The Fall of Site-128 - SCP Foundation

SCP Foundation Secure Facility Dossier (Abridged)

Research and Containment Site-128

Site Identification Code: GBSWCB-Site-128

General Information

Site Function: Site-128 is a small research and containment facility, focused on storing Safe-class objects and minor anomalous ephemera, alongside monitoring low-level GoI activity within southern England.

Founded: 27 May, 1989

Founding Director: Dr. Richard Sterling

Location: Somerset, England

Cover Story: Schmitz-Corsham Processing (refuse management centre)

Size: 8000 m²

Site Overview

Site-128 was originally established to monitor an anomalous retailer known as Holt Office Supplies, which operated numerous outlets and ventures in southern England throughout much of the 1980s and 90s. Its operations have since shifted to cover the storage of low-risk anomalies, general GoI monitoring in the region, and some academic work on theoretical parastatistics.

Site-128 is currently the smallest Foundation facility in the British Isles, and remains among the smallest in the world. For this reason, it has retained a relatively low profile within the organisation since its founding, and is unable to take on projects with particularly high budgetary or personnel requirements.

Staffing Information

On-Site Personnel: 44

Site Director: Dr. Marie S. Bradley

Deputy Director: Lorenzo Montalbini

Chief of Security: Jeffrey R. Flint

Senior Researchers: Dr. Kai L. Lassila, Dr. Oliver Q. Memphis

GoI Specialist: Dr. Elia Fira

Head of Maintenance: Sara Doyle

Chief Medical Officer: Dr. Blake R. Turner

2016-08-03

16:53

Site-128, Somerset, England

Oliver Memphis's job did not involve reviewing the Secure Facility Dossier.

He was doing it anyway, because with every passing week he became less and less sure what precisely his job did involve. He knew what his job was called — he was a Senior Researcher at Site-128 — but why such a position was in any way required remained a continuing mystery.

The five SCP objects for which the Site was responsible, as of now, possessed no significant scientific or strategic value of any kind. No useful or interesting data had emanated from the facility in months, if not years. The parastats work, which he was supposed to be writing a fairly unremarkable paper on, had been stymied by the fact that he needed data from other Sites — all of whom had ignored his emails.

The dossier was far too diplomatically-phrased to use words like "stagnant", "redundant" or "shithole", which Oliver considered a shame. It might have got them shut down, and the sooner that happened, the sooner he would have a chance of transferring somewhere more interesting.

"Do we have a Kant counter?" came the voice from across his desk.

Oliver looked up from his monitor. "I think so. Should be in storage somewhere. Why, what do you want to use it for?"

"The Site."

The office was in keeping with the Foundation's conventional aesthetic, in that it was a windowless white box with austere furnishings and negligible decoration. The desk faced a blank wall, which made it a good spot for staring into the middle distance — a popular activity, given the quantity of actual work required of him. He was currently filling time, as he often did, by chatting to Kai Lassila, 128's other Senior Researcher — the fact that it needed one of those was odd, but two was frankly baffling — about whatever was going on at any one of the myriad more exciting facilities operated by the SCP Foundation. The places that weren't where research went to die.

"What do you mean, you want to use it for the Site?" He attempted to raise one eyebrow and failed, so opted to just furrow them both instead.

Kai looked at him from across the desk. "I want to take the Humes of the entire Site," he explained, "because I don't see any other reason for—"

He found himself interrupted by a distant crashing sound, followed two seconds later by a notably less distant one. The room jolted in what could have been an earthquake — if earthquakes were the kind of thing that happened in southwest England, which broadly speaking they were not — and then the lights snapped out, leaving the windowless office bathed only in the dim green glow of a single emergency exit sign.

"Um."

Before either of them could fully process what was happening, sound began to erupt from the little radio on the desk. There seemed to be at least four people talking at once, and it was impossible to make out more than a handful of words over the crosstalk and background noise:

"—emergency—"

"—calling Security Chief Flint—"

"—please advise—"

"—north side of the building—"

"—status on the Director—"

"—hostiles, unknown number—"

They heard gunfire downstairs, and the little radio nearly blew out its speakers as it dutifully tried to relay the noise. There was some sort of general commotion about three metres below their feet, and Kai suddenly wondered if this dark and airless office was the exact best place for him to be right now.

"What should—"

"Shh." Oliver pointed to the radio, before grabbing a flashlight and a pad of paper out of a drawer. Kai picked up a green pen and wrote:

EVACUATE OR SHELTER HERE?

Oliver listened to the incoherent shouting on the radio, considered for a moment, and then replied:

HERE — DOOR LOCKS FROM INSIDE

Once he'd got up, locked the door and sat back down, Kai was writing again:

CONTAINMENT BREACH???

The confusion was entirely reasonable. 128 had no Keters, no humanoid anomalies, and essentially no potential for a containment breach to occur, especially not one as destructive as this. The alternative, Oliver realised, was much worse.

SOMETHING'S TRYING TO GET IN, NOT OUT

Neither of them kept track of how long they stayed inside; it could just as easily have been thirty minutes as thirty seconds. Given that the attackers had seemingly managed to enter the building, the chances of one office door blocking their passage seemed low to negligible, but in the absence of any alternatives they stayed still and silent.

After a seemingly interminable amount of shouting and general panic, the crosstalk began to subside. Oliver picked up the radio, gingerly pressed the button with one thumb, and spoke as calmly as he could manage: "Memphis to 128 actual, requesting situation report."

The response came quickly, though it wasn't the Director's voice. "Dr. Memphis? Can you come to the front of the building, please?"

As though it understood the concept of comedic timing, the floor gave way.

The fall wasn't far. This was partly down to the building's haphazard architecture, which had helpfully placed his office directly above a small room with a low ceiling; mainly, however, it was because all four walls of said room had been at least partially smashed through, with the resulting rubble piled up where they landed.

Kai stood up, dazed, and looked around the newly-open plan space. Every visible surface seemed to feature an assortment of bullet holes, scorch marks and exposed wiring. Smoke was emanating from several different corridors at once, and he could see outside — not because there happened to be a window there, but because there was now a sudden vacancy for the job of exterior north wall.

"What did they do." He realised his eyes were itching.

"I think that part's fairly clear," Oliver muttered, before walking away without another word.

They both moved towards the brand new exit, which looked for all the world like a truck had smashed directly into the structure, before reversing out again and driving off. Oliver tried very hard not to think about what kind of vehicle might have been able to do that, just like he tried not to think about why there were bodies on the ground, or what the crumpled metal object on the floor was supposed to be, or the fact that if he couldn't see the fire from where he was then it was almost certainly coming from the main admin wing, or who the bodies on the ground were, or why everyone seemed to be waiting there for them and them specifically, or why the maintenance chief was rushing over to look at the crumpled metal thing, or why everything looked to be completely bullet-riddled, or where the Director was, or where the security chief was, or why he was still standing stock-still inside the building even though the roof was probably close to caving in, or who—

"Dr. Memphis?"

The voice calling from outside snapped him out of his trance, and he ran over to its source: a security guard named Bains. "Were we attacked?" he asked flatly.

"…yes. Did you not notice?" Bains replied incredulously.

"I was stuck in my office the whole time. Just assume I know nothing. Where's Bradley?"

"Unconscious. Smoke inhalation. So's Montalbini." Oliver opened his mouth, but no words came out, so the guard continued. "And Flint's gone AWOL."

He was about to ask the obvious next question, and then realised he knew the answer already.

Site Director: Dr. Marie S. Bradley

Deputy Director: Lorenzo Montalbini

Chief of Security: Jeffrey R. Flint

Senior Researchers: Dr. Kai L. Lassila, Dr. Oliver Q. Memphis

GoI Specialist: Dr. Elia Fira

Head of Maintenance: Sara Doyle

Chief Medical Officer: Dr. Blake R. Turner

"Kai?" he called.

The other man jogged over. "What?"

Oliver spoke quietly through gritted teeth. "We appear to be in charge of the Site."

Site-128 had a full staff complement of around forty or fifty. The minority of these people who possessed any training whatsoever in first aid, building maintenance or general crisis response were helping out in whatever way they could, while the remainder were steadily rounded up by one of the Acting Co-Directors to stop them getting in the way.

"Everyone into the parking lot, please! Everyone without response duties, give us some space!" Kai shouted ineffectually. He wasn't used to projecting his voice, especially not into a crowd of confused and frightened staff all murmuring amongst themselves.

He turned to Bains. "Do we have a bullhorn or something?"

She pointed at the ruined building. "In there."

"Oh, terrific."

"Specialist Campaign Polling," came a pleasant voice through Oliver's phone. "How can I help?"

He was standing as far away from the madding crowd as possible, on the opposite side of the building. It was the closest currently-available approximation to peace and quiet.

"Hello, could I speak to Chris Romero in Quality Control, please?" he said, hoping he'd remembered the code phrase correctly.

"Which office, Boston or Seattle?"

"Lisbon."

"Just a moment, please."

There was no hold music while his call was transferred, just a faint dial tone.

"We need these people out of here," explained Blake Turner. He was attending to a collection of people clustered around the least-damaged part of the Site, all in various states of serious injury. "We don't have the facilities or staff to treat them all here, and that's assuming the medical wing were actually usable. Which it's not."

Kai did some mental maths. The nearest facility was Site-12, around eighty miles away. A Foundation helicopter could get there quickly enough, but this place only had one, and it couldn't accommodate all of these people at once. They might end up needing the help of every Site in the country.

A different voice came through. "Overwatch crisis response. State your location, situation and code phrase."

"Site-128. Emergency code Bravo-3. Memphis beta twenty-eight giml blueprint Taliesin."

Another pause. "Copy that. Give me a detailed report."

He launched into his hastily-prepared monologue. "OK, we've been attacked by… around fifteen individuals. Two of them are captured, and we believe the rest are dead, so there's no immediate danger, but they caused a lot of damage. Seems they rammed a truck straight into the building, multiple times, and then just started shooting and setting things on fire. No idea who they were or what they were hoping to achieve, but we have, I believe, nine staff currently injured or unconscious, including the Director and her deputy. Several of those will need medical attention off-Site somewhere, because we do not have the ability to provide it right now. The building is half-destroyed, has no power, and may be in imminent danger of collapse… oh, and our Chief of Security, who should be the Acting Director right now, is missing."

As he was speaking, Kai ran over and pointed at the segregated area where their single helicopter — having somehow survived the attack undamaged — was kept. He brought his hand up into the air, then down towards the ground, then held up ten fingers, then two.

"So we'll need logistical help from Site-12," Oliver finished. Kai tapped his wrist, and he added: "Urgently."

Sara Doyle was attempting to investigate what remained of the building, whilst making sure none of it fell on her head or entered her lungs. She didn't really have the mental space to answer Kai's questions at the same time, but she tried to entertain him anyway.

"I have no idea how long it'll be until we're operational," the maintenance chief explained. "Right now, I wouldn't even let anyone inside without PPE. Probably stay that way for a few days, minimum." She picked up an unidentifiable chunk of metal and presented it to him. "This was the main fuse box. We're only gonna get power back once this entire area gets rewired." She dropped the mangled box on the ground, and gestured broadly at the missing wall. "Does that give you an idea?"

This news was not cheerful. "Any containment compromised?" he asked. It was mostly an irrelevant question, since none of their anomalous items actually required any containment measures beyond leaving them in a locked cupboard somewhere, but it was the only one he could think to ask.

"Aside from the fact that anyone can just walk inside, you mean? I don't know," Doyle said firmly, "because all the anomalies are stored in the middle of the building, and we can't go in there to check on them."

"I'll put that down as a 'no'," Kai replied. "I think we've got enough problems for now."

Oliver had been shunted over to the switchboard of the Site-12 logistics office. He wasn't precisely sure what the person he'd spoken to at Overwatch was supposed to be doing, but he hoped it was something useful.

"This is Acting Director Oliver Memphis from Site-128," he explained. "We have nine Foundation personnel requiring urgent transfer to your facility for emergency medical care, and we only have the capacity to move two of them."

The person on the other end frowned. Oliver couldn't see it, of course, because they were just a voice, but he could tell. "For what reason?"

"Bravo-3. We got attacked, and so our own medical wing is completely unusable right now. We have some high-ranking personnel unconscious, and we need any logistical help you can offer in getting them to you."

He wondered how many more people he was going to have to explain the current predicament to. Maybe I should just learn this script by rote.

Their own helicopter had departed with the Director and her deputy on board, and several more were apparently on their way from Dartmoor. Following that, some more security-ish personnel were scheduled to arrive — neither Kai nor Oliver had been told from where — to pick up all of their unwanted visitors both dead and alive, and take them somewhere where they were no longer 128's problem. The support staff were handling things as well as they could, and it seemed that trying to get anyone else to lend a hand would turn the whole mess into a too-many-cooks situation. There was therefore nothing left to do except wait, and so Kai was preparing to send most of the staff home.

He wanted to talk to one of them first, though.

128 had been founded to monitor Groups of Interest operating in the area, and this remained some of the only legitimate work it still did. The majority of said work was done by one person, who was standing off to one side with their head in their hands. In Elia Fira's case, this either meant they were deep in thought, or trying to block out every detail of their surroundings. Possibly both.

"Any ideas who this was?" asked Kai.

They shook their head. "Not a clue. Don't know anyone that operates like this. Except maybe the CI, but they usually wear their logo. These guys had no insignia."

"Not even all uniformed," Kai muttered.

Fira looked over at him. "Yeah, they were. All in tactical gear, just unmarked tactical gear."

Now it was Kai's turn to shake his head. "Not all of them. I saw three or four in plain clothes." He pointed towards the corner of the building where the bodies had been dumped.

"Why would only four of them be in plain clothes?"

Before Kai could respond, he noticed the rusted south fence near one of the utterly obliterated external buildings. It backed onto a hedge, which in turn backed onto an open field where anyone could be walking — and he was fairly sure it hadn't been touched by the attackers, it had always had that hole in it…

"Oh, fuck." Kai didn't finish the thought out loud.

Those were civilians.

Kai strode around the building towards Oliver's hiding spot. "Not my problem," he muttered to himself. "I'll tell him, and he'll tell someone else, and it will be their problem and not mine, and I don't have to think about it."

He didn't stop thinking about it.

20:46

SITE-128 ALL-STAFF BULLETIN

Site-128 will be closed to all personnel until further notice, except those responsible for security or building maintenance.

Further information will be provided when available.

"Sent," said Kai as he tapped his phone.

The two of them had chosen to make this announcement for the same reason they were sat in the back of Oliver's car instead of in an office: Sara Doyle had told them in no uncertain terms that the building was not fit for human occupancy, and would not be for several days at a bare minimum.

They both sat in silence.

Eventually, Oliver spoke. "What were you saying earlier? About measuring the Site's Hume levels?"

Kai looked over at him. "Do you think they're going to shut down 128 after this?"

Oliver stared out of the window across the nearly-deserted parking lot, squinting at the empty husk of the building under the slowly-dimming sunlight. "Wouldn't surprise me."

"Why do you think it took them this long?"

Oliver shrugged. "Probably the same reason they haven't closed 333 yet. Decomming a Site is a lot of work, and even the ones that look useless now might be important in the future. Don't want to close a place down and then only realise you need it a couple years later. Same goes for 246, considering how old it is. Or… I think even Area-21 mostly exists as a formality these days."

"Area-21 does something. It's still used as a testing ground for AcroAbate research. Site-333 does something, even if they've got the most incompetent administrators on the planet. What do we have? Five skips, if I'm counting right, plus a bunch of minor anomalous objects that no-one cares about. None of them are hard to contain, and we've had them all for so long that we basically know everything there is to know about them. And they're not even here any more." Everything anomalous had been moved out of the building as a precautionary measure, since it now possessed the containment capabilities of a damp paper bag. "We've got twelve research staff, total, and they're doing 20% theoretical parastats and 80% meaningless data collection."

"I see where you're going with this," Oliver replied, "but just to play devil's advocate: what about strategic value?"

"Well, what about it? Do we have any?"

"Not that I'm aware of, but it's entirely possible there's… I don't know, some stuff way above my clearance level that means we need to have a facility right here. Maybe Bradley knows something we don't, or Flint, or even Fira."

Kai looked around at the interior of the car. "There aren't any cameras in here, you don't have to defend Overwatch's decisions if you don't want to."

"I'm not defending anything. I'm just saying, there are a lot of possible explanations for why we're still open. What were you hoping to prove with a Hume reading anyway?"

Now it was Kai's turn to shrug. "I don't know. It would tell me if there's anything to look for, at least."

"I would imagine," Oliver narrowed his eyes, "that if there is some kind of… magic conspiracy, or whatever you're thinking of, and we don't already know about it, then maybe Overwatch wouldn't appreciate us trying to find out?"

Kai sat back, and did not respond. The dead building stood across the asphalt from them, flanked by a handful of guards — they were mainly protecting files and furniture now, but those were still considered too valuable to leave fully unattended.

Oliver sighed. "Look, we've both been on crisis response for the last four hours, and I for one do not have the energy to deal with this right now. Whatever it is you're concerned about, we can deal with it tomorrow."

"Assuming we're still in charge by then." Kai raised an eyebrow. "Which we won't be if Bradley's back. Or Montalbini, or Flint."

He stared straight ahead into the middle distance, took in a breath, and said quite matter-of-factly: "If Jeffrey Flint is here tomorrow, I'm going to hit him very hard somewhere with as many nerve endings as possible."

2016-08-04

07:32

To: Dr. Oliver Memphis

From: O5-6

Subject: Site-128 Staffing Changes

Director Memphis,

Your report on the recent attack on Site-128 was received by Overwatch. Pending an investigation into the origins and exacerbating factors of this attack, the following personnel have been relieved of duty:

Site Director Dr. M. Bradley

Deputy Site Director L. Montalbini

Chief of Security J. Flint

All of the above individuals have been detained at Site-12.

Your security credentials have been upgraded to Level 4 on a provisional basis.

-O5-6

He stared at his phone.

He had been awake for less than three minutes.

Overnight, the O5 Council had apparently seen fit to appoint him as the chief executive of a facility that was empty, ruined, and entirely superfluous. He could understand the idea of appointing someone to the role for purely administrative reasons — though presumably an actual administrator would be more qualified for that — but the corresponding clearance bump seemed to imply that they were giving him a real job with actual responsibilities.

Either they were planning something, or they were morons.

09:02

"Alright, welcome to the first formal meeting of the What-The-Fuck-Is-Happening Society."

The Site's semi-reshuffled management team was assembled in a huddle in the parking lot. Kai Lassila stood looking concerned — if he'd received a similar email to Oliver this morning, he hadn't yet mentioned it. Naomi Bains had been drafted as the new acting security chief, not that there was much left to secure, and Sara Doyle looked impatient to get back to fixing the building. Elia Fira had offered at short notice to come in and look for clues as to the origin or motive of the attack, and so they'd been brought into the meeting as well.

"The rough version is as follows," explained Oliver. "After last night, I had assumed that Overwatch was going to either shut down the Site entirely, or send in some external administrator to manage it. Or just send Bradley back here and keep business running as normal. None of those are what actually happened. What actually happened was that O5 sent an email to 'Director Memphis' — no Acting — to say: one, we're suspending all of your superiors while we figure out if this was their fault; and two, here's a complimentary clearance upgrade. No further information."

He glanced at Kai, who said nothing.

"So you've unintentionally gone from researcher to co-Director to full Director in 16 hours?" Bains said.

"Effectively, yes."

"Did they actually ask if you wanted the job?" Kai finally spoke. "Or did they just throw it at you?" It was hard to tell whether he was jealous or relieved that Overwatch had seemingly chosen Oliver over him.

"They did not ask."

"Is it rude if I say I'm glad I'm not you right now?"

That settles that, then. "No, that's entirely reasonable. This is not a fun job, as you well know."

"So… OK," said Bains. "What happens now?"

"Well, that's what I wanted to discuss. Seeing as we are now the entire leadership of Site-128, I wanted to get your opinions on something. It's my personal view that this entire facility should be decommissioned as soon as possible. We've already had to move our entire anomalous inventory out of here, and I see no utility in fixing the place just so that we can move it all back in."

"I'm with Ollie, in principle," said Kai. "This place was doing almost nothing before, and it's doing actually nothing now."

Elia Fira spoke up. They seemed only half-present. "Suppose we did rebuild it. How long would that take?"

"Several days until you can go inside without at least a hard hat," Sara Doyle replied flatly, "several weeks until it's how it was before."

"And the cost?" asked Bains.

"That's one for the CFO."

"…who is in hospital right now," Oliver pointed out.

Fira looked over at him. "Just to be clear, are you suggesting sending Overwatch a decommissioning proposal for your own Site?"

"Uh, yes. Yes, I am," he smiled joylessly.

"Wait, actually though," Kai muttered. "What were we saying yesterday? We were trying to figure out why they hadn't shut us down already, and we thought there might be some kind of Director's-eyes-only reason that we needed to stay open. Right? And obviously we wouldn't know if that were true, because none of us would be cleared for it."

"Well, none of us would be cleared for it." Bains pointed at Oliver. "You would."

"I would, if I could actually access anything. But seeing as we don't have any power right now, never mind a working terminal and SCiPNET connection… do we have an ETA on any of that?" He looked at Doyle expectantly.

"Not today. Maybe tomorrow." She shook her head. "The electrics in this place were a rat's nest even before yesterday, it's going to be a nightmare getting anything working at all."

"Hm. I'd like to move forward a bit faster than that. I might go to Site-12 and see if I can log into SCiPNET from there."

"What do you want us doing in the meantime?" asked Fira.

What did he want them doing? He thought about it for a moment. "Uh, you can go through whichever parts of the building are least dangerous right now, see if you can figure out anything about why the attack happened. Sara, keep working on getting the power back on. Naomi… keep making sure nobody steals eight boxes of files, I guess. And Deputy Director Lassila, you can draft up a decommissioning proposal, just so we're prepared."

"Sorry, deputy what now?" Kai stared at him.

"Well, someone here needs to be in charge if I'm out."

"I don't want to be."

"Neither do I!" He turned, as if to move towards his car, before Kai interrupted him.

"Wait. Why are you so worried about rushing ahead with this?"

That was a fair question, and it was one he'd considered at great length while failing to sleep the previous night. "OK. Briefly, how would you all describe this Site's previous leadership?"

This wasn't a difficult question. He was talking about a Director who either rejected or ignored anything coming across her desk that would have required more than three minutes' work to deal with, a deputy who was an abject non-entity in nearly every regard, and a security chief who liked to solve problems by shouting at them whenever they occurred, and frequently when they did not.

"Useless," said Doyle.

"Negligent," added Bains.

"Sometimes actively unhelpful," finished Fira.

He nodded. "All of those are true. I would say, speaking more precisely, that what Bradley did as Director was a very bad and ineffective kind of firefighting. Just deal with whatever's right in front of you, and make it go away as quickly as possible — which in our case led to very little being in front of us, and very little happening. I would also say — and this is entirely my own theory, to be clear, I'm not a psychologist or a management consultant — but I would say that the attitude at the top filters down to everyone else. And when the attitude at the top is that, the culture at the entire Site becomes that kind of unhelpful firefighting. Not for everyone all the time, but on average that's how we've been operating for at least as long as I've worked here. We don't control events, we are dragged along by them. None of us are exempt from that, for the record, and I don't want to absolve myself of my share of the blame."

Most of those assembled looked somewhere between confused and unimpressed. Sara Doyle was the only one who spoke: "You're saying Bradley was shit, so we ended up all being shit. Great. What's your point?"

"My point is that Marie Bradley is not here any more, and we are not obligated to continue her approach. I want to actively do something, because the current situation does not benefit anyone in any way, and neither did the situation 24 hours ago. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and find out what the hell she knows that we don't, and if any of it explains why this facility still exists."

Site-12, Dartmoor, England

The security staff at Site-12 seemed to be getting slightly peeved at the amount of 128's personnel and/or detritus they'd been sent since yesterday evening. The arrival of a man claiming to be its new Site Director, with a security badge that didn't match his system credentials, requesting the use of an empty office with a secure SCiPNET connection, did not immediately improve their mood. He'd called ahead beforehand and explained the whole situation as clearly as possible, but it seemed the duty officer hadn't got the memo. He made a mental note to avoid sending them any more staff if the shutdown went ahead.

Oh well. After much bureaucratic finagling, he'd finally been shoved into an unused corner office the size of a large storage cupboard, which suited him fine. All he needed was him, an enclosed space, and a terminal.

Most of the files classified at Level 4 — at least those originating from Site-128 itself — were relatively mundane. Hiring papers, personnel records, administrative minutiae. He certainly couldn't find anything that pointed to 128 having some kind of vital, highly-confidential ulterior purpose. He did, however, find a file for something called "AO-95286", which might have been a misclassification. He couldn't recall an item with that number, and the idea of a minor anomalous object being classified Secret was bizarre to the point of absurdity.

He opened it.

Item No.: AO-95286

Location: Site-128, Containment Cell 31

AO-95286 is a small bronze statuette resembling a lion. It will intermittently vocalise English sentences when a person is present; these sentences frequently contain information of scientific or tactical value to the Foundation. It must therefore be visited at least once per month by the Site Director, or other appropriately high-ranking personnel. The source of its information is currently unknown.

Item will damage cameras, microphones and other electronic recording apparatus when in proximity to it, through an unclear mechanism. Such equipment must therefore be absent from its containment chamber.

Last updated 1995-09-27 by R_Sterling_128 (user inactive)

Bullshit.

Richard Sterling had been the founding Site Director before Marie Bradley, up until his death in 2004. He had, apparently, written a document requiring him to enter a room once per month in which he would not be surveilled, in which nobody — theoretically including Overwatch — would know what he was doing.

Oliver was reasonably certain that Containment Cell 31 did not exist.

A quick check of the Site's floorplan confirmed this, more or less; there was no room anywhere labelled 'CC31', though there was a corridor adjacent to CC30 leading to a space approximately the size of a standard humanoid containment cell. It was labelled 'STORAGE'.

O_Memphis_128

got a new job for you

O_Memphis_128

can you go inside and take a look at containment cell 30?

O_Memphis_128

specifically, the door immediately to the right of it

K_Lassila_128

Hold on

K_Lassila_128

OK I'm here

K_Lassila_128

The door just says storage, what am I looking for

O_Memphis_128

can you go in?

K_Lassila_128

Its locked

O_Memphis_128

card reader or physical keyhole?

K_Lassila_128

Might be both

O_Memphis_128

oh brilliant

O_Memphis_128

any other way in?

K_Lassila_128

Nope

K_Lassila_128

What's in there exactly

O_Memphis_128

it's complicated, i'll tell you when i get back

So much for that.

The file had apparently been written in late 1995. Had anything else happened around that time?

It turned out that it had. Around a month prior, 128 had seized about half a ton of esoteric material from somewhere in Wales. That material had never been properly documented or even named — all the files just referred to it as some variation on "SCP-PENDING" — but it was apparently dark grey, slightly malleable, and possessed a number of thaumaturgic properties described in technical language that he only partially understood.

It had also gone missing.

The person responsible for this rare material had been the then-Deputy Director, a man named Lewis Flood, and his mishandling of it had been so egregious that he'd been summarily fired and quietly shipped off to a position at Site-333 where he couldn't do any damage. That was what the records said, at any rate; Oliver wasn't sure how much he trusted the records at this point, especially the ones written by Richard Sterling.

K_Lassila_128

Can you check if we've ever hired a me ethicist

K_Lassila_128

Memeticist

K_Lassila_128

Fucking autocorrect

O_Memphis_128

uh, ok

O_Memphis_128

why?

K_Lassila_128

Elia just found a box of files with a memetic contamination warning label

K_Lassila_128

Says to contact a specialist

K_Lassila_128

I didn't think we had one of those

O_Memphis_128

yeah, we don't

O_Memphis_128

as far as i can tell we have never employed anyone with any kind of memetics qualifications

K_Lassila_128

What the hell is that thing doing here then

O_Memphis_128

i have no idea

O_Memphis_128

i'll add that to my list of Weird Shit

K_Lassila_128

You have a LIST?

O_Memphis_128

unfortunately yes

Site-128's Level 4 filespace was only accessible by three people at any one time: the Director, the Deputy Director, and the Chief of Security. The most recent holders of these offices had clearly made no effort to organise anything in any meaningful way whatsoever, instead allowing the entire thing to collapse into a chaotic, unnavigable heap of assorted files. He got the distinct impression that nobody had actually read anything contained there for several years.

He was attempting to review all of it in the space of one workday.

Richard Sterling's personnel file was unhelpful — in fact, it seemed to be oddly thin on details — but he did manage to find one document written by Bradley shortly after his death, which had itself occurred only three months after Bradley had been promoted from obscure administrator to Deputy Director. It consisted of a one-paragraph summary followed by some mostly-blank pro forma garbage:

On 2004-06-28, Site-128 Director Dr. Richard Sterling was unexpectedly killed by a gas leak explosion at his private residence. At the request of several Foundation personnel, I am opening an investigation into the potentially-suspicious circumstances surrounding this incident.

If that investigation had ever produced any other documents whatsoever, or even concluded, there was no sign of it.

Is that a cover-up, or just Bradley being her usual apathetic self?

He could have gone and asked her, but thought better of it. Even if he was technically entitled to go more or less anywhere in the Site, he got the distinct impression that neither the people working here nor the O5 Council would be thrilled about him walking into a hospital ward to interview the subject of someone else's investigation.

K_Lassila_128

Update, we found the kant counter

K_Lassila_128

It was at the bottom of a filing cabinet in the admin wing

O_Memphis_128

of course it was

K_Lassila_128

And its giving me really weird readings

O_Memphis_128

weird how?

K_Lassila_128

Well it says the whole of 128 reads about 60 or 70% of baseline

O_Memphis_128

are you sure it's not broken?

K_Lassila_128

Goes back to normal the moment you leave the site grounds

K_Lassila_128

Its this place specifically

O_Memphis_128

huh

O_Memphis_128

i'll see if i can requisition another counter to bring back anyway

O_Memphis_128

just in case yours is wrong

2016-08-05

09:23

Site-128, Somerset, England

It wasn't wrong.

Oliver stared as two separate Kant counters reported the exact same inexplicable figure. The entire facility was apparently covered by some kind of ontokinetic aura.

"It gets worse," said Kai.

"How?"

"I checked to see if it's uniform across the Site, or if it's emanating from a particular point. It seems to be strongest around the centre-west part of the building."

"And?"

"Do you know what else is there?"

Against all odds, Sara had managed to restore power and lighting in a handful of less badly damaged areas late yesterday evening. All five of them, therefore, could see perfectly well what the young researcher was pointing at.

A nondescript locked door, simply marked STORAGE.

Kai looked down at the counter in his hands. "0.62. I'm sure it's coming from around here."

"Do you want me to smash the door down?" Sara suggested helpfully.

"I think I'd like to try something else first," replied Oliver.

One of the other more-or-less-functioning sectors was the security office. This was a blessing, as it contained 1) SCiPNET terminals, so none of them had to trudge eighty miles to Site-12 just to look at their own files, and 2) a keycard printer.

"Didn't you say there was a physical lock on there as well?" asked Sara, as Oliver entered his credentials.

"We've got lockpicking tools," Bains pointed out. She pulled open a filing cabinet and started rifling through drawers; behind her, the printer whirred into life and spat out a piece of plastic emblazoned with four orange stripes.

The photo on the card had been taken when he'd first joined, four years ago — recent enough that he'd never once felt the need to update it. Then, he'd been a fresh-faced junior researcher; now, he was the Foundation's least experienced and least necessary Site Director.

This, he mused, is probably not a typical career progression.

As expected, the card alone did not unlock the mystery storage room. It took Bains several minutes of wrangling with the keyhole to finally get the wretched thing fully open, at which point the five of them stepped into the unknown.

A short hallway led to another door — this one did only need the card — behind which was a pristine cubic room. The walls, floor and ceiling were all made out of some uniformly dark matte metal, which didn't match any other containment chamber any of them had seen. Maybe it's for soundproofing, Oliver thought. In the centre was a wooden table with a single chair, on which was perched a hideous-looking lump of bronze vaguely resembling a lion.

He picked it up briefly. "This thing," he announced, "is apparently classified at Level 4. File also says it ruins cameras if they get too close." He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and snapped a photo of it. "The research work of our esteemed founding Director, everyone." He leaned down and spoke to the object. "Hello! Do you have any of that vital tactical information he mentioned?"

The statue, being a statue, said nothing.

"No? Quelle surprise. I think it's safe to assume that file might be wrong about a few things."

"0.56," said Kai, still holding the borrowed Kant counter. "This room is the focal point."

"I don't like it in here," Elia muttered. "This room gives me a weird feeling." Oliver knew what they were on about; there was a very faint but noticeable buzzing sensation in most of his body.

"That might be the reality bending aura," replied Kai.

Oliver shook his head. "Don't think so. It's not that much stronger in here than outside."

"You got a better idea?" Kai leaned against one of the dark walls.

The dark grey walls.

Oh, no.

"Yes, I have, actually," he said.

"Go on."

"I didn't get the chance to tell you about Dr. Flood, did I? He was Richard Sterling's deputy, or one of them. Discovered this brand new esoteric material, managed to seize half a ton of it from somewhere. Really thaumaturgically active and versatile, huge number of practical applications, in theory… and then it got lost."

Bains looked skeptical. "How do you lose half a ton of previously-undiscovered material?"

"That is a very, very good question. Because I'd say that, if it were still around somewhere, and especially considering the dates involved, there'd probably be about enough of it to make, oh…" he sucked in a breath through his teeth, "…one medium-sized containment chamber?"

Nobody said anything.

"Kai, just out of interest, did you finish writing that draft proposal yesterday?"

"Yeah." Kai pulled up a document on his phone, and handed it to Oliver.

DECOMMISSIONING PROPOSAL

WHEREAS Site-128 has suffered severe structural damage following the attack on the 3rd of August 2016, and will therefore remain essentially unusable for a period of several weeks at a minimum;

WHEREAS, for the reasons cited above, the few anomalous items previously contained at Site-128 have all already been transferred to other facilities without further incident;

WHEREAS Site-128's research operations have largely stagnated in recent years on account of a lack of resources, and of the limited amount of information that can be gathered from such a small number of anomalous subjects;

WHEREAS Site-128's GoI monitoring operations have similarly stagnated, as the main group that the Site was originally established to monitor (GoI-6625, "Holt Office Supplies") has been defunct since 2004;

WHEREAS there is no apparent strategic value in continuing to operate Site-128 at this location, as the nearest facility (Site-12) is already largely responsible for operations in southwest England, and has significantly greater MTF capabilities;

WHEREAS Site-128 employs only 41 personnel, and its three formerly highest-ranking staff are under O5 investigation due to their being implicated in the aforementioned attack;

THEREFORE it is proposed that Site-128 be decommissioned with immediate effect, and its remaining personnel and assets be transferred to other Foundation facilities.

Naomi Bains, Chief of Security, Site-128

Sara Doyle, Head of Maintenance and Facilities, Site-128

Dr. Elia Fira, Group of Interest Specialist, Site-128

Dr. Kai Lassila, Deputy Director, Site-128

Dr. Oliver Memphis, Director, Site-128

He nodded. "We may need to rewrite this."

By the end of the day, the document had quadrupled in size. Kai's original draft had become just the executive summary of a three-part essay. The first section was a scathing indictment of Marie Bradley's Directorship, which Oliver had spent several hours wording extremely carefully; the second was a fairly pessimistic cost analysis of returning the Site to normal operations, which they'd need to get someone in Finance to sign off on as soon as they were able; and the third was an explanation of everything they'd found surrounding Richard Sterling. In addition to the complete closure of the Site, it now also called for either a new investigation into the old Director, or an expansion of Overwatch's existing one.

It got five signatures with no objections.

"What are you going to do if Overwatch rejects it?" asked Bains.

He shrugged. "Overwatch is a vast and knowledgeable monolith," his voice dripped with sarcasm as he leaned back in his chair, "and I'm an idiot they threw an awful job at. I can't be expected to fathom their motivations."

2016-08-08

Site-01, Undisclosed Location

The chair was surprisingly comfortable. He wasn't.

"Well, this isn't quite what we were expecting," said the singular silhouette, which was apparently named O5-6. Could be worse, thought Oliver. They could have dragged me in front of all thirteen of them at once.

"With regards to what?" he replied carefully.

"When we appointed you as interim Director," said Six, "we rather assumed you were going to keep the Site running while our investigation went ahead, and not rock the boat to such an extent."

He'd anticipated something like this. "With respect, sir, Marie Bradley spent her entire Directorship not rocking the boat, and now it has capsized. I was left to pick up the pieces, and I was not given any instructions as to how." He considered adding that the word 'interim' was nowhere to be found in Six's email, which seemed to imply that he had all the powers and responsibilities of a permanent officeholder, but thought better of it.

"Yes, well, I'm not admonishing you by any means," oh, how nice, "but I would quite like to know how you found all this information so quickly."

This, at least, was a relatively easy one. He'd more or less rehearsed it on the way here. "We started working on the decommissioning proposal the morning after the attack — that was my intention from the start. I had, however, considered the possibility that we'd been kept open not due to inertia, but because of some sort of secretive reason that I wasn't previously cleared to know about, so I spent a day looking through all the files that were marked Director's-eyes-only just to check. I didn't find any kind of secret modus operandi, but I did find most of what you see in Section 3 of that proposal. Dr. Lassila found the rest."

"I see." Six's voice conveyed no hint as to whether or not this explanation convinced them. "The decommissioning proposal itself is quite reasonable, but you're also suggesting an investigation into a man who died twelve years ago?"

"And who is connected to Containment Cell 31, which is apparently important enough that his deputy got fired over it," Oliver continued. "There is another interesting fact about that room, actually — it's not in the report because we only realised it yesterday."

"And that is?"

"OK. The attack on Site-128 looked essentially random. They were destroying equipment, blowing up walls, setting basically anything on fire, with one exception. After all the dust settled, the only part of the main building that was completely undamaged was the area around Cell 31."

The silhouette shifted but did not reply, so he kept going. "I don't believe this attack was indiscriminate. I believe it was coordinated by someone who knew what was in that room — which means either Richard Sterling, Lewis Flood, or someone that one of them trusted. And it killed four people, so I'd quite like to know what they were trying to achieve in doing it." Oliver exhaled, and settled back in the chair.

Three hours seconds later, Six said: "We'll take that under advisement."

He nodded, not even knowing if the darkened entity could see it. "Thank you, sir."

Almost as an afterthought, they added: "Have you given any thought to what you want to do after this? Supposing Site-128 were to be decommissioned, that is."

There were a hundred ways to answer that, but anything but the least committal one felt inadvisable. "Not specifically, no. I've had a lot of other things on my mind."

"Noted," said Six. "That will be all, Dr. Memphis."

2016-08-09

Site-128, Somerset, England

SITE-128 ALL-STAFF BULLETIN

Overwatch Command has ordered Site-128 decommissioned.

All personnel will be transferred to other facilities in short order. Transfer requests are to be submitted to the Office of the Director by the 12th of August.

Direct all queries to this office.

We thank all staff at the Site for their service here.

The announcement had to be sent from Oliver's phone, of course, but he still let Kai press 'send'. It felt right.

They were exactly where they'd been six days earlier: in the back of a parked car, looking out at the destroyed shell of their soon-to-be-former workplace.

"Obviously, you've got first choice of transfer location," said Kai.

"Obviously."

"Any ideas where you're going to go?"

"A few," replied Oliver. "I need to mention something first, though."

"What?"

"O5 approved both parts of that proposal. The Sterling investigation's going ahead."

"Oh, good."

"But they don't want to do it internally, within Overwatch," he explained. "Something about allocation of resources, I think."

Kai frowned. "Who is doing it, then?"

"That would be me," Oliver grinned.

The other man blinked. "Wait, really?"

"The O5s trust me, or at least one of them does. Fuck knows why, but they do," he shrugged. "And they've given me… not quite a blanket authorisation, but something pretty close to one. Resources, transport, and also staff."

"Staff," Kai nodded. "Interesting."

"Now, I will note something. Obviously we'd want to be stationed somewhere near here, probably at Site-12, so we've got physical access to the building. But, I may want to interview Lewis Flood, who's in New Jersey, and maybe the GoI research group in Massachusetts, and possibly even some of the experts at 43. We'll probably want a North American office as well, is my point."

Kai looked at him. "I… don't really want to move to America."

"43's in Canada."

"I don't want to move there either."

"Fair enough," said Oliver. "Personally, I would prefer never to visit this place again, so I'm happy to let you handle this side of the operation."

"Oh, so we're not actually working together?" He sounded surprised.

"I mean, not physically, but we'll be coordinating. And depending on how deep this thing goes, I suspect one or both of us will end up bouncing between every Site in the world, so I'm sure we'll meet up at some point," he laughed. He hadn't laughed in a week.

Kai didn't laugh with him.

As before, it took a long time before either of them said anything. Finally, Kai stared straight ahead and muttered: "…so this is what change looks like. Action versus firefighting."

"Yep."

"I'm not used to it."

Oliver sighed. "I don't think any of us are. Firefighting is stable, in a certain sense, and it's comfortable."

"Mhm."

"It also achieves nothing," he said bluntly. "And I'm bored of doing that."

This time, Kai did laugh, if only briefly. "Well, Dr. Memphis, it's been a… pleasure? I think? You've made the last four years tolerable, let's leave it at that."

Considering where the last four years had been spent, that ranked as a generous compliment. "The same to you, Dr. Lassila," he smiled.

To be continued