I Didn't Forget Pt 13: Evan Sanders - SCP Foundation

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Present Day

“Something wrong?” asks the guard I’m speaking with.

“No,” I say. “Thank you.” I back away. The guard goes back to his meal. I look over at Evan. His body armor is black, and there’s a Mobile Task Force patch on his shoulder. A pit forms in my stomach as I approach him. Why is he dressed like a Jailor? He’s not one of their guards. There’s no way he could be. He’s an anomaly. He’s in their database. He has an SCP number. The Jailors don’t recruit the people they contain.

Another Jailor, one who looks higher-ranking, enters the room and approaches Jack “What’s going on here?” he asks. He gets the same explanation Mike got from the surrounding jailors. He studies Jack and the agents who’d been escorting him. Even from across the mess hall, I can see his suspicion. We need to get out of here, fast. I don’t have time to worry about what Evan is wearing. I need to get him somewhere where we can use the Way.

I approach Evan from behind. I tap him on the shoulder. He turns away from his food and looks at me.

“Mind coming with me?” I ask.

Evan looks at me. He glances at the patch on my uniform. “On whose orders?” he asks.

That’s a question we prepared an answer for. “Dr. Phillips,” I say. “Team just arrived, they’re dealing with a cognitohazard, and they asked for you to come…” Suddenly, Evan’s eyes go wide. So wide they startle me. I stop speaking. I lock eyes with Evan. Does he recognize me? That’s a good thing, right? Hopefully, he’ll realize I’m here to save him. Evan stands up, drawing the glances of a few of the guards nearby.

“Alright,” he says. “Lead the way.”

I start to lead him out of the mess hall. As soon as we’re away from the table, he whispers to me. “Jerry?” he asks.

I give him the subtlest nod I can.

“What are you doing here?”

“Just bringing you to Dr. Phillips,” I say. As badly as I want to talk to him, I can’t break cover this close to the other guards. “C’mon.”

At the front of the room, the argument about Jack is escalating. “I saw this group pass through the mess hall about an hour ago,” a guard says. “They were headed to the secondary wing. If they’re here to place an anomaly in its chamber, they should’ve done it by now.”

“There was a mix-up regarding his cell number,” one of the Hand agents says.

“For an entire hour?” asks the higher-ranking officer.

“Yes. We searched the whole building for the wrong cell, only to realize it was wrong, and start searching for the right one.”

“Show me your ID’s,” the officer says.

They’re ready with them. The officer looks over them and scans them with a device he produces from his belt. He studies the result. “Record says you came in here almost two hours ago. What the hell have you been doing for all that time?”

“Trying to find his cell. I’m sorry, sir, but I’ve not been here before. I don’t know my way around.”

“Bullshit,” says one of the other guards. “You could have checked the whole place in two hours.”

“That’s exactly what we were doing.”

The officer holds his hand up. He turns around. “Mendez, Jenkins, take the anomaly, to cell 73.”

“Yes, sir,” they both say. All the Hand agents, including me, look at Jack.

“C’mon,” I whisper to Evan. “Quick.” He follows me as I lead him out of the mess hall. “How far away do we need to get to be out of range of the reality anchors?” I ask Evan, once we’re outside.

He ignores my question. “Jerry, what the hell are you doing here?” he asks.

“Rescuing you, obviously.”

“Rescuing me?”

I pull out the recorder. “I have a portable Way here. We need to get to where we can use it so I can take you to the Wanderer’s Library. It’s a safe place, where no one in the Foundation will be able to follow you. We just need to get to where I can use a magic item.”

Evan stares at me. “You’re with the Serpent’s Hand,” he says, more to himself than to me.

“Yes,” I say.

“Those guys at the front of the room, are they with you?”

“Yes,” I say. “Now come on. We need to get outside the reality anchor’s range before things escalate. This place is already swarming with guards.”

Evan grabs my wrist. His grip is tight. It hurts. I look up at him. With a firm grip on my arm, Evan drags me back toward the mess hall. “What the hell?” I ask, as I try, and fail, to break away.

He pushes me back through the door, which swings open as I stumble through it and fall to the ground. Evan grabs the gun from his belt and points it straight at me. The next words he says aren’t addressed to me, but the whole room. “They’re Serpent’s Hand,” he says. “This one too. He just admitted it to me.”

Hundreds of guards spring upright and draw their weapons. Dozens of them form a circle around my colleagues. Dozens more form a circle around me. I stare at Evan. “Evan?” I ask, my voice weak.

“Hands above your head,” Evan orders.

“Evan, why—”

“Don’t put up a fight, Jerry. Hands above your head.”

I do as he says.

“Go ahead and drop the flute,” Evan says.

I open my hand, and the way out of here clatters to the ground. One of the other guards approaches me, holding handcuffs. “Evan why are you—”

“It’ll be okay,” Evan says.

“Why are you helping them?”

“Where does this one know you from?” one of the other guards asks Evan.

Evan takes a deep breath. “He’s my brother,” Evan says.

Several more guards step forward. They flip me over and cuff me. I think about resisting. I want to resist. These are the same bastards who took my brother from me. Who took Sean. But there are hundreds of them in this room. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I shout at Evan. “Why are you helping them?”

“We’ll talk about that in your cell,” Evan says.

“Is he anomalous?” the other guard asks.

“Not that I…” Evan begins, but he stops. He looks at me. “You remember, don’t you?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“I’m so sorry,” Evan says. “That isn’t how you should’ve been introduced to the Foundation.”

“You’re really one of them, then?” I ask. “You’re a full-on Jailor, just like the people who dragged you away?”

After a moment of hesitation, Evan nods.

I glare at him. How could that happen? Evan isn’t the kind of person who would become a Jailor. He’s not a bigot or an authoritarian. He’s a hero. He’s always believed in freedom and kindness. He was a mage, in love with the strange and supernatural.

But, somehow, he’s changed sides. Somehow, he’s working with them. Somehow, he’s helping them detain me.

One Year Ago

Theo opened the door to the apartment. He smiled when he saw me. “Welcome home,” he said, gesturing for me to come inside.

I smiled back. “Thanks,” I said. I stepped inside. I looked around the apartment. This was where we were going to be living together. The thought of it made my heart erupt with glee. Theo led me over to the couch, and we sat down together. We leaned toward one another, and we kissed.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you too,” he said. He pulls me into him, and we embrace.

We were going to be together forever.

Present Day

I’m handcuffed to a cold metal table in a Jailor cell. Its stark, white walls and gray floors are lit by harsh fluorescent lights. Two armed guards flank the door across from me. I’ve been sitting here for a while, waiting to see who they send in to try to interrogate me. The Hand trained me in interrogation resistance. I know how they’ll try to make me talk, and I’m not going to tell them a fucking thing.

I failed the others. I shouldn’t have told Evan who we were.

How could I have known, though? How could I have known that was even a possibility? The Jailors don’t let their ‘anomalies’ join them. Not like this. Not as full agents working with them on equal terms.

The large iron door opens.

It’s Evan, still dressed like a Jailor guard. His gun is holstered. There are two people behind him. One of them is the same high-ranking officer from the mess hall. The other is a female researcher.

Evan sits down across from me. He’s staring at me like I’m some cross between a ghost and a pot of gold.

“What?” I ask, tersely.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s strange, seeing you again.”

“Well, if it weren’t for certain people, you’d have seen plenty of me over the past six years, but you don’t seem to be holding that against them.”

“Look, you don’t understand—”

“You’re right. I don’t. These people dragged you out of your home, away from your family. They threw you in a cell because they think you’re a freak, and now you’re helping them lock up more people just like you? Your own fucking brother?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Evan says.

“I watched them do it.”

“And I know how that must have looked. We should have followed up on the possibility that you’d be immune to amnestics like I am.”

“And what if you had realized? What would you have done? Send more soldiers to lock me in the cell next to yours?”

“I don’t live in a containment cell. I’m a soldier. I sleep in a barracks.”

“Why the hell would they allow that?”

“Because you’re wrong about us. About the Foundation. You saw me get dragged away, but you didn’t see what happened afterwards. You didn’t see how impressed the Foundation was with what I pulled off at Galaxy Plaza, with all the lives I saved. They were expecting a difficult op that day. Lots of casualties. I walked in and did their whole job for them with the power of my voice. They did appreciate that. Sure, they detained me, but as soon as I’d been processed, they were clamoring to get me into Alpha-9.”

“What the fuck is Alpha-9?”

Evan gestures to the MTF patch on his shoulder. The emblem is overdesigned and hideous, consisting of some kind of hexagon thing with an eye and wings.

“It’s the Foundation’s special task force of anomalous entities,” Evan says. “The Serpent’s Hand gave you out-of-date information. Ten years ago, we didn’t recruit SCPs, but Alpha-9 was already a few years old by the time I got here, and I was in it by the end of the month.”

“And you just went along with that? Started working for the people who’d taken you away from your family? From me?”

“It’s how things have to be.”

“No, it isn’t! They didn’t have to kidnap you because you had powers. They didn’t even have to kidnap you for you to join their stupid task force. Do all the other guards here have families who think they’re dead? Do you have any idea what it was like for us without you? How wrecked Mom and Dad were? How I was treated without you there to protect me? Did you even care that they wouldn’t let you see us?”

“Of course I cared, but everything isn’t about me or what I want. The things I do for the Foundation are secret. They have to be secret, because the Foundation has a lot of enemies. I bet you already know how nasty some of them are. Do you have any idea how much less good I’d be able to do if everyone knew I could cure almost every mind-affecting anomaly in the world?”

“What does that have to do with whether you can live with your family?”

“Every person who knows something is a potential vector for information to leak. Not just information about me, but about the anomalous world. Information that could cause world-ending panic.”

“Really, Evan? You’re really stupid enough to buy that line?”

“It’s not a line.”

“What do you think people would do if they knew the truth? You seem to be handling it fine, along with all of the millions of people who haven’t been forced to live under the veil. Why the hell would the rest of humanity react with ‘world-ending panic?’”

“It’s about the world humanity understands itself to live in. Humanity has existed for a quarter of a million years. Out of all that time, how much has been of any significance? How much of it have we used to accomplish anything? Roughly, the past five-hundred years. That’s when human advancement began—”

“That’s actually just when white people started to conquer and pillage everything.”

“Do you really think humanity would be better off knowing they were surrounded by monsters?”

“I think Mom and Dad would be better off knowing their son wasn’t dead.”

“Jerry, I save people every day. Countless people. From death. From slavery. From worse. I’ve stopped people from being forced to kill themselves, and their families. Do you want to hear about the giant metal pig that used to force people to burn children alive? About all the mind-warping books the Fifthists have written? All the mind-controlled slaves they and other thaumaturges have taken, who I’ve rescued? I’ve brought people back after their entire minds had been erased. Those people had lost everything they were, and they’re whole again thanks to me and the work I do here.”

“And how many people have you helped imprison?”

“I decrease the number of people in Foundation custody. Before I came around, there were hundreds of mental anomalies whose victims had to be kept in containment for the rest of their lives. I’ve cured thousands of people like that, allowing them to be sent back to their families. I’ve freed more people from Foundation containment than the Serpent’s Hand ever will.”

“And you just have to do that under the banner of the people who stole you from me?”

“If I want access to those victims, yes, I do.”

“So that’s what it comes down to? They’re blackmailing you with those lives?”

“No. Look, Jerry, this is where I can do the most good. Even if I were interested in becoming a terrorist, I couldn’t accomplish a tenth as much under the Serpent’s Hand. Do you think they’d be able to move me from anomaly to anomaly as efficiently as the Foundation can? Do they have the surveillance infrastructure to identify as many victims? Could they partner me up with the world’s most elite soldiers, allowing me to protect them from mind-controlling anomalies while they perform rescue missions that would be impossible without me?”

“And what about the people you help them contain? Do they all get to join your task force?”

“More than you seem to think. The success of Alpha-9 has changed a lot. The Foundation has come to understand the benefits of allowing anomalies to work for them. The sense of purpose it gives us. These days, if someone wants to help, they usually can.”

“And what about people who aren’t interested in serving their captors?”

“Most of them are like Callum. Public menaces who enslaved the people around them. I’m the one who brought Callum in. His parents, too. It was the first thing I did for the Foundation. He’s one of dozens of mind-controlling slavers I’ve helped shove into containment cells, and I’m damn proud of that. Hopefully someday, you will be too.”

“I’ll be what?”

“Proud of how much good you can do as part of Alpha-9.”

I can’t help but laugh. “You’re serious? You actually think I’m going to sign up with the Jailors like you did?”

“Once you see how things are really like here, yeah, I think you just might. For all the good I’ve done in the past several years, I’ve spent every moment regretting the fact that there’s only one of me. There are more people who need my help than I could ever save. The two of us, together, can save twice as many people. Maybe more.”

“That’s not happening. I will never work with Jailor scum like you.”

“Really? You’d let someone suffer under the effects of torturous mental anomaly when you could help them with nothing but the power of your voice?”

I look him right in the eye. “To spite you bastards? Yeah. I would.”

Evan studies me. I can see the moment he realizes I’m telling the truth. “I see,” he says. “That’s a shame. I’m disappointed in you.”

“I don’t fucking care.”

“Then a lot has changed in the last six years.”

“Yeah. I guess it fucking has.”

Evan sighs. “I can only hope that you change your mind. It would be a shame if all the good you could do went undone because of your own spite.”

I glare at him. “I think I’m just about done talking to you.”

“Alright,” he says. He gets up to leave. I glare at him. Piping hot rage courses through my veins. I want to punch him. I want to bash his head in and watch him die. I can’t do that, though. Not while I’m handcuffed to this table. However, there is something else I can do to hurt him. “Mom and Dad are dead,” I say.

Evan turns around. “What?”

“Mom couldn’t handle the grief of losing you,” I say. “She jumped off a bridge. Dad drank himself to death afterward.”

He stares at me. “You’re lying,” he says, but I can hear the quiver of doubt in his voice.

“No, I’m fucking not!” I pump all of the anger and conviction I can into those words. He studies my face. I maintain my glare.

Evan turns to the researcher who came in with him. “Is that true?” he asked.

“Not to my knowledge,” she says.

“Do you really think these people would tell you the truth?” I ask. “You’re such an important resource to them. Why would they tell you anything that would make you resent them for imprisoning you?”

He looks at me. He looks at her. I see the crack form in him. His expression shifts. He believes me. He fucking believes me! His gaze falters. He turns and exits the room. The others go with him. Once he’s no longer looking, I smirk.

He won’t believe me for long. It won’t be hard for them to prove that I lied. I don’t care. For a brief time, he’s going to feel what I’ve felt for the past six years. Some fraction of the pain he caused by abandoning us.

The door closes behind him. I’m left alone in the room. Over the next several minutes, my smug satisfaction leaks out of me, and what flows in to replace it is the knowledge that I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life in a containment cell.

I’ll try to escape. Of course I will. Perhaps the Hand will come for me, just as they said they were going to come for Sean.

Still, while I can cling to that hope, the brutal reality is that most of the people the Jailors imprison never get out.

Theo was right. He was exactly right about what would happen if I came here. I didn’t rescue my brother. I was captured. Now, I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life in a Foundation containment cell, when I could have spent it with him.

The last thing I said to him was that I hated him. That’s probably the last thing I’ll ever say to him.

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