Taking the Lead - SCP Foundation

Taking the Lead

2003

13 October

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

Harry stared at him. "The what?"

"There is no Administrator," Falkirk sneered. "That's a god damn myth."

"The Overseer Council is dead." McInnis' sober voice carried the weight of his claims. "The Site Directors' Council of the Whole is dead, or in hiding. STF Alpha-43 is now MTF Alpha-1. I have been named sole authority over this organization."

Falkirk turned to face Ibanez. He pointed at McInnis. "Shoot him."

"Would you like me to speak the words to disable your pacemaker, Edwin?" McInnis asked softly.

The old man turned, one hand clenched into a fist, the other pointing in accusation, shaking, jaw wagging soundlessly. They stared each other down. Between Falkirk's hunch and McInnis' diminutive stature, they were standing about even.

"It will be a simple matter to confirm my credentials," the putative Administrator offered. "If a demonstration is desired, Chief Ibanez is equipped to instigate it. Chief?"

Ibanez swallowed hard. "Are you sure?"

Falkirk spun again to wag his pointing finger at her. "Don't do it."

"Quite certain," McInnis nodded.

She nodded back, and said in a voice so serious McInnis was sure he'd never heard her use it before: "Does the black moon howl?"

"In subjective disagreement," he responded.

They fell to their knees.

All of them. Nascimbeni shouted in pain. Falkirk screeched in agony. Most of them exclaimed in shock.

Only McInnis remained standing. "I apologize, but that was necessary. It's very important that you understand the gravity of this moment."

"Fucking gravity," Harry grunted.

"You're just a man," Falkirk gasped. "Just a man with a code book. We don't need more men, especially not ones like you."

"How would you know what we need?" McInnis towered over the Director. "You've made no effort whatsoever to address the situation. You've allowed humanity's brightest hope to dwindle away in the dark."

"I will not be lectured." Falkirk's voice was nothing but a guttural growl now, animalistic and raw. "What wonderful things have you been up to all these months, Administrator?"

They slowly rose to their feet, one by one, as it occurred to them that they could. Falkirk remained on the floor. McInnis wondered if he was even capable of rising, or if his thin knees had been shattered.

"I have been monitoring the collapse of our organization, and in rapid succession, the civilizations of the Earth." There could be no doubting the sincerity of his devastating calm. "I believe I possess a clear picture of what has occurred, and what is to be done about it. My predecessors lacked both the resources and the opportunity to effectuate a solution. I am uniquely equipped with both, in the persons of my staff at Site-43."

"My staff." Falkirk was shaking all over, his white hands turning red as he clenched them into fists. "I'm the Director."

McInnis nodded. "So long as you fulfill my directives, I have no interest in usurping your position."

The old man was suddenly still. "What?"

"Yeah, what?" Ibanez stepped forward. "You know this sack of shit. He isn't fit to manage a gas station."

"You have been a profound disappointment, woman," Falkirk spat over his shoulder. "I thought you understood what had to be done. I valued your understanding."

She presented him with her middle finger. "I never met the woman who understood you, and if she exists, I have nothing in common with her."

"Director Falkirk remains qualified to perform his administrative duties, in the absence of a sufficiently experienced substitute." McInnis looked down his nose at the miserable specimen of a man. "He has, despite his considerable shortcomings and moral failings, succeeded in preserving the majority of our staff for this moment."

"I don't think he knew that was what he was doing, Allan," said Harry.

"Yeah," Lillihammer agreed. "Sorry to burst your bubble, Al—"

"Did you just call the Administrator 'Al'?" Okorie boggled.

"It is my name, in part," he murmured.

"—but I don't think you're going to want to keep this snake around once you've heard what he's guilty of. You might have the big picture topside, but there's things gone on below you didn't see."

McInnis inclined his head. "Do tell."

Lillihammer looked behind her as Karen Elstrom approached from the barricades. "Who wants the pleasure?"

"We can tag-team," the secretary smiled grimly.

"Group effort," Okorie agreed.

"I was in the control room when Falkirk sent the civilians down the tunnel to AAF-A." Lillihammer walked down the hall to stand between the Director and Administrator. "I saw him in contact with the boots on the ground, on his private terminal. He was piping the audio to an earpiece so the rest of us couldn't hear it."

1 July

"What's going on?"

Operations Control was a mess. The climate control was all fucked up; someone was repeatedly hacking the systems remotely, and they'd turned the air conditioners up to max. Eileen was working on it, but for now everyone was wearing sweaters — just like the personnel making homes in the I&T server hall, for safety's sake. The alternative, Eileen had said, was turning off the systems entirely and suffocating to death.

After a week of Falkirk's Directorship, this kind of gallows humour was beginning to feel like a legitimately acceptable alternative to Lillian.

"The peasants are revolting." Falkirk was leaning over the main console, Eileen at a station beside him. "Are the sprinklers working in that sector?"

"Yes, sir," the I&T Chief nodded.

"I know what you're thinking, and it's no good." Ibanez was standing on the far aisle, boot up against the wall, arms crossed. "There's not enough oxygen in there right now with everyone screaming and yelling and packing in tight. We gas these folks, they die."

"That would certainly solve our civilian problem," the Director mused.

Lillian made a low noise in the back of her throat. "You're not serious."

Falkirk glanced over the shoulder of his sweatervest at her. "No, Lyle, of course I'm not serious. I took the same vows you did, to protect these people. But they're certainly making apostasy look tempting."

Falkirk had inherited a subway full of angry civilians, and he wasn't dealing with the responsibility well. There were MTF agents managing the refugee camp where the trains had stopped at H&P, but it wasn't a situation that was manageable indefinitely. The Director had refused to rehouse the refugees in H&S, and so they'd been stuck in cramped and close quarters for eight days. Something was going to give.

"Chief, we're losing crowd control here. " It was Ibrahim Msuya, Deputy Chief of the Emergency Psychiatric and Amnestics Unit. He'd been charged with controlling the chaos. "I've already lost sight of a few targets."

Lillian looked at the big screen on the farthest wall. It showed a subway station jam-packed with tents, bedrolls, and angry people with their arms in the air. The number of uniforms, S&C, MTF and EPAU, wasn't nearly enough to make a difference.

Eileen glanced at Ibanez, who nodded. "Reinforcements are on the way," she said into the mic.

"Reinforcements won't help." Msuya's voice was strained, and the electronic noise filter was having a very hard time cutting out all the shouting around him. "It's standing room only here. We need to calm these people down."

"We're human beings!" someone successfully hollered through the filter.

Falkirk mashed another button, and leaned toward a free mic. "Then behave like it!"

"We're human beings!" the same voice shouted back, and in seconds it had become a group chant. "We're human beings! We're human beings!"

"What sparked this?" Lillian asked.

"Rationing." Ibanez sounded nonspecifically disgusted. "They've been getting pissy about accommodations, but the rationing set them off."

"They're being fed," Falkirk sighed. "They're being watered. We're even disposing of their filth for them. You'd think a little gratitude would be in order."

Lillian gestured at the monitor. "Are you going to send someone to talk to them?"

"Of course not. We're not the government, we're the Foundation. We don't owe them explanations. We certainly don't negotiate. They're living under my roof, they follow my rules. If they don't like it, they can leave."

"Maybe we could take a few of them topside," Ibanez suggested. "Show them what they're missing."

"Maybe we could send the lot of them topside," he retorted.

"We're human beings!"

The old man shoved his mic away. "Someone shoot that b—"

The air filled with shrieking static, and the camera view cut out.

"REPORT!" Falkirk shouted.

Ibanez had darted forward in the time it took Lillian to realize anything had happened. She was tapping on a console. "Something's wrong in H&P. Feeds aren't responding. Ibrahim?"

"Oh god," said Msuya over the radio.

"Ibrahim? What's going on down there? I've lost H&P."

"Yeah." A trained physician, Msuya would have diagnosed shock from his own tone. "Yeah, you have."

"Chief!" Ibanez barked at him. "Report!"

"It's gone. H&P is gone. Something blew. They're panicking now. He's here."

Falkirk's legs were shaking. "Meaning what?"

"We've lost—"

It happened again. The audio compensators handled it better this time, but there was no mistaking the flash on the screen or the random hiss on the line.

"It's all going up!" Msuya was screaming. "We've got to get these people out of here!"

"Are we being attacked?" Falkirk's hands were balled into deformed fists. "Are they terrorists now?"

"It's Ambrogi! He's in H&P, oh god—"

"Every camera in H&P is non-functional," Ibanez interrupted. "I can't raise anyone. I think… I think he hit the shaped charges."

Lillian put a hand on her shoulder. "The what?"

Ibanez looked back, and up. "You shouldn't be here."

Falkirk shoved them both out of the way. Lillian was surprised he had the strength. He grabbed at Ibanez's mic. "Chief, are you still there? Can you hear me?"

"Yes, sir. I think I'm wounded. My armour—"

"I am issuing orders," said Falkirk. His voice was steady. "Listen closely. Get the civilians back on the trains."

"That's not going to be—"

"GET THEM BACK ON THE TRAINS. Shoot a few if you have to."

As one, they all turned to stare at him.

"Sir?" Msuya sounded dazed, and Lillian thought it wasn't all from his injuries.

The Director crossed his arms. "They're leaving."

Lillian's body tensed up, and she shouted at the back of his sweater vest: "What do you mean, they're leaving?"

"They've shown their true colours. I won't have them near our operational zone again."

On the one hand, he was moving them out of Ambrogi's warpath. On the other hand, he'd somehow done the mental arithmetic allowing him to blame them for their own predicament. She found herself making an obscene gesture behind his back. "So you're just going to, what? Put them on a slow train to Auschwitz?"

He actually had the gall to chuckle. "It would serve them right. But no. Chief Veiksaar, are the trains still operational?"

Eileen had been waiting to respond to his query. "They're ready, sir."

"Once they're fully loaded, or near enough," he continued, "I want you to send them on an automated run to AAF-A."

Eileen nodded slowly. "Should I notify Chief Van Rompay to expect arrivals?"

"No. They won't be arriving. Lock the train up tight, then stop it at the third bulkhead door. Is the response team still on standby?"

"I thought you weren't going to respond," said Lillian.

He waved her off. "Leadership is being prepared to do things you don't intend to do."

"Yes," said Eileen. She was still nodding, still slowly. "They're ready, sir."

"Then send them along. Have their train stop before the second door."

A new sound came over Msuya's open line, and for a moment Lillian thought another of the explosions had occurred, or else Ambrogi had been attracted by the sounds of screaming meat. But this kept going, over and over, and she suddenly recognized it as automatic rifle fire.

"Oh, god," she whispered.

This time Ibanez shoved Falkirk aside. The old man nearly tottered over; nobody moved to help him. "Report!"

"They're resisting." Msuya's voice was even flatter, more distant than before. "They… they were resisting. They're moving into the trains now. They're running away from us."

"As they should." Falkirk looked satisfied.

"Can we get medical…"

He overrode the channel. "You know the answer to that. They removed medical help from the equation themselves. Let me know when the trains are full, and under no circumstances allow any civilian to walk back out of that train."

"Yes, sir."

Lillian slid into his line of sight, leaning up against the console. "You're not even going to try saving those people?"

"That's correct." He didn't look at her. "They're examples now."

"Response train is inbound." Eileen couldn't see Falkirk anymore with Lillian in the way, and she was using this as an excuse not to try. She looked devastated; Lillian had never seen a look on her face like that which she herself had not been responsible for putting there. "Going to stop it at F-D until it's needed."

"Excellent," the Director nodded.

"They're in, sir. Most of them." Msuya paused meaningfully. "There's not enough room for everyone. Even with… even with."

"Can you control the ones who are left?" Falkirk demanded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think we can. They're pretty scared, sir, and we still don't have eye on Ambrogi."

"Execute, Chief Veiksaar."

"Great choice of words," Lillian growled, shoving his hand away.

"We have control of the platform, sir. Ready to begin negotiations."

Falkirk looked up at the ceiling, and a look of such sudden and unrestrained glee spread across his withered features that Lillian looked up to see if there was something fantastic on the ceiling. "You're trained for give-and-take, Dr. Msuya, is that correct?"

"Yes, sir."

His horrible grin just kept getting wider. "There will be no give today."

13 October

"I wasn't aware of any of that," McInnis mused. "Why wasn't it in the records?"

"We'll get to that," Ibanez promised him darkly.

"My record is clean." Falkirk was staring sullenly into the middle distance. "I have nothing to hide. I did my level best with the mess you left in my lap, traitor."

McInnis hunched down to look him in the eye. Neither of them shied away, though Falkirk's eyes were bleary with slow-forming cataracts. "I had attempted to evacuate the nearby locales well before that point. You reported me to Overwatch Command, and they threatened to send Hammer Down to bring us back into line if I did."

"As was my duty," Falkirk spat. Still McInnis didn't flinch. "They sent me here to keep an eye on you, just like your sainted predecessor. And just like him, I caught you with your hand in the cookie jar."

Harry knelt beside them. "Is that what you call trying to help people in need? You can honestly only understand that sort of thing as… selfishness? Grasping for personal gain?"

Falkirk turned his withering gaze on the archivist. "Absolutely. Absolutely I can. There's nothing else there. You're fooling yourself if you think it's nobility, the things you people do. You're so full of what you need to feel good about yourselves," and he shot a meaningful glance at Lillihammer — who, apparently expecting it, immediately stuck out her tongue — "that you completely lose sight of what we're supposed to be doing here. Protecting people. Protecting everyone."

"Yeah," Lillian sneered. "Yeah, you really did a bang-up job of that on Canada Day, didn't you? But you really fucking stepped up for Independence Day."

4 July

"Well? What's he asking for?"

Msuya's reply was bone weary, but Lillian thought she detected an undercurrent of contempt for Falkirk in there as well. Then again, she could have been projecting. Very easily. Or she could have been reading the mood of the room, which had not improved in the three days since the first incident. "It's not really clear to me. Seems like he's not much of a spokesperson. All the people in that camp want something different."

The tunnel-trapped refugees had reluctantly set up camp where Eileen had stopped them. There were S&C guards keeping them out of a southern bulkhead partition, where Msuya and his team were camped out in a second train. It had been a long, painful standoff to get this far, one highlight of which had been the relief train being bisected by what everyone assumed to have been Ambrogi standing on the tracks, just for shits and giggles.

"Give me the least boring examples," Falkirk yawned.

"Dormitory accommodation."

"No."

"A say in Site affairs."

"I asked for interesting examples, not absurd ones."

"Some of them would apparently like to join the security team."

"Hmm." He turned to his security chief. "Fancy a few hundred cheap bullet shields?"

"I know you're not being serious right now," she sighed.

"In all honesty, there aren't many things they could suggest which I would consider seriously. In your opinion, Chief Msuya, would they be willing to settle down permanently in that tunnel?"

Another pregnant pause. "At present, I would say not. They're nearly as agitated as they were back at H&P."

It wasn't the right thing to say. Falkirk was still hyperactively antsy about that disastrous breach of security. Lillian saw him tense up, even more than his norm,

Ibanez saw it too. "Well, there's nothing they can damage where they are now, so let them stew a little."

"I think I'd rather stir the stew, actually," the old man purred. "Here's what you're going to tell them."

"Yes, sir."

"They are required to submit to a full strip search today, in preparation for being pressed into a work detail tomorrow."

The longest pause yet followed, as Msuya weighed what he had just been told and the Operations Control crowd followed suit. "I don't think—"

"A work detail for what?" Lillian interrupted.

"Clearing the rubble at H&P. Helping to clean up the mess they created."

On the radio, in the background, someone laughed. It was a desperate, humourless, cynical sound. It probably crackled even without the help of the comms line. "That isn't going to play well, sir. What can I offer them in return?"

"My continued forbearance."

"Is that all?" Msuya pressed.

"You can't keep pulling this shit," Lillian interceded. "They don't know you. They don't know what you're capable of."

He looked her in the eye. He didn't do it often, and when he did, he feigned disgust. Now there was only a vengeful gleam in his irises, a cruel twist to his lip. "Precisely. I'm going to show them."

She took a deep breath, regretting that it was composed entirely of his air. "Listen to me. The rest of us are fully aware what a miserable sack of shit you are."

"Doctor—" Ibanez half-shouted.

Falkirk waved her off. "No, by all means, let him finish."

She would never get to the point where she didn't hear his little digs, but she would also never get to the point where they meant anything coming from him. She ignored it, as she always did. "We know when you're at your snapping point. They don't. They think they're dealing with someone reasonable. You're about to take that away from them. You're going to make them really, truly panic if you do this."

He shook his head. "I don't think so."

"I'm the mind expert around here," she reminded him.

He glanced down at her chest, then back up. "You don't even know your own mind." He turned to the console again. "Chief Msuya?"

Eileen and Ibanez were both trying to catch Lillian's eye, presumably to offer moral support. She didn't need it. Not against Falkirk. Moral superiority was assured from the start.

"Yes, sir?" Msuya fairly groaned.

"Proceed as instructed."

"Yes, sir."

13 October

"This is how you want to spend the day?" Still the old man wouldn't get up from his knees. Perhaps he didn't trust his legs not to shake. "Don't you have a happy reunion party to plan? Or, I don't know, should we not be taking more steps to neutralize the same threat I was containing in your pointless, indeterminate monologue?"

McInnis glanced down the corridor, towards the barricades and the server hall. Almost everyone who mattered was already here. His deputy. His trainee, though Karen likely had no idea he thought of her that way. The Survivors — minus Wettle, who had gone to find a washroom and had not yet returned. Even Thilo Zwist, which was an unexpected and almost thrilling boon. They hadn't been up to nothing without him, he could see. But Falkirk was right; they couldn't waste much more time on recriminations. He caught Lillihammer's eye. "Damning as this evidence is, I would prefer it if you could reach the conclusion with alacrity."

She grinned viciously. "For my part, sure. But I'm just the opening act."

4 July

Ibanez listened to the ranting coming over Msuya's microphone with an expression of quiet resignation. They could hear the EPAU Chief trying, and failing, to get a word in edgewise. "He's not happy."

"I don't want them happy," Falkirk snapped. "I want them compliant."

It felt pointless to say anything, but Lillian knew she had to. She couldn't just be a bystander while one man with too much power and not enough conscience committed his special crime. "That crowd is ready to blow."

He rolled his eyes. "We live in a fallout shelter. Let them blow."

It was a well-timed statement. The harangue was suddenly drowned out by a series of low boom sounds, and the granular rattle of cracking stone, and the groans of heavy metal under stress.

"Shit," said Ibanez automatically as she scanned the console. She thumbed the mic, and told Msuya's honour detail: "Move in!"

"God dammit." Lillian was also cursing randomly by habit at this point. All of them were, except for Falkirk, who almost seemed to be enjoying himself.

"Get our people out of there!" Ibanez restrained herself from shouting, as it wouldn't help to bellow in her people's ears, but only just.

"What was that?" Falkirk demanded.

"Detonation in the tunnel," Eileen droned. Lillian didn't think she'd slept in days.

"Where?!"

"Can't tell."

He loomed over her. "Get me video."

"Bringing it up on the board," she agreed.

"No." He suddenly stiffened, straightened, and adjusted his tie. "Get me video. My console only. Now."

She shrugged weakly. "Yes, sir."

He walked to the back of the room, where there was a partitioned area and a single podium for use of the Director or the officer of the watch. Lillian saw his eyes racing over the information on his screen, saw his face twitching every which way, and it went on like that for several tedious minutes. They were all left waiting for his judgement, with only the sound of the very old man sucking in air through his perfect teeth to keep them awake.

Finally, he spoke. "Are our people out?"

"They're out," Ibanez said. "They're holding the campers back, but only barely."

"Tell them to use the gas rounds."

Ibanez's jaw dropped. "Sir?"

Falkirk reached down and stabbed at his controls. "Use gas rounds, Msuya! Push them way past the doors, but do not enter."

Msuya opened his mic by way of responding. They could hear equipment being readied, but also a low clattering in the distant background, like an endless echo of the rumbling from before.

"Where is that coming from, Chief?" Falkirk asked.

The first Chief with an answer was Eileen. "Best guess, the bedrock. Might be Ambrogi again."

Lillian's stomach overturned itself, and she fought to keep her lunch down.

"They're pushing through!" Msuya suddenly shouted.

Falkirk had been waiting for this moment, apparently, because as soon as the words were out he provided his own: "Seal the bulkheads."

"Which ones?" Eileen called back.

"All of them."

All three women said the same thing at the same time: "What?"

"Do it!" He gripped the edges of the podium so tightly that colour actually returned to his hands. The colour was purple. "Now!"

Eileen was shaking her head rapidly. "Sir, I—"

"Bring the trains back through!" Lillian grabbed Eileen's shoulder. "You have to bring—"

Falkirk slammed his hand on the panel. "It's done. Thanks for nothing."

She found herself shaking with rage. She would have feared for his safety if she hadn't already despised him so fully. "It's fucking done, alright."

Eileen leaned into her microphone. "Clearance crews to—"

Falkirk stabbed another button, and the line went dead. "Don't."

"But—"

Ibanez was yelling. "You can't—"

The purple was in Falkirk's face, now. "If you ever use those words on me again, Chief, I will have your pips."

"If it was Ambrogi—" Lillian started.

"Then there was nothing we could have done."

"If it wasn't Ambrogi—"

"Then they'll be fine. They've got more than enough supplies to see them through. When we have better control of our own situation, we can see about mounting a rescue. Right now I need every available agent taking care of the remaining troublemakers."

"Troublemakers," she repeated.

"That's right. They've been nothing but trouble since they came down here."

"You're one to talk," she said. She wanted to scream it into his face, and possibly bite his bulbous nose off.

"Return to your office, Dr. Lillihammer." He adjusted his cufflinks, one by one. His tone was grave-cold again already. "I will recall you should I have need of further… colour commentary."

"You're a fucking psychopath," she told him. Very calmly. Almost politely.

He nodded amiably. "And you're far too soft. No wonder you think you're a woman."

13 October

Falkirk remained defiant. "I don't owe you all disclosure. I'm the fucking Director."

"Everyone in that tunnel is dead," said Okorie. McInnis felt a wave of sadness, let it wash over him, and converted the resultant burst of nervous energy into empathy. He met her eyes, and she met his, and he gave her a silent nod of understanding. It felt good when she bit her lip, and nodded back in obvious thanks for the support. I've been away too long, too long…

"And he knew they were going to die when he sent them in there," Ibanez was saying.

"That's a lie," Falkirk rasped.

"I was there too, manning the console," Veiksaar piled on, "and I didn't trust the Director's judgement. Something about his behaviour seemed… off. So I made a backup of his comms."

"You what?

"Problem is," she continued without acknowledging him, "I can't access Director-level privilege stuff without his credentials. So I had a record, but I couldn't open it. "

Harry feigned shock. "There's such a thing as a file you can't open?"

She smiled thinly at him. McInnis thought he detected some tension there; perhaps of more than one sort. "I'm the best coder around, but not the best in the world."

"You're not even the best coder around," Lillihammer interjected.

"So anyway," Ibanez said while Veiksaar glared at Lillihammer and the latter shrugged innocently, "We stole the Director's credentials."

McInnis raised an eyebrow. "Oh, my."

Falkirk did a double-take. "How? How? You'd need my fucking eye to get past those countermeasures."

Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, round object. He held it up to the light. "You don't say?"

The old man was beet red now. He seemed unable to open his mouth. His jaw muscles were throbbing.

"So that got us some fun little tidbits, like, for example: did you know he privately authorized all of Msuya's men to open fire on the civilians, if they had to? No wonder they were all so twitchy. And he knew Ambrogi was in the area, and did nothing to protect his charges, or the literal explosive charges for that matter, from him."

"This is more than enough to convince me," McInnis smiled. "I knew I could count on you."

"Well, you don't have to count us out quite yet," Ibanez assured him. "Sure we wanted him out of the big chair, but we were thinking even bigger by then. None of us want this fucker around in any capacity, and with resources stretched so thin, we'd need a real smoking gun to justify boxing him up to the troops. And I knew we could find it, if we looked long and hard enough. I knew he'd made a critical mistake, somewhere, because he's a rot-brained old fuck-fart, and I was desperate to figure out what it was."

Elstrom stepped forward. "It was this."

4 July

Karen tapped her keycard and opened the door to the office adjoining Operations Control, where the Chief of Administration and Oversight could conduct their private planning sessions during an active event. Falkirk was in here now, and he was shouting. He had his back to the door, and was looking down at the laptop terminal he'd taken from the podium before stalking out.

"I am telling you," he shouted, "there's nothing to be done about it! Man up! Do your job!"

"I'm trying, sir." Msuya sounded weaker than before, and Karen wondered if his injuries were beginning to trouble him again. Though his people did excellent patch-up work — EPAU mostly did psych assessments, as the name suggested, but they were trained paramedics too — there was no substitute for rest, and that was precisely what he wasn't going to get.

"Try harder." The old man was shaking with rage, his voice cracking with every word. She'd been his personal secretary for only a week, so it didn't mean much, but she completely failed to recognize the specific meaning behind his tone. He sounded tired, too. Was that it? Mere exhaustion?

Msuya yawned on the line. "I think the crowd is calming down a little, so that's good."

Falkirk nodded, wavy grey and white hair bobbing up and down. "I thought… it might."

"There's still a lot of commotion." Msuya sounded speculative, a little confused perhaps. "It's getting kind of warm in here?"

"Don't talk." She'd definitely never heard gentleness in Falkirk's voice before. "Conserve your energy."

She wondered if she ought to announce herself, but she didn't want to interrupt.

"Sir," Msuya said with a sudden clarity that startled them both, "I can't hear the air exchangers."

Falkirk nodded, but said nothing.

"Sir?"

"The air exchangers are silent, agent."

A moment of silence, and then: "That's not… that's not true. Are the air exchangers in this end of the tunnel not… functioning?"

As though the air exchangers in the office had stopped working, too, she suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

"I leave it up to your determination." Falkirk straightened, looking away from the terminal. "Please report back to me when you have something."

"You can…" Msuya was gasping. Karen's eyes filled with tears. "You can see the systems from where you are!"

"Agitation will only make the problem worse." Falkirk fidgeted with his tie, his cuffs, his vest. "Do something productive. Find the air exchangers."

"I can't… there's too many god damn people in here!" Msuya took a deep, desperate breath. "We're going to fucking suffocate!"

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Sir—"

"Figure it out, agent. I'll call again when it's safe to get you out of there."

"But there's nothing—"

"I won't hear it. Best of luck."

"Sir—"

"Goodbye."

He cut the connection.

And he looked away.

Over his shoulder.

13 October

"It's not my fault!" the old man wailed, every trace of dignity long gone. "What was I supposed to do?!"

"You unbelievable son of a bitch," Nascimbeni seethed.

"They pushed me too fucking far!" Falkirk was looking from face to face, searching for sympathy and finding none. "Who can blame me for pushing back?!"

"You were charged to protect those people," McInnis reminded him.

"You've gone on and on about our fucking oaths," Ibanez added.

"I was trying to protect them! Do you think I knew the exchangers were compromised?" His eyes were pleading. "Do you?!"

"Did you?" McInnis asked.

"OF COURSE I DIDN'T!" His voice was already hoarse, those ancient lungs already worn ragged by the effort of actually emoting. "I'm not a fucking murderer! I didn't know." He suddenly fell to pieces, losing half a foot in height even slumped on his knees as he was, jowls hanging loose, hair falling limp. "I didn't know."

"Did you know I was going to be ambushed?" Elstrom suddenly snorted, and turned away. "Who am I kidding? You set it up." She walked over to McInnis. "He tried to have me killed, sir, because I knew what he'd done wrong."

"I can't be weak." Falkirk's speech was strangled, garbled, like it was coming from the bottom of his throat now. "They couldn't know I'd been weak. Operational security. You should understand."

"Oh, yes. I understand you perfectly well." She glanced at McInnis again. "Sir."

He reached out a hand, and she took it. "It's good to see you again, Dr. Elstrom. I'd like to talk later, if you have the time."

She laughed. When the handshake was finished, she headed back to the barricades without saying another word to either of them.

"Did you know the psychic shielding around the server hall was compromised?" Nascimbeni asked after allowing a moment to pass.

Harry shook his head rapidly, as though overloaded with information. "What?"

"He was so paranoid about mind control, even though we knew it was impossible inside the hall, right?" Ibanez's voice was tight with contempt. "Constantly going on about how people were turning traitor, spooking at every action he didn't understand. Acting like we were all in danger of turning on him at every second. Noè and I figured out why that is, with a little help from Roger." She paused. "I'll introduce you to Roger in a bit."

McInnis inclined his head.

"This worthless motherfucker," Nascimbeni pointed at Falkirk, who was staring at the floor unseeing, "robbed a wad of telekill membrane out of the south wall."

"And did what with it?" McInnis asked.

"Oh my god," Harry gasped.

Nascimbeni nodded. "You get it, right?"

"His fucking briefcase." Harry's eyes were wide, and widening. "He kept it in his briefcase. He was carrying around a lump of telekill, so that he personally wouldn't get grabbed."

Falkirk shuddered to life. "I'm more important than every one of you combined. I have decades of experience, classified information, ultra-high-clearance things that would be disastrous in the wrong hands, or the wrong minds. If they'd taken me, you'd all be dead. I had to take measures."

"You could have asked for more screening!" Ibanez seethed.

"I couldn't trust you," he muttered.

"I thought you said you did trust me." She was almost laughing. It was a dangerous sound.

"Not with my brain, woman. At my age, that's all I have left."

"What a nightmare that must be," Lillihammer jeered. "Trapped in your rotting shell with only that withered old peanut to work with."

His cheek twitched in acknowledgement.

"Telekill is fucking toxic, you know that right?" Ibanez was incredulous, even having had days to digest the information she was now dumping on them. "It gradually degrades the neurons. You'd have ended up catatonic in a few months, carrying a lump of that shit around. And you exposed god knows how many of our best people to it, too!"

"You would have been perfectly fine inside the main shield," Veiksaar added, "which is thin enough to pose no health risks, but thick enough to block intervention. You put all of us at risk for nothing, twice over."

"You sick fuck." Ibanez was hopping from foot to foot, and McInnis suspected she was thinking about football kicking his head. It would be an easy shot. "We should overdose you on amnestics and push you out the front door. See how long it takes for anyone to bother trying to mindfuck you."

"I bet they ignore him," Lillihammer huffed, "or else spit him back out immediately. Bad taste in the mental mouth."

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," Nascimbeni agreed.

It was time to intercede. "I think I should prefer a more nuanced approach."

"Of course you should," Lillihammer murmured.

McInnis reached down and gently raised the old man's head to face him. "Edwin Falkirk, I hereby relieve you of the Directorship of Site-43 under my authority as Administrator of the SCP Foundation. Your security clearance credentials will be revoked in full, and all privileges appertaining to your position are rescinded."

All he received in response was "You'll get what you deserve some day."

"I daresay." McInnis walked toward the bulwarks, and the crowd. "Chief Veiksaar, please contact the Occult and Supernatural Activities Taskforce. I understand Dr. Falkirk was engaged in frequent negotiations with them, and that they possess certain privileges and resources we could make use of?"

"If any of them are still alive." Nascimbeni looked pained.

McInnis patted him companionably on the shoulder. "Well, I wonder whether they'd enjoy interrogating a former Site Director?"

"Oh my god," Ibanez breathed.

"I bet they would, too," Harry suddenly smiled.

McInnis nodded at Veiksaar. "Make the call, in your own time please."

She nodded back, twice. Excitedly. He wondered how many stimulants she was on. "Yes, Dir— Yes, Administrator."

"Administrator of what?" Wettle had returned. "Oh, hey Director. Where've you been?"

This obviously reminded Harry of something. "Who's taking Falkirk's place? The ASC?"

The big man was already shaking his head when McInnis did, and they both made eye contact before stopping. The ASC smiled broadly at him.

"No," McInnis said. "I will require his aid for a separate project soon enough. I instead confer the Directorship upon Dr. William Wettle."

About a dozen people said the same thing at the same moment. The only sensible way to respond to such a pronouncement, he acknowledged inwardly.

Wettle looked from face to face, searching for some clue to the obvious joke. His head inclined to the left, and he said: "I definitely missed something. What am I directing?"

"Allan. Come on." Harry was craning his neck forward, like he wanted to check the Administrator's tonsils. "You're not serious."

"I'm serious, but not honest." McInnis smiled at the six of them. They were standing in the barracks infirmary, where they could speak freely. It was good to speak to them again at all. "The Directorship of Site-43 is going to become a purely ceremonial position from this point onward."

"Willie's just as shit at ceremony as he is at everything else, Al." Ibanez was sitting on a cot, her short, fat legs kicking back and forth in agitation. "Are you just trying to make him a bullet shield for the real boss? You?"

Wettle stirred. "What?"

"No." McInnis raised a comforting hand. "I will require Dr. Wettle's provision with all the security attendant on his new position. I am in fact attempting to keep him safer than he was before with this measure."

"Oh," the scruffy man nodded. "Well, good."

"Why, though?" Lillihammer was leaning on Harry, occasionally tilting her head away and back again to bonk him in the noggin. He didn't seem to mind at all. "Frankly I'd think as the Admin you'd have about a billion more important things to worry about than the safety of Dr. Fuckup, Esquire."

"Esquire?" Okorie snorted. "Since when?"

"Hey." Wettle looked her up and down as though he hadn't noticed her presence before that moment. "Aren't you, like, a cadet or something?"

"His safety is in actual fact very important to me. All of you are." McInnis took a few seconds to look at them all in aggregate, the unlikely friend group the universe had inexplicably selected for him. Ibanez stood up, stretched, and strolled into the middle of the group. Nascimbeni glanced down at her, embarrassed longing writ deep in every line on his well-lined face. "I am going to need to know that I can count on you for many, many things in the near future. It will take some time to lay the groundwork, and there is…"

Ibanez took a deep breath, smiling grimly, and he could see that she understood. Nascimbeni did not, and so plainly did not.

"…pruning to be done, before that can begin."

"You mean the Victims," said Harry.

"I do."

Ibanez nodded, and opened her eyes. "It's about time we made them earn that name."

14 October

"Something I never asked you." Harry sat down beside him.

McInnis glanced up from the agenda on his tablet. "Mmm?"

"How come you're always the first one to a meeting?"

The makeshift boardroom had been constructed using the same principles as the barracks infirmary, only big enough to fit a table and a dozen chairs. It was cramped quarters, not unlike the senior researcher VIP in Archives and Revision, but it would get the job done until they could re-secure more commodious accommodations. One of McInnis' first acts the previous night had been to release the secondary server hall for general occupation. He had no need to lord his authority over a personal staff, unlike his predecessor — who was presently cooling his heels under guard in the infirmary.

"Because I'm always the highest-ranking person in any meeting you've seen me at."

"Right." Harry scooted his chair in so the rest of the attendees could squeeze past. "Those are the people who show up last."

"And why do you suppose that is?"

"I dunno. To show how important they are?"

He smiled. "And why do you think they need to do that?"

Harry sighed, and considered the question less flippantly now that he saw it was shaping up to be a whole thing. "Because they're not really that important, I guess." He nodded. "That's fun."

"Mmm."

"Alternatively, they've got a lot going on and they only have time to show up right when they're needed."

The All-Sections Chief edged his way around to the opposite end of the table from his Administrator. "That sounds like a charitable way to describe poor time management."

"Nobody'd ever accuse Allan of that."

"We gonna talk about time management?" Ibanez took a seat beside the archivist. "Gosh, that sounds fun."

"You're happy with how we've used our time, this past year?" McInnis asked her.

"Not particularly. Past me was apparently useless."

"Same." Harry sighed again, then raised a finger. "Don't say it."

Lillihammer gave him noogies as she walked past to sit on his other side. "Did I miss a chance to insult Harry?"

"You're usually here last," he grunted. "What gives?"

"I made eye contact with her," she jerked a thumb over her shoulder, "and it was too awkward not to tag along."

Okorie waved hello as she found her own seat. "Yeah, you're big on awkwardness avoidance."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Lillian was a portrait of innocence.

Okorie glanced from face to face, and asked: "Is this a Survivors-only meeting?"

"Looks like," Harry replied without looking at her. "Minus the ASC."

The big man smiled inscrutably. "The Administrator has made me an honourary Survivor."

"Diversity hire," said Ibanez immediately.

"I was gonna make that joke," Lillihammer whined.

Okorie shook her head. "You're too white."

"What, like, in general?"

"Sorry I'm late." Nascimbeni came in, still wiping a streak of oil off his shiny J&M jacket. McInnis noted, as he already had once before, that the name tag read MARKEY. "Got a lot going on, pressed for time."

"HA," said Harry.

"Sorry?"

"Inside joke. You missed it."

"Well damn." Nascimbeni sat down beside McInnis. "That's my day ruined."

"There's worse to come," Lillihammer assured him.

Thump. Thump. THUMP.

They had liberated a pair of glass doors to provide access to the boardroom. McInnis had stipulated this, as he felt it would do the troops some good to see their superiors actually getting things done for a change. He had, in a moment of hurried forgetfulness, only remembered to unlock one of them.

William Wettle was presently attempting, utterly in vain, to open the other.

"Use the other one!" Harry shouted.

"The other one, Willie!" Ibanez shouted.

"The other one!" Okorie shouted. "Use the—"

There was a loud crack, and the door came open. Wettle walked in. "I think I broke it." He blinked. "What's this about?"

"Friends." McInnis beamed at them with genuine warmth. "It's grand to have us all together in one place again. We have much to discuss."

"Like who we're going to kill first," said Ibanez.

Wettle looked down the table at her. "What did I do?"

"You're correct, in part, Chief," McInnis nodded. "We will engage in threat assessment, and determine the best path to neutralizing each in turn. But I also wish to speak on more esoteric questions, then a few baldly practical ones. First, and I open the floor to all of you equally: what precisely has placed us in this position? What is the nature of this new reality?"

Lillihammer answered first, of course. "It's a tangent timeline. Everything's different from September 8, 2002 to the present day."

Harry, their resident expert on the way history was meant to work, was obviously eager to know why. "What could cause that?"

"Changing the past," Okorie said.

"I didn't know you had clearance for Temporal Anomalies stuff," Harry responded dismissively.

She raised her eyebrows. "I don't. But you showed me Back to the Future, remember?"

"It was Part II, actually," Lillihammer corrected her.

"How did the past get changed, though?" Ibanez tugged on her uniform lapels for emphasis. "Nobody here did any time travelling."

"Everybody here did time travelling." Correcting people was Lillihammer's favourite hobby.

McInnis gestured to her with one hand. "Go on."

"When the breach happened again—"

"Why did it happen again?" Wettle interrupted.

"We don't know. Shut up. When it happened again, it happened again."

Harry gestured at her with both hands, as though presenting to the world. "Doctor of Tautology Dr. Lillian Lillihammer."

"What I mean is," she puffed, "what we did when the breach recurred got walked back to 2002, because the two occurrences were selfsame. It wasn't a reprise. It was the actual event, again."

That took a moment to fully register.

"You're suggesting that AAF-D itself time-travelled?" the ASC finally said.

"Sort of? More like… more like everywhere and everyone directly affected by what happened in 2002 returned to that moment in time in 2003, and it really was that moment in time, not a version of it, the actual moment itself. Those five minutes or whatever…"

"Okay," Okorie interjected, "I think I know what you're getting at."

"I got at it," Lillihammer grunted.

Wettle was looking from face to face, begging for assistance from his seat as Falkirk had earlier on his knees. "Please translate her for me."

Okorie turned in her chair to face him. "It's 4:15 PM right now, right?"

He glanced down. He shook his wrist, accidentally striking his glasses with a metallic clink. He glanced up. "My watch stopped."

She extended her own wrist. "Look at mine. 4:16. Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"On October 14, 2003."

He shrugged. "Sure."

"There was also an October 14, 2002."

"Obviously."

"There was a 4:16 PM on that day."

"Still obvious."

"If I were to perform an action right now—"

Lillihammer chucked one of her memetic cards into his forehead, and shouted "YAHTZ!" apropos of nothing.

"OW!" He rubbed a new red spot on his forehead.

"Learned it from a Ricky Jay video," she explained.

"Thanks?" Okorie suppressed a giggle. "Were I to perform that action—"

Lillihammer did it again.

"Cut it out!"

"—it would only happen now. It wouldn't also happen on the same day at the same minute in 2002. Right?"

He was still rubbing. "…right…"

"I mean, I do feel like hurting him a lot."

"Please let me get through this," Okorie pleaded. "What Dr. Lillihammer is saying is that the period from 6:22 PM to 6:27 PM on September the eighth doesn't work that way at all at Site-43. There is only one 6:22 to 6:27 on September the eighth, now. The same things that happened then will happen every time, at the same time. In 2003, the same five minutes slotted into the space where a new five minutes should have gone. There might never be a new version of those five minutes again."

"I wouldn't go that far," said Lillihammer, "but otherwise you're right. When the breach came back, it wasn't a second breach, it was the first breach."

Nascimbeni looked pensive. "And the things we did differently… therefore… now happened in 2002."

"Wiping out the entire year we remember having lived," said Harry, "and replacing it with this disaster."

Okorie had been waiting impatiently for the peanut gallery to shut up. She caught Lillihammer's eye. "What did you mean when you said you wouldn't go that far? Obviously we just need to wait for the breach to come back, then do what we did in 2002, and that'll restore the old timeline. Right?"

"Wrong, because of what we did in 2003."

Wettle was blinking furiously. A pair of overlapping red rectangles were fading into existence on his forehead. "I didn't do anything in 2003."

"Because I ran into you," said Ibanez.

The memeticist gestured at her in support of this assertion. "And he therefore didn't run into your agents, Del. And I didn't lock Del Olmo in to die. And Harry didn't send Wirth to look at an explosion, and Allan didn't answer his redline, and Noè didn't distract Markey or seal the agents in, and… I dunno what you did the first time, Udo, but you didn't do it the second time."

"Yeah…"

"And most important of all, we stopped the breach cold before anyone could die, or any effluence could be released. The only thing that could have caused a temporal distortion strong enough to compress two years' worth of five minutes into one year's space, or I guess extrude one year's five minutes into the parallel five in the next year, was the breach."

Nascimbeni whistled. "The counterchronological material."

"The what?" said Wettle.

"F-D processes a lot of gunk from temporal anomalies. It went critical along with everything else. That's why there's a temporal dimension to the disaster."

"Or rather," Lillihammer amended yet again, "why there was a temporal dimension. Now there won't be."

"Because…" Harry closed his eyes. "We changed the past so there wouldn't be."

"We trapped ourselves here," Ibanez finished. It should have been a mic drop.

But Wettle was still in the audience. "Hold on, I've seen Back to the Future. If we got our jigowatts from the sorcery sewer blowing up the first time, couldn't w—"

"No," said Harry."

"Couldn't we bl—"

"No," said Nascimbeni.

"Couldn't we bl— STOP SAYING NO!"

"We're not blowing anything up!" Nascimbeni shouted at him. "Enough damn things have blown up already!"

"But hold on." Okorie raised her hand, like she was still in school. McInnis reminded himself that the young woman, easily more intelligent than everyone here but Lillihammer, didn't even have her doctorate yet. "What the hell happened to the Victims? Why are they so screwed up, if we stopped the breach? Shouldn't they be normal?"

"Best guess?" Lillihammer shrugged. "Something cosmological changed in their nature when the breach killed them. Something that makes them different now, something that doesn't change just because the rest of the universe did."

"They've been empowered by something," the ASC intoned.

McInnis caught their eyes, one by one, and asked: "But what?"

Lillihammer leaned back, banging her head on the server stacks and cursing under her breath. "It would have to be something intrinsic to reality itself, existing beyond timeline considerations. Something built into the fabric of spacetime."

Nascimbeni had shifted into what he called Expert Mode, the rarest of his three social selves. He preferred to be either paternal or awkward in his interactions with others, but deep down he was a consummate professional. "That mix of materials was unprecedented. F-D was turned upside down, inside out, eighth-dimensional and worse. Tessellated and inverted and fractalized and crystallized and converted to raw vacuum, a different bit of lunacy every few feet. It could easily have been that combination of forces. Nobody on Earth is qualified to do the math required to explain what happened. You'd need an entire math universe to work out that problem."

"Or we could get Willie to run a replication study on it." Harry punched the shoulder of his colleague's fresh blue labcoat.

Wettle punched him back, limply. "Tried that in Austria, remember? Didn't go well."

Harry put his arm around the other man's shoulders, and hugged him sideways. "I'm so proud of you for finally remembering it was Austria."

Wettle squirmed out of the hold. "I get fooled once automatically, so I only really try the second time."

"Saves us the shame, leaves it on you where it belongs."

It was strange, McInnis reflected, how little the idea of being trapped in a bad future seemed to bother the two of them. Then again, very little got through to Wettle. But Harry, Harry was so very sensitive…

Ibanez cleared her throat. "So you figure we're stuck with this mess, then."

Lillihammer shrugged again. "I mean, who knows? Like Noè said, it's a hot clusterfuck. But I honestly don't see a way out."

The ASC stood up and placed both palms on the table, the thump audible enough to attract all of their attention. McInnis knew, not that he'd had any doubts, that he'd chosen wisely in trusting his longtime deputy. "Then we need to engage in spot treatment. Make the best of a bad situation."

"Quite," McInnis agreed. "There is an obvious place to begin: our opposite numbers."

Wettle looked from person to person yet again. "I don't have a partner."

"I'm referring to those individuals we've been calling 'the Victims'. I see no reason to update the title; clearly they remain victimized by some force beyond their control. It is our duty to ease their suffering."

"Dibs," said Ibanez.

Harry blinked. "On?"

"Just in general."

An uncomfortable silence followed, unbroken even by Wettle. The ASC sat down.

Ibanez finally followed up herself. "Look, we all know how this is going to go. None of you are any use in combat."

Okorie tossed her bag of reagents on the table. "Objection."

"Almost none of you are any use in combat, and all of you are soft. Ever killed anyone, Udo?"

Okorie looked away. "No."

"I would've said yes," said Harry. "Just to mess with her." When Okorie didn't look at him, his mood visibly darkened.

"I'm pretty sure I could kill someone," Lillihammer reflected.

"I'm pretty sure you'd cause collateral damage," Ibanez said, "and we've had more than enough of that already. For all we know there aren't the supplies topside to repair this place. As for replacing people, that's probably going to be even tougher."

"Memetics are targeted by their nature," Lillihammer grumbled.

"Still not worth it. You're too valuable to risk in combat, and I don't want to look the wrong way and get a faceful of hazard. I'm going to be the bagman, no two ways about it."

Nascimbeni was pale. "We're not even going to explore non-fatal solutions?"

Ibanez was adamant. "That's correct."

McInnis raised a hand. "I appreciate your enthusiasm, Chief Ibanez, but Chief Nascimbeni has a point. These people did not choose their present stations, and if we could restore them to their former selves…"

"Anybody have any bright ideas how to do that?" she demanded.

"Again," said Lillihammer, "memetics."

"Forsythe tried that already with Mukami," Harry reminded her. "Didn't take."

"We don't know that was the real Mukami. And forgive me for assuming I'd have more success than a medical nurse at my chosen profession."

"It's not practical," Ibanez insisted. "You want to get up close with Ambrogi or Markey? End up as a flesh stick in some cave somewhere?"

"They can still speak," Nascimbeni protested. "There's still something in there."

The ASC regarded him with a stern but empathetic countenance. "Do you have reason to believe that what's in there is them?"

"She seemed…" He sighed heavily. "She didn't seem completely like herself, but it wasn't so far from what I remembered that she seemed completely alien. More…"

"Attenuated?" suggested Lillihammer.

"Attenuated works."

"Attenuated means…?" Wettle asked.

"Maybe you were too eager to dip your wick to see the obvious facts," Ibanez told Nascimbeni, eyes flashing.

Harry did a double-take. "Okay."

Wettle broke the awkward silence first. "I bet Alis could figure something out."

Ibanez rolled her eyes. "I still think we should execute Alis."

"We will address Dr. Naylor shortly," McInnis assured her. "At this time I am interested in termination procedures for the Victims." Nascimbeni began to protest again, and McInnis held up a hand to silence him. "If we are able to cure them of their possession, should they indeed be possessed, I promise you that will become our main priority. For now we must assume they died on the eighth of last September, and we face only cruel mockeries of the people they once were."

"Let's proceed alphabetically," the ASC suggested. "Propose solutions as they occur to you. Ambrogi?"

"Shoot him with a gun," said Ibanez.

Nascimbeni looked stricken. "Delfina."

"I met this guy." Harry shook his head. "Molten metal didn't faze him."

"A big gun, then. If we can get into R&E, Bremmel has this absolute monstrosity socked away—"

"Did have," Lillihammer corrected once again. "I snatched it while escaping, stashed it in a dorm room. Told Allan, didn't have time to tell you yet."

"Why didn't you just bring it here?" Harry asked her.

"Because I heard fucking Falkirk was the Director."

"So," the ASC nodded, "you propose attacking Ambrogi with this weapon, Chief Ibanez?"

"That's insane." Nascimbeni pulled off his ballcap, and scratched at his hair. The cap, McInnis noticed, was also not his usual beaten-down version. Thereon hung a story. "He's hiding in a honeycomb network of caves. You'll never find him."

"He wasn't shy," Harry argued. "Last I saw."

"He will be if he knows you can kill him. I haven't seen anything to suggest that they've gone stupid, or suicidal."

Ibanez was sighing repeatedly now, over and over on loop. "So I'll go on the hunt. Won't be the first time."

The ASC gestured at Nascimbeni. "I understand that J&M conducted searches of the caves in the early days of the conflict, Chief. You likely have some files you can share with Chief Ibanez, to aid in her search."

"I'm sure he's thrilled," she snorted.

"You think I don't want this to be over?! I just…"

"We know, Chief." McInnis raised his hand yet again. He was beginning to feel like a school teacher. "Trust me. There will be other consultations before I approve any aggressive action. All possible avenues of approach will be considered. You have my word on that."

"So," the ASC continued. "Del Olmo?"

"Is likely not at Site-43." McInnis glanced at Lillihammer, who twitched. "Nothing has been heard from him for a long, long time. We must assume he's either dead, or in hiding."

"Gwilherm?"

"I'm going to want to talk to Brenda about that," Okorie began.

"Bet you are."

"Fuck off, Harry."

McInnis was considering leaving his hand in the air at this point. "Please."

"Gwilherm is best considered a deific threat." Okorie fixed Harry with a glare that dared him to interrupt again. "Radcliffe certainly thinks so. She's displayed easily the most extreme capabilities of each Victim. Hopefully we can conduct our other… operations, quietly enough that she isn't contacted. She ought to be the last one we tackle. The longer we can keep her away from 43, the better."

"Aw." Wettle looked like a scolded puppy.

The ASC nodded at him. "Something to add?"

"She and I were getting to know each other when the big switcheroo happened."

Harry frowned. "Getting to know each other how?"

The other man suddenly grinned. "Getting to know each other and how."

Lillihammer began to choke. She hadn't been eating or drinking.

"What?" said Harry.

"Pardon?" said Okorie.

"I can't breathe!" Lillihammer protested.

"Are you insinuating," McInnis said slowly, "that you indulged in sexual activities with Janet Gwilherm, Dr. Wettle?"

"She was the indulging one. I just kinda lay back, and let her go at it."

Harry placed his face on the table. "Yeah, no, I can't be hearing this. I just can't."

"Grow up," Okorie snapped.

His head snapped back up. "Fucking picture it, would you?"

"Okay," Lillihammer interrupted, her voice now scratchy and awkward, "as revolting as this is, it might provide an angle."

"If she did him once," Harry muttered, "she's bound not to do it again."

Wettle poked him in the shoulder. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Let me mull this one over." Lillihammer had obviously only asked for permission as a formality; her expression was already distant, and growing more so. "I'll figure something out."

"Technician Markey?" the ASC continued.

Ibanez flexed her fingers. "He'll be with Ambrogi, more or less. Two birds, one gun."

"If it comes to that."

"Yes, Noè, if it doesn't come to shooting them, I will not shoot them, because causality."

The ASC gently tapped the table. "Agent Mukami?"

McInnis answered before anyone else had the chance. "I'm not sure what the mechanism will be, but I suspect my involvement will be necessary."

His deputy was obviously taken aback. "That is a terrible idea, sir, with respect."

"It certainly is. But Agent Mukami is behaving like the tyrant of Site-43, and has engaged in frequent dialogues with members of my staff. She clearly wishes to converse, proselytize, spread her ideology. With sufficiently bolstered cognitohealth, I believe I could resist her temptations."

Ibanez harrumphed. "Nice to see a man who's willing to try."

"You want to have this conversation here?" Nascimbeni nearly shouted at her. "In the boardroom? With them?" He gestured at the others.

"Stay on topic, please," the ASC entreated them. "If the Administrator can lure Mukami into a conversation — which I remain unconvinced is the safest course of action — how might we use that to our advantage?"

Lillihammer drifted back to Earth, reluctantly, after Harry gently shook her shoulders. "We need to figure out what kinds of effect work on her."

"Oh, good." Nascimbeni picked up his hat again, and slapped it onto his scalp. "Now you're going to suggest we torture the one we have in custody."

"Yeah, that." Lillihammer pointed at him, and pulled an imaginary trigger. "Thanks for being the one to say it."

"And we're the good guys," he spat.

"Hey," said Harry, "don't know if you've been to the auditorium lately, but there's a lot of body bags full of people who'd say yes, definitely, we're the good guys in this situation."

The ASC straightened in his chair, casting a blinkenlight shadow over them. "I think we can table this until further investigation is done into Agent Mukami's cognition, however we want to approach that. Yes?"

"Yes," McInnis nodded. "The less we discuss divisive options at this point, the better. We all need to remain on roughly the same page, if not line and verse."

"Radcliffe, then."

Ibanez rolled her eyes again. "Nobody's seen hide nor hair, but he never shuts the fuck up."

"Possible he's in the command centre?" Harry suggested.

"I didn't see him," said Lillihammer. "Everyone talked like he was long, long gone. Far away."

"Hmm." McInnis tapped each of the fingers of his right hand on the table, in sequence, once. "We could engage Chief Veiksaar in a test of his signal strength. Determine the likely distance of his transmission station."

"What if he doesn't have one?" Wettle flinched, as though expecting to be laughed at or struck with a piece of cardboard. When that didn't immediately happen, he continued: "What if his magic power is ventriloquism?"

"That is a legitimate consideration," McInnis acknowledged.

"Yay." Wettle smiled contentedly. He would likely check out for the remainder of the meeting, now.

"I think we will conduct the test anyway, however. Narrow down the possibilities."

"And if we find him?" Harry asked. "What then?"

"An entirely new threat assessment will be made. We know the least about what he is capable of."

"Fun times," Lillihammer yawned.

"That leaves Dr. Wirth," the ASC concluded.

"And you can leave that one to me," the memeticist half-sang. All traces of boredom drained out of her expression and posture.

McInnis shook his head. "I would prefer to explore all possible alternatives, rather than—"

"I could kill him today."

Everyone, Wettle included, stared at her.

"Oh, what, nobody can top that? Colour me surprised."

"I…" McInnis found his frown dissipating into a smile. "…will take your word for it at the moment, Dr. Lillihammer, though I expect a thorough explanation of your plan before I approve it."

"Yeah, that'll take all of a minute. Could do it now if you want."

"There's no need. Killing Dr. Wirth would signal to the others that we are moving against them, and capable of doing so. It can only be done when we are prepared to put the remaining plans in operation as well."

"Cool. It does have to be first, though. Can't so much as walk around out there without him poking in your skull, so Del wouldn't make it halfway to the caverns."

"Why is it," Harry asked, "that he didn't go after me or Melissa?"

"That's a very good question," Ibanez nodded.

"Come to think of it…" Lillihammer started tugging on her long orange locks. "It's strange I had so much control over my faculties while he was in my head."

"Is it possible," the ASC asked, "that the lot of you are protected from the effect, in some sense?"

"Oh," said Nascimbeni. "Fuck."

McInnis gestured at him. "Chief?"

"Oh, no. OSAT."

"What about OSAT?"

"That's why I thought… that's why they thought she wasn't the same as the rest." He reached up to slap his forehead, and instead struck the brim of his hat. It flew backward off his head. "She was trying to control me, because of course she was. She just couldn't. And that got everyone killed."

McInnis lowered his voice to a tone more soothing than commanding. "That misunderstanding, if indeed it's the case, had little to no effect on what transpired next."

"They gave us more leeway because they thought I might be right. I was wrong. And now they're all dead."

"There was no way for you to have known."

The old technician was sinking lower and lower in his seat. "I just didn't want to believe she was bad. It's my fault."

"Yeah, a bit." Ibanez made a rolling motion with both hands. "Now get over yourself and help us fix our shit."

The ASC looked to McInnis. "I take it there will be further meetings in this vein?"

"Yes. I intend to add to this inner circle. Individuals we can trust with the facts of our true nature. I am open to suggestions."

"Melissa," said Harry.

"Brenda," said Okorie.

"Alis," said Wettle.

"No!" said Lillihammer. "Moron!"

"I had also considered Dr. Reynders, Chief Veiksaar and Dr. Elstrom," said McInnis. "If and when they are freed from the grasp of our enemies, Dr. Ngo, Dr. Du, Dr. Sokolsky and Dr. Euler would also be vital allies."

Lillihammer guffawed. "You just said 'Sokolsky' in the context of 'trust'."

"It was a very specific context of trust. I trust him not to reveal our secret to the rest of our staff."

"And what's our endgame?" Harry asked. "If we manage to take out all seven of these obstacles, one way or another?"

"Then, Dr. Blank, we rebuild. We attempt to restore some equilibrium to this world. We correct the catastrophe, so far as we are capable."

There was a meaningful glint in the archivist's eye, now. "It might be helpful if we actually knew the extent of said catastrophe."

Lillihammer put an arm around his shoulder. "That sounds like a you job."

McInnis nodded. "I shall make my files available to you, Dr. Blank."

"Huzzah." He raised his hands in mock victory. "I've always wanted to write the history of an alternate world. Never expected it to come to me, though."

Executive Dysfunction

The Breach Goes On: Wrong Tomorrow

The Cruelest Fight