Who Will Save The World - SCP Foundation

October 26th, 2019

It was well after three in the morning when Harvey considered that, maybe, he should be asleep by now. Thirty three years on the job had placed their toll onto his body - wasn’t that supposed to mean he could be granted the luxury of going to bed at a reasonable hour? He had the graying hair, and children in college, but those were both negatives. Women do not like gray hair, and living alone isn’t something to boast about. All of the downsides, none of the upsides. One could say that was the life he had chosen at a young age, but the man from all those years ago had been a fool. He hadn't been thinking of the bigger picture then, and now that it was his job to do so, he could see more clearly that this wasn't the life he had envisioned. Its gloss had faded.

He leaned back in the car seat, leather creaking as it protested the additional pressure against it. If Harvey had known just how long it would take for the others to get here, he would have brought an extra cup of coffee. Instead, what remained of his only cup sat light and cold next to him, a reminder of their tardiness. They were supposed to be here half an hour ago. If he was going to show up early, couldn’t they run their scans or whatever the hell as a “fifteen minutes before” sort of courtesy?

Headlights flickered, finally illuminating the road ahead. This far out from the rest of society, it was unlikely that they had meant anything else than what he had come here for. They had shown up. Harvey’s knuckles clenched against the steering wheel. A deep breath, a mutter of prayer, and the Senior Special Agent rose from his vehicle - alert and awake as the day he was born. Slowly, the headlights came to meet him.

June 10th, 1993

Screaming down a poorly paved road in a rented car, two Americans were well on their way North. One clutched their chest, where crimson seeped through pale fingers. A kevlar vest’s promise of protection had failed him. The other kept their hands against the wheel, clenched knuckles cut with shattered glass. Steady nerves kept the driver focused, yet his steady breath had too faltered.

Fresh air whipped throughout the cabin, mixing with the smell of cigarette smoke and cheap booze. This was supposed to be a quick job, a simple romp through a recently independent country in search of a rogue asset. GRU-P was supposed to be in shambles. They weren’t supposed to make contact with the Russians.

And they hadn’t.

The vehicle stopped fifteen yards from Harvey's shoes, the man stuffing his hands into his pockets as two figures came from the doors. They stared at him for a moment thoughtlessly, only nodding in acknowledgement of his presence once he had flashed his badge. This had been a useless gesture, and Harvey knew it - the two were not alone, even if he could not see those who were accompanying them. His identity was known long before this final pitiful confirmation.

From the back seat, a third figure emerged, this one hunched and afraid. It was the man he had come halfway across the country to see. To retrieve. Thirty three years on the job, fifteen of which was spent within the Office of Relations, and Harvey could not for the life of him make out the words he had to speak without strict rehearsal. Even with trained repetition though, they came through gritted teeth.

"Apologies, Peacekeepers. I understand this one has been trouble?"

The man in the driver seat spared a glance towards his passenger, disregarding for a moment the speed he was going. Blood loss kept him in a state of dopey consciousness, unmoving in his slumped state. Whatever strength remained in him, though, was able to form words.

"They got us, didn't they?"

Somehow, the driver hadn't noticed him speaking until now. Maybe it was the fact that his attention was so caught into the adrenaline, but now - he heard it - just barely audible over the deafening sounds of the engine and wind. He was quiet, far from the usual boisterous tone he had once carried with him so proudly. The words now sunk beneath him, gone with his conviction, seeping out from his chest with each passing breath.

The driver nodded once, but remained silent, a lump forming in his throat as he turned his attention back towards the road. A quick look down to the accelerometer placed their speed at just over eighty miles per hour, far faster than the Soviets had ever intended the rusted hunk of steel to go. With this many holes punched through, it would not be long until something gave in. One puncture of the radiator would be enough.

"We got lucky, you know?" said the passenger, his speech slurred into something akin to a dreamer's tone. "You did good, Harvey." The passenger waited a moment longer, then mumbled something else. This time it came as nonsensical, more a whisper than anything tangible.

Harvey got back into the driver's seat, waiting for the Greenhorn to shut his door. A difficult silence hung within the car's windows as the Senior Special Agent turned the ignition, staring straight forwards into the night. Harvey's face had become stagnant, an expression of irritation and disappointment plastered upon him. "What you did - it was stupid and out of line, Lewis."

The youngster, or maybe just the fresh face, shook his head. Lewis had expected the speech - the same speech that had been passed to him a thousand times before. Even if it had been told now with a different tone, it just meant the same thing. "No," he said after a moment of pause, "we didn't have that. You and I both-"

Harvey cut over Lewis, loudly putting an end to his brief retort. "I am not sitting through another one of their fucking threats again, and you knew better. You said it over a public emergency frequency. I don't know what kind of stupid cry for help you were going for, but you crossed the damn line, and you are done."

"What, and the alternative was that we just keep on watching? I'm sorry, but I'm not equipped to deal with this, and when I told higher that, all I got was a 'do the best you can'. You realize we have lives on the line, right? Innocent people?"

"We were dispatching a tactical team-"

"The tactical team," Lewis's voice rose with frustration, his face contorting into a look of bewildered anger. "It would've taken them hours to get here. It took the Coalition fifteen minutes."

The cabin fell silent again. Harvey stared ahead, watching the other vehicle disappear. The truth is, he did not care for a moment how long it took for the Blue Helmets to step in. He didn't care how effective they were, either. Twenty six years of spite boiled within him, and Lewis had chosen his side. Though the car the Blue Helmets came in now left, he found their presence still lingering next to him.

But he was right. Seven lives were saved because the Greenhorn had went loud, and that was just the immediate effect. Who knows what else they would have done? Reason momentarily echoed in Harvey's head, but it echoed upon deaf ears. The Unit was made rotten because of people like those he had just been chastised by, forced to stand and listen as they accused them of recklessness. And now, the traitor in the seat next to him spoke of them as angels, and put up no resistance to their claim of everything he held dear. The acceptance of their own failure had plagued the unit to its core for far too long.

Harvey looked one last time towards the passenger seat. Without a chance to say goodbye, the man he admired beside him had fallen still. His eyes were lost, staring off at some spot of nothingness within the center console. Four years on the job, and he had been there for everything. Now, Harvey needed him more than ever, and he was gone. The rookie was not prepared for what was to come.

The Peacekeepers would be waiting for him in the next town over. They wouldn't have given up with a single ambush. Five calls up to his next in the chain of command, and none of them had been returned. Skirmishes with the Peacekeepers didn't end like this. Dozens of little flashpoints over the years painted a target on the back of The Unit's Agents, but not a single one had resulted in command cutting contact - and the Blues were never this bold. Somewhere, somehow, Harvey knew something had changed. This was bigger. This was the end.

Mile markers showed him closing in on the next town. Whatever final blessings Harvey had for his mentor, they would be passed up for thoughts of escape. Grieving could come later. He still had himself to worry about.