the most pertinent to your interests:
- Filtering information from a surreal context to identify latent anomalies around Site-⌘.
- Securing over fifty (verified) infovorous anomalies within my own skull — they always find something new to snack on!
- Containing 43 or 516 surreal anomalies, depending on your definition of "anomaly".
- Protecting reality, in a very general sense of both those words.
Keeping all of this in mind (which may be difficult, it tends to leak), I would like you to consider sanctioning my entry into Yellowstone as a member of MTF Alpha-9.
Thank you (and Farewell!),
Dr. Irving Gat
| TO: ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni#ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni
| FROM: ten.fpcs|thgils#ten.fpcs|thgils
| SUBJECT: Re:Declaration of Intent to Join a Merry Band of Heroes, Odd and Old, on our Quest to the Utopic Land of Yellowstone
Dr. Gat,
Unfortunately, MTF Alpha-9 is not accepting applications; we select members via recommendation and internal consideration only. Additionally, I'm entirely unfamiliar with Site-⌘ and its operations.
Please do not contact us again, and contact your site's RAISA liaison to discuss how you came into this information.
Thank you,
Dr. Light
| TO: ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni#ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni
| FROM: ten.fpcs|thgils#ten.fpcs|thgils
| SUBJECT: Re:Declaration of Intent to Join a Merry Band of Heroes, Odd and Old, on our Quest to the Utopic Land of Yellowstone
Dr. Gat,
Apologies for the last email. After a little poking around I managed to find someone who's heard of the Surrealistics Department, and they mentioned you by name.
Welcome to Alpha-9.
Thank you,
Dr. Light
| TO: ten.fpcs|thgils#ten.fpcs|thgils
| FROM: ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni#ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni
| SUBJECT:
:)
Allison Eckhart
Allison Eckhart is an infectious info-vector which supplants previous identities with Allison Eckhart. Don't think about her without the proper Allison-Eckhart protection.
Potential as an infohazardous cluster-bomb when things go south. Too unstable. Need to rethink my priorities.
Sophia stepped into the decontamination chamber at Bio Site-Allison Eckhart. Several traces of semantic contaminant still clung to her full-body Allison-Eckhart suit, and she was feeling the effects. Every breath felt like Allison was compressing her lungs; every step felt like someone else was pumping her legs up and down; every thought came with the addendum, What would Allison do?
"Everything okay, Director Light?"
The tech who was removing her suit looked up at her quizzically. He was young, well-built, hiding his intelligence beneath a mop of curly brown hair. Sophia traced him with her eyes, taking in the alienness of the human face, again and again until she was sure. He's not Allison, and neither am I.
"I'm fine, yes." She nodded to him belatedly, stepping out of the suit fully. "I just had my mind changed about a few things."
Mentally, she crossed another candidate off the list.
Et cetera
- SCP-4494 - Physical embodiment of fighting crime, potential as a combat asset. Can be manipulated via several legalistic anomalies I have access to.
- SCP-5601 - Demonic parrot. Telepathy, divination (?); need someone with a bird's-eye view if communication breaks down in the field.
- SCP-184 - Last-resort containment asset. Don't have access to it for some reason.
- SCP-2719 - Can make Yellowstone "go inside", maybe. Allison and 184 didn't pan out, but this might work in a worst-case scenario.
The more I check for candidates, the more it looks like the Foundation is uniquely terrible at making allies. Cages were never really an incentive for good behavior, I guess.
I'd have better luck getting the Council to work together than I have with this.
O5-10 was alone in her bedroom, and she was nearing death. Not the drunken, mistaken death she had endured in Sophia Light's kitchen just hours before, but real, tangible death.
Her chest heaved as she fell out her bed, fumbling on the soundproof carpet to stand upright. Her balance betrayed her and she landed hard on her side, sparking dull pain. It couldn't rival the burning in her chest, the searing of a hundred 668s piercing straight to her heart as she ripped herself from the floor.
Her hand grabbed the cold metal knob of her bathroom door. Her palm glided over the smooth marble counter, jerking a faucet open so pouring water could mask her descent. Steam filled the cramped room and everything came to a head.
She vomited in the toilet.
Ten, veritable demigoddess, one-in-thirteen rulers of the world, was having a panic attack and kneeling in front of her toilet. She limply shoved her hand in her pocket and pulled out a slip of paper, but it fell from her grip. The note had been passed to her discreetly many years ago, before she was on the Council, by someone who had worked for someone who owed a favor to the last O5-10.
She fell unconscious before she could pick it up.
…
You're being promoted. I'm sorry.
I did everything I could. I called in allies and made concessions. I offered my head on a platter to the others, but they wouldn't have anyone else but you. You're the new O5-10 now, and I'm going out the only way an Overseer can: at the hands of one of my colleagues.
If you're fortunate enough to know who your replacement will be, find a way to save them. It may just be the most good thing you ever do on the Council.
SCP-4051 ("Rainer Miller")
Contained at Site-17 after he fucked up and hit the Foundation's radar for vigilante-work. Can make/manifest small objects of his choosing. File's redacted to all hell; good luck getting more info on him from official sources.
Unofficial sources say he travels in high circles whenever an O5 needs something done quick. I'm sure Ten wouldn't mind his inclusion.
Sophia had once heard the phrase "footprints in a blizzard" used to describe futility. It was intuitive and evocative imagery, and it was partially the reason she had chartered a helicopter to Site-17. Traveling on land had too much baggage.
No, instead she had chosen to fly in a blizzard, where the metal rotors could rearrange the snowfall in a thousand meaningful ways.
Her phone buzzed in her hand, but she let it sit unanswered for as long as she could tolerate. She wanted to watch the land pass beneath her, and sometimes catch sight of a peculiar natural landmark sticking out from the white shroud, and watch it disappear over the horizon.
On the fifth buzz she placed it against her ear.
"Hello, Vaux."
"What, you're not answering your phone now?" Her assistant was being playful, Sophia noted. He knew something was wrong.
"I'm just a little distracted."
"Ah, I see. Is it one of those distractions?"
"No." Her voice was flat and icy. "Not since Ukraine."
The air was silent for a moment, and Sophia was overcome by guilt. She was being cruel to him.
"I'm… happy to hear that, Sophia. Your prescription came through, by the way."
She bit her lip and forced herself to smile. "Thank you, Vaux, I appreciate it. Say, uh, I've been thinking about something, and I want your opinion on it."
"Fire away! That's half the reason you're paying me, anyways."
Sophia's smile felt genuine for half a second. "How about I stop the in-person interviews after this? I have people I trust who can perform them just fine. I can come back to Eighty-One to handle the… administrative functions, for a while."
Vaux's reply was near-immediate. "I think that'd be for the best. Looking forward to seeing you again."
"I as well."
She took the phone from her ear, ready to end the call, but she heard Vaux's voice still speaking on the other side. The phone soon returned to its previous position.
" — careful at Seventeen. I hear they've had a lot of turmoil with their senior staff after Moose left, and they've got a bit of a… reputation, I guess you would call it."
"Noted," she replied. "Thank you. We'll talk soon."
The helicopter was quiet, and she let her phone fall to her lap. She didn't feel like watching the landscape anymore.
No one greeted Sophia as she stepped onto Site-17's tarmac. There were a few lab-coated employees who ducked inside buildings at the sight of her arrival, but only those in the motor pool tolerated her proximity. The personnel who arrived to service the helicopter kept a strange distance from her, and if she walked in their direction they would flinch and turn the other way.
Moose should still be running this place, Sophia thought sadly. It was so much more lively when she was here.
A greeter would have only been a formality, anyways. Sophia had a room number and enough time to trial-and-error her way through the facility, walking through sterile hallways and down inscrutable stairwells until she found her mark. She could ask for assistance from the site's employees, of course — but again, that strange distance, that subtle fear. Sophia thought it best to walk on her own.
Eventually, she located the room; not in a containment wing, to her initial confusion, but in the medical ward. On the placard of the wooden door were embossed the words "Temporary Asset Care". Sophia pushed down the questions rising to her mind's surface, and twisted the door's handle.
Her eyes drifted from the large medical cot in the center of the room, to the young man comatose within it, and then to the terrified woman standing beside him.
"Oh god." The woman's eyes widened with horror before she turned her head away. She grabbed a collection of papers resting on the table next to the cot and made for the door. "I came in here for an intake form! Heading out now."
Sophia let the door shut behind her with a click. The woman stopped in her tracks, pressing the papers against her white lab coat, trying to control her rapid breaths.
"It's alright," Sophia murmured. "I was just looking for 4051's room. Is this it?"
The woman across from her blink slowly. "Yes, this is Rainer's room. He's…" She trailed off, taking a moment to look over Sophia's face. "Sorry, have we met before?"
Sophia shrugged. "I doubt it. I'm from out-of-site, but I take it you work at Seventeen?"
Her shoulders visibly dropped at the news, her hands falling to her sides. "Oh, yes, I'm in anomalous pediatrics. As in, pediatrics for contained anomalies, not anomalies within the field of — sorry, my name's Jules, Level 2. Pleasure to meet you!"
Sophia, Level 4, nodded and broke a smile. "Sophia. Is there some rule against being down here?"
"Well, not officially, no." Jules shifted her weight from foot to foot, probably wondering if she should attempt to escape again. "But you know how Management is. Well, I guess you wouldn't know; Management tends to reassign people who start looking into Rainer's… situation"
Sophia raised an eyebrow at that. "Do they give any particular reason?"
Jules shrugged. "I haven't been reassigned, so if they do, I wouldn't know."
"The lack of transparency doesn't seem ideal."
"Well, when you've got a hammer." Jules began fidgeting with the papers again, obviously wanting to leave but bound by social convention to stay. The silence lingered.
Sophia stepped away from the door and turned her eyes towards the man in the cot. "Why's he here, instead of in containment?"
Jules exhaled sharply behind her. Seconds passed and Sophia wondered if she had quietly left the room while her back was turned.
"He's… a bit of a problem-anomaly," Jules said. "Have you read his file?"
"I have."
"Ah." She rubbed her neck awkwardly. "RAISA chose to feature my involvement with him rather heavily. I was his therapist for about a year. He… pulls small objects out of portals. But, he can also pull out the inverse of a thing, thereby destroying the original, which poses some complications to containment."
"And yet he's considered a Temporary Asset."
"Management transports him off-site sometimes, so it's easier to just keep him here. They put him on a sedative regimen until they need to use him, then put him back under. I don't know what they use him for, because they never let me know, but —"
"Jules."
"Yes?"
A thousand more thoughts than Sophia could process were swimming through her head. She was shaking, trembling, asking herself simple questions without answers over and over until it became the white noise of her soul. The hum of the medical equipment was a roar in her ears, blinding and striking her from all sides at once. She gritted her teeth, straightened her back, forced her balled fingers down to her sides. Slowly, she asked one of her questions.
"Do you think what's happening here is okay?"
Jules hesitated before answering. "No."
Sophia Light bit into the inside of her lip, refusing to turn away from the cot until she got her answers. "Do you think there's a better way for things to be done?"
"I… yes? Are you alright, Sophia?"
She pivoted on her heel to face Jules, eyes begging to hear the final word. "And if you were in Management, you'd do something about this, right?"
"That's not really —"
Sophia shook her head. She strode forward and grabbed the door's handle, wrenching it open. She took a step through before turning back to meet Jules' confused, and concerned, gaze.
"I'm doing just fine. Thank you for humoring me."
She flashed the pediatrician a smile before shutting the door and walking back to the tarmac.
The helicopter flew low over the tundra, leaving Site-17 behind the horizon. Although the northern blizzard had shown no sign of abating upon their initial descent, the afternoon light now filtered unhindered onto the pastoral landscape beneath Sophia's transport.
Her phone buzzed in her front pocket. Absentmindedly, she pulled it out, flipped it open, and answered the only person who would be calling her right now.
"Hello, Vaux." The words spilled near-effortlessly out of her lips. "I'm heading back from Seventeen."
"Ah, good to hear!" Her assistant paused, probably scribbling that information down on a pad of paper. "What'd you learn about the kid?"
Sophia shrugged to herself, glancing out the side-window to watch the landscape pass by. "I think he'd be good for the team. Seventeen kept him in a coma for an extended period, so we might have to acclimate him to walking and talking, but otherwise he's a suitable candidate."
"That's… good to hear, Sophia. You're sounding a lot better now, you know."
Sophia laughed. "Yeah, I guess I am. I had this realization about myself, too."
Vaux paused again. A statement like that was not spoken lightly.
"Oh?" he asked.
"Yeah. I think I want to be an Overseer."
On the other end of the line, Vaux released a long, deep sigh, trying to parse which word in Sophia's statement had been an unfortunate mispronunciation. But no matter which angle he attacked it from, Overseer Light started to make more and more sense. When she wanted, Sophia could be all sorts of cunning, manipulative, and terrifying, and as far as Vaux had determined, those were the only significant criteria.
Well… shit, he thought to no one.
O5-10
Second-youngest member of the Overseer Council, currently engaging in a political incident over the creation of Alpha-9. We've been forced into a sort of allyship for this reason.
I'm meeting with her factotum today to discuss the final roster. Let's see what I can learn about Ten's job security.
"Please, close the door behind you, Light."
Salt — or who Sophia assumed to be Salt — had elected to wear a three-piece suit for the meeting. The suit was integral to the whole setting, Sophia realized, since Salt was reclining in a padded chair, one leg crossed over the other. Without the additional professionalism, the intimidating facade would come crumbling down with the myriad arcana lining the office's walls.
Light shut the door, as directed, and took a seat across the table in a matching padded chair. She felt far too casual; she made a mental note to go shopping at some point in the near future.
"I checked over the roster you sent me." Salt gestured towards several papers on the table between them; Sophia's search had been extensive, but she'd narrowed the team down to ten-or-so primary candidates. The files in front of her displayed an ensemble of humans, androids, and a lone parrot. "They're all strong choices for the task at hand."
Sophia studied Salt directly, ensuring her eyes smiled but her lips stayed deathly straight. "Thank you. I take pride in my work, especially given the ongoing situation."
Salt nodded, then jammed her elbow into the arm of her chair. She rested her cheek on her balled fist, appearing… bored, perhaps?
"I was worried you'd buckle under the pressure, Light. You've found yourself with an awful lot of power and responsibility over a short period of time."
Sophia recognized what Salt left unsaid. "Managing an MTF is the same as directing a site, just with fewer people. I can handle this and more."
Nothing visible rose to the surface, but Sophia felt something about Salt's position harden. Slowly, she un-jammed her elbow and rested her hand on the chair's arm, just like Sophia.
"You understand, of course," Salt began, "that the unlikely success of Alpha-9 may grant you a certain level of… autonomy, in your career path."
Sophia's smile moved to her lips. "I do. And strangely, I think things are beginning to look up for once in a long while."
Salt's mouth twitched upwards before she stood, towering over Sophia from across the table. Sophia rose too, uninterested in being diminutized.
"I would like to have a long talk with you about your career, if such a thing comes to pass." The factotum spoke low, as though she were relaying something great and terrible.
"Then let's hope this operation is a success," Sophia replied.
Haltingly, Salt extended her hand over the table. It was gloved in white fabric, tailor-made to her digit length and size, and crafted to disappear beneath her sleeve's grey fabric. She flexed her fingers briefly, then met Sophia's gaze.
"I hope you save the world, Director Light," said Salt.
Sophia grabbed her hand and shook. "So do I, Overseer."
Resurrection – New Faces
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