Nothing to Worry About - SCP Foundation

Nothing to Worry About

2011

11 September

Timeline 5243-C

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

"It's cabin fever," LeClair sighed. "Only the cabin is the biggest building in the world, and it's got one thousand people in it."

"Also the cabin is the world, and it's got our whole damn species."

"I don't know why people keep repeating that." LeClair finished filling out the inventory form, handed Helena the clipboard, and closed the cupboard. "For all we know, someone pocketed us like a billiard ball. The entire Site being intact is a sign that this was done by something intelligent. Someone, most likely. And the Foundation has a lot more enemies than the human race does."

"Helps that every enemy of the human race is de facto the Foundation's enemy."

They walked back out of the barracks pharmacy. Agent Bosch nodded a friendly greeting as he walked by; the grunts liked to stay on the doctors' good side, as a rule. Never knew when you'd need patching up. They had their own medics and supplies, but for anything serious, they'd rely on LeClair's steady hands.

"Come on." Helena poked her daughter in the shoulder, twice. Billie was sitting on a bunk bed, scowling at nothing. She slouched to her feet and followed without a word.

LeClair was patting her labcoat and frowning. Helena handed her the clipboard, receiving a wan smile in response. "Thanks."

"Been a stressful couple days."

"That's the thing, actually." They headed for the cloverleaf, passing techs and agents and the odd labcoated abationist as they went. "Ngo says stress is down so far. Says Elstrom actually complimented her this morning."

"Bullshit," Billie muttered. Helena chose not to make an issue of it.

"But the injuries are a bad sign, anyway. Anxiety is a problem, but going squirrelly? That can become fatal, very fast."

"Very fast," Helena repeated. "How do people who live underground anyway start getting cabin fever after only two days?"

"Schrödinger's topside," LeClair mused. "You know it's there until you don't. You don't need it until you do."

"Don't think that's much to do with Schrödinger."

"I might be misremembering."

They passed a pair of junior researchers overtly snogging in a comms niche. LeClair flicked the closest man on the scalp, and said "You have a room. Use it. And use a condom, too."

"Room's too small," the man muttered back. His partner winced agreement.

"I just don't get it," Helena sighed again.

"I do," said Billie, but in the crowded corridor nobody heard her.

It meant an argument with his peers, but that was nothing new. They argued practically every time they spoke. It was a major constituent element of their friendship. In the end, they relented. McInnis had never objected in the first place; Udo's objection had almost certainly involved personal considerations she was unwilling to air in a pinch; Del just wanted to complain, and Lillian wanted Harry to feel embarrassed before she let him have the win.

Not that he thought it was any great boon, being able to pass on this information. Telling someone their entire world had a shelf life was not the most pleasant of tasks. Still, he felt she had a right to know. He would have felt profoundly wrong proceeding without telling her.

What he hadn't expected, though in retrospect it made a certain sense, was that Karen would open her mouth in a silent guffaw and stare at him with wide eyes and an open-mouthed smile for ten seconds straight before saying, in a mixture of awe and relief, "That's fucking hilarious."

And the whole way up the elevator, she was humming a jaunty tune.

Most resources at Site-43 were already inventoried regularly, so the recount was just a formality. But McInnis wanted precise, up-to-date numbers for everything, and he got them within two days. It only took that long because in addition to counting the food, medical supplies, armaments and the like, he demanded a tally of every other numerable object within the facility. He had to know precisely, in every detail, what they were working with.

Harold Blank, some of his old sense of humour already returning for some reason, found it a fun idea as well as a vital one. "We have the opportunity, for the first time in human history, to know exactly how many objects exist in the entire world. It was never worth the prep costs before, you know?"

With it all laid out in front of him, McInnis could now judge the length of eternity. How long the only living things would live. The Site kept food and medicine stores for one year at max complement, a policy inaugurated after everyone had been trapped bottomside while indigenous protestors occupied Camp Ipperwash above in the mid-nineties. Those stores were at capacity. They would likely last until September 8, 2012. Of course, that wasn't good enough; they didn't want hunger riots interrupting the containment procedures for SCP-5243, and they also didn't want to drop dead if they failed and were stuck here permanently.

Well, probably. Probably they wouldn't want that.

So LeClair and Forsythe were synthesizing additional stocks, with help from an unusual source: William Wettle, whose degree in chemistry and experience in pharmacology could finally come in handy. They'd be replicating medicine for a while to ensure they'd be prepared for any eventuality, as even a single preventable death represented a major drop in the community's sustainability.

Unless of course they couldn't get their food growth projections higher, in which case a few casualties, perhaps early on, might help considerably with reaching the finish line. (The first to point this out had been, of course, Delfina Ibanez.) The Site was equipped with hydroponics, though they had been designed as a supplement to food imports from outside or to allow for pet projects in the field of agricultural comestibles rather than full-scale production. Muhammad Ghosh, a turfgrass management specialist among other things, was overseeing the transformation of their little greenhouses and grow-ops into something resembling a covert industrial farm. Initial estimates suggested their supply of soil, seeds and a variety of complex organics would enable what had formerly been pilot studies to carry them through to October, if necessary.

If it needed to last even longer, that would be an entirely different kind of problem.

Most of the day-to-day consumables weren't an issue. They'd never run out of paper, batteries, lightbulbs, soap, et cetera, or rather they'd run out of something more vital much sooner. They'd be rationing these things anyway, though not excessively; McInnis understood that enhancing the already oppressive nature of their collective imprisonment was a good way to take it from unpleasant to intolerable. He had Styles writing up proposals for incentive programs, spontaneous parties and such to keep spirits high and the odds of disobedience low, and both Ibanez and Van Rompay had been briefed on the importance of taking the lightest of touches to internal policing.

External policing was also a consideration, now more than ever. The Site had a lot more externals going on than they'd ever had to manage. The empty caverns which surrounded it had largely disappeared, but there was now a vast expanse of roof accessible through maintenance hatches designed for repair and replacement of the various protective membranes stretched over the first sublevel. Within the walls, egress points to the Mishepeshu tunnels now opened on solid void, but an enterprising spelunker could use them to crawl along the facility's outer skin. Obviously nobody in the Site's complement was expected to do this sort of thing, but they were much better off safe than sorry, so patrols were posted and locks double-checked regularly. They were still deciding what to do with the exterior of the transport systems; it was now possible to promenade along the top of the subway tunnels from the main Site to AAF-A, with only the slimmest likelihood of tripping, slipping, and falling to your death, presumably of starvation, in the dark.

Why the whole Site hadn't done that already, none could say.

Nascimbeni's early findings re: the power and potables situations seemed to hold. They were still trying to figure out where the wells were getting their water, and what the geothermal vents were actually venting, and some of the scientists thought the answers to these questions might conclusively explain just what precisely the great disappearing had really represented, but for now the main thing was that the lights would stay on, the water would keep running, and the heat would keep radiating.

Spaceship-43, a pale grey dot in the otherwise vacant cosmos, would endure.

Probably.

If nothing else went wrong.

12 September

Don't think about it.

"That's probably far enough." If only so the sound of the whirring hydraulics would distract his preoccupied mind.

Vanchev nodded, and flicked the switch. The pulley began drawing the cable back up. "One kilometre, and nothing."

"Yep."

They were standing on the bottom-most level of AAF-A, feeding a long length of steel braid through what had formerly been a cave access hatchway. They'd send drones down next, now that it was obviously safe; they were already buzzing far above the facility, determining whether the blackness had any extent or boundaries, but somehow sending them downward had seemed much more potentially dangerous. Material dropped below the Site would be essentially irretrievable. At least if it fell from above, it would impact on the roof of S&C.

"Been talking to Paul," Vanchev yawned. "Know what he thinks?"

Nascimbeni did not know what Paul Nicolescu thought. He couldn't wrap his head around anything that happened between these two men anymore. Where he came from, one had bludgeoned the other to death. Where he was now, they were closer than he'd ever been with his own son.

Don't think about it.

There was something very human about the way everyone was reacting to the sudden appearance of nothing in every direction. Site-43 was now the full extent of their reality, and what were they all doing? Standing at the edge, looking away from everything that existed, at…

"We need more words for 'nothing'," said Nascimbeni, ignoring the question he'd already nearly forgotten.

"Weird, right?" Vanchev agreed.

They were worse than children on Christmas morning playing with the box and ignoring the toy. They were playing with the space beneath the tree where the box had been. In a sense, he supposed, it indicated both a whimsical imagination and the soul of science. He remembered when Flora—

Don't think about it.

"Sorry I'm late."

Technician Charles Carter sauntered over from the stairs, zipping up the front of his jumpsuit. He was five minutes early for his shift, as he had been the previous day, and the one before that. He apologized for it every time. Perhaps it was an inside joke Nascimbeni was meant to be inside of. He had no way of knowing.

Eileen Veiksaar was with him, rubbing red-rimmed eyes beneath black-rimmed glasses. "Want to talk to you," she said, and Nascimbeni assumed he was being addressed. She hadn't cared for Vanchev back in baseline (nobody had), and he suspected she'd already had plenty of time to talk with Carter.

"Sure. What do you want to talk about?"

"I want to run something rhetorical past you." The emphasis was only the tracest of outlines, but it was there.

He fixed a smile on his face, and nodded. "Okay. The office?" He gestured in the vague direction of the tiny maintenance kiosk on this sublevel.

She inclined her head agreeably, then stood on her tip-toes and kissed Carter on the cheek. He was already leaning to the side so she could reach. "See you later," she cooed.

He'd never heard her coo before.

Carter grinned. "Not if I—"

"You'll see me first automatically," she snapped. "I wear glasses. That's how light works."

Something in the way she said it gave Nascimbeni a notion. As they headed for the kiosk together, he chanced a glance back at Carter, who was clapping Vanchev on the back companionably, and then at Veiksaar, who was re-adjusting her glasses after the kiss.

Each had a gold band on their left ring finger.

He wasn't sure why this should give him a worse sinking feeling than watching the cable descend into the unplumbable abyss, but still, it did.

He didn't think about it.

Karen stared into the void.

The void approached, and rubbed itself against her pant leg. She reached down and touched the void, and it began to purr.

Karen Elstrom in his dorm room was like a touch of Rococo in a drug nest. Stiff and ornate in a den of dissolution. She didn't so much pull the room together as she put it to shame. Harry realized he'd hardly ever seen her outside of A&O for nearly a decade, where the fancy decor was only slightly upstaged by her impeccable sense of style.

The cat leapt onto the cushion beside her, a bridge between two poles of elegance. She reached out, and a tiny black snout delicactely sniffed at her metallic blue fingernails.

"Question," he said. She glanced down the couch at him, an invitation to continue, as her long fingers found the cat's flank with experimental precision. "What do you know about Foundation medical tech?"

She scratched behind Scout's ears. The cat jumped into her lap, startling her; she held both hands in the air uncertainly as the brown-black ball began kneading her thighs. "Uh. Not much. What's your question specifically?"

"Anti-aging."

She looked at him again, this time speculatively. "Feeling old?"

"Yeah. I'm sure you can see the grey hairs from over there."

She scooted a little closer on the couch, and leaned in his direction. Even so casual a gesture seemed choreographed from Karen, and her hands never missed a beat. The cat, never very skittish when he was being loved, rolled with the haunches. "A few," she agreed. "I still don't know what you're asking."

"I don't really expect an answer, I'm just putting out feelers. Do you know what might cause someone to age at a different rate? Someone in the Foundation?"

"Oh, well." She performed her equivalent of a shrug, inclining her head away from him. "Yeah. The Fountain of Youth."

"Which is a myth. As in, an actual myth. Not in the database."

"Maybe not in the database," she smiled, "but not quite a myth. I've got inside information."

"Why, Dr. Elstrom." He rubbed Scout's flank with his toes. "Are you immortal?"

"According to my last phys-and-psych, my body's young and my brain is old. I'm not talking about me." Her expression clouded over. "I'm talking about Falkirk."

He should have known better than to ask her a question like this. Now he'd need to play a one-sided game, keep her from realizing he hadn't lived the same nine years she had. He'd gone over his diaries and notes, but that only got him so far. "Falkirk."

"Yes. When he was Director." Her lips were thinning to points.

"I remember." He did remember Falkirk as Director. He supposed it made sense that the old bastard had filled that role in every timeline; the 2002 breach, which had triggered his investigation and advent at the Site, had happened in every reality they'd inhabited.

"You remember how pale and skinny he was? How he looked like death warmed over?"

"Yeah. Trust me, I remember that." Trust me. The words had the savour of charcoal.

"He told me a funny story about something that happened in the war…"

"I knew it was water," Lillian crowed. She stabbed a finger at Del. "I told you it was water. Pony up."

Nascimbeni was still processing the information. He didn't like it, but he wasn't sure how to articulate why. As usual, the others were taking up the slack with gusto.

"One," Del scowled, "you told me it was just water. Two, wouldn't you rather get paid in baseline? So it takes?"

"It's not about the money. It's about the memory of being right, and I get to hold on to that forever."

They were sitting in a deeper sanctum within the Director's Complex, a sitting room with appointments that had once been modern and luxurious, which were now moderne and comfortable. Just the seven of them. Some topics, though not many, were meant only for Survivor ears.

"You're saying they inject us with holy water?" Wettle frowned.

"Not holy, just magic." By his tone, Harry was still wrapping his head around how this made him feel. "Water from the Fountain of Youth. Falkirk saw it. He took a bath in it. It saved his life, once."

"Dr. Falkirk," McInnis murmured, "is not what I would call a reliable source."

He was also a sore spot for Nascimbeni, who still kept mum and watched the others argue. He'd just as soon never have heard the old man's name.

"Dr. Falkirk," said Lillian, "was a sack of flaming shit."

"But it makes sense." Udo had been nodding since Harry began the story, which he visibly found annoying. It looked to Nascimbeni like she was trying too hard to agree with him. "He was practically ancient, but he had all that energy. I remember hearing LeClair say something about how he never needed a medical checkup."

"He was only there for, what, a week? Ten days?" Nascimbeni pointed out.

"Sure, but at his age that should have meant at least a cursory exam. Something was keeping him healthy."

Harry nodded back at her, perhaps hoping that would make her stop. It did. "I think that's it."

"It could just be standard life extension." Nascimbeni was unconvinced. He had a hard time believing the Foundation would inject actual anomalies into people, and the implications…

"Chief, look around." Udo spread her hands to take in the entire group. "Everyone's older now."

"Could be environmental factors," he shrugged. "Also, you look exactly the same."

Udo looked pained, but had no response.

"We can't prove whether this was happening." Harry caught each of their eyes in turn. "But can we imagine why? Why it might be happening? I think we understand that if this stuff is actually real, it's probably only used by the Council." Everyone knew the Overseers had lifespans far in excess of the human norm, though it wasn't clear how everyone knew it. There was apparently no rarefied hall of power impenetrable to escaping rumour. "Why would they authorize giving it to us?"

"I know," said Wettle.

"I don't know." Lillian put her foot up on a coffee table, dislodging a small stack of Sherlock Holmes paperbacks in the process.

"I said, I know. Don't do the thing."

"What thing?" Lillian loosened one of her shoes in preparation.

Wettle instinctively flinched. "The thing where nobody listens to me when I know what's going on!"

"Has that happened more than once?" Harry asked him. "Has that happened once, even?"

"Alright, broken clock," said Del. "Let's see if it's your time to be right. Explain."

"Replication studies. That's my thing. You guys do things once, and I do them again, and again, to make sure the first time meant something. To get the same results, you need the same starting conditions. You need to control and maintain those conditions."

"Fuck," said Lillian. "I—"

"Shut up," Wettle snapped. Her eyes went wide in shock. "Let me have this one. It's the Breach, guys. Of course it's the Breach. They want us as healthy and smart as we were when it happened the first time."

"You are characterizing yourself as healthy and intelligent." Harry obviously couldn't bring himself to use the word 'smart', not even in quotation, not even for an insult.

Wettle waved him away. "Shut up. You know this is it. They're giving us those shots so we're still around to do the thing, and keep the timeline together."

"Fat lot of good it did them this year," Del sighed.

Nascimbeni felt the other shoe drop. Not Lillian's, but the metaphorical one that had been dangling in his mind since the first grey hairs had been spotted. "Oh, no," he said. "Oh, no no no."

They all stared at him. "Chief?" McInnis prompted.

"Remember the time experts? Forth and Xyank? They said they didn't know what was going on. Why the loop was happening. Why the timelines worked how they do."

"Right," Udo agreed.

"Fuck fuck," said Lillian.

"That's why they're keeping us young." Nascimbeni felt his eyes turning hollow as he spoke. "Not just so we do everything right. So we keep doing everything right. Indefinitely."

No-one filled the silence that followed, so he finished the thought himself.

"They think this might go on forever."

13 September

Chuck Carter, the long-dead technician who somehow lingered on in every alternate timeline, dropped Eileen off with a kiss. Like every display of affection directed toward her once-upon-a-time partner, it made Lillian feel inarticulately icky. Like someone was kissing an old shirt of hers.

She filed that vile thought away under things I can say to quickly end a conversation with Eileen. For today, she had first to begin one.

"Now don't get excited," she began. "You're not my first interview."

Eileen sat down across from her, expression as neutral and detached as ever. "Okay," she said. "I am not excited. Continue."

They were sitting in a repurposed containment chamber. Lillian had repurposed it by placing a sign on the door which said "Interrogation in progress. Do not lock door. NOT A CONTAINMENT CHAMBER." She'd considered putting a cognitohazard on it, but had made the mistake of saying this out loud in earshot of McInnis. He thinks that's bad, he should see my favourite shirt.

"I interviewed three people already. I did do them all at once, though, so you can think yourself as the second interview, or the fourth. Or the third, if you consider the two twins I interviewed to be one person, but that's not v—"

"Lillian." Eileen was rubbing her temples, much as Du had done earlier; perhaps more urgently. Lillian prided herself on being able to do more damage with her mouth than her hands.

"Sure, sure. I know you. Machines are soothing, people are a headache. The more honest you are with me, the sooner you can get back to your quarters and grab some Tylenol with coding."

The pun left Eileen scowling, but the implications opened her eyes a pinch. "What do you think I'm being dishonest about?"

"Nothing, yet. That starts when I ask you my question."

The tech chief exhaled for longer than Lillian would have been able to. She could hold a lot of air in her little barrel of a body. "Only one question? If I only have to give you one answer, I'm pretty sure I can avoid telling a lie."

"Fab." Lillian clapped, and Eileen shrunk away from the sound. "Here we go, then. What's your biggest regret?"

The other woman blinked.

"Come on. I thought you wanted—"

"My biggest regret? That's what you're asking? What does that have to do with anything?"

"I was just promised a single answer. Now you're asking three questions, and one of them's not even phrased—"

"Fine! Fine." Eileen pulled the hood of her cotton scrubs up over her ears, as though seeking extra protection from the assault that was Lillian's speech. "My biggest regret. Sure. Alright."

1995

22 August

The pungent scent of Right Guard deodorant preceded his arrival, and she steeled herself. Though it was difficult to tell, with the office floors carpeted as they were, she felt certain he lingered out of sight behind her, looking over her back, before sliding into view and draping his arms lazily over the walls of her cubicle. "Eileen."

"Chief." She forced a smile.

Rudolph Marroquin flicked a hand at her monitor. "Everything working out alright?"

Her heart fell. He couldn't be serious. "Of course. Getting it done."

"All of it?" Marroquin pressed, smiling the least sincere smile she'd seen outside of a zoo.

"All of it." Her voice sounded weak in her own ears. By the way his nostrils flared, she knew it sounded the same to him. He was a tiger sniffing blood on the wind.

"Lyle?" she called out. Her boyfriend was working in the next row of cubes, a few seats down. The office was almost empty otherwise, only one other tech slaving away at their machine. She wasn't sure what she was going to say when he responded, but it would signal the end of her conversation with Marroquin, and that was all that mattered.

Except Lyle didn't respond. He didn't so much as acknowledge her. If he were a cat, his ears wouldn't even have twitched.

Where'd these animal metaphors come from, all of a sudden?

"He's busy. Eileen, it's really important that you get these things done today. Important for both of us. You understand."

She did understand. She knew exactly what he was talking about. Her fingers itched to call up the program she'd been working on, even with him looming over her machine, and let the cards fall where they would.

But no. If she was going to do that, she was going to do it right. She was a programmer. Half-finished code was no better, and sometimes worse, than no code at all. And some part of her was already rebelling at the idea of using something so pure for such a dirty job. Before Marroquin, it had all seemed so elegant…

So, she nodded. And called out again, more forcefully: "Lyle."

He waved a hand dismissively.

"Really gets into his work, doesn't he?" Marroquin chuckled. "Maybe let some of that dedication rub off on you. Of course, if you're not up to the tasks we've agreed on, I could always see if he's game to join our little cabal."

She shook her head. Anything but that. "It's fine. It'll be done. Like I told you."

"Great." The chief tech stood up, stretched, and then patted her on the back. Even through the cotton, his touch was electric in all the wrong ways. "End of day, please. As in, day doesn't end until it's done. You understand."

And he walked away, ignoring Lyle to zero in on Cassandra Avelina on the opposite end of the block. He paused before stepping in front of her, and… yes, he was scanning her screen, seeing what she was up to. Eileen saw Avelina's shoulders tense up. She could tell he was there, and was preparing herself for the assault.

Lyle was looking at her now. "What did you want? You wanted something, right?"

She shook her head. "Don't worry about it. It's not your problem."

He instantly turned back to his screen. "My favourite kind."

She watched Avelina recoil as Marroquin dangled his paper bag hands into her enclosure…

Oh.

That's where they came from.

Lillian looked ill. "Why is that your greatest regret?"

"It continues," Eileen sighed.

"Not with me, it doesn't. I didn't call you in as a guilt trip, so you don't have to guilt trip me back."

"That's not—"

"I'm sorry, okay? I wasn't paying attention. I don't pay attention. But I think it's safe to say you missed a few details about me, too. Yeah?"

Eileen bit her tongue.

"You know what I think? I think maybe you tried to come up with the real answer, and you bounced off it. Landed somewhere near, but not quite on the mark."

"Don't."

"It started in '95, but—"

"I said don't."

"You sure you don't want to jump forward a few years? Say, to the turn of the mill—"

She gave Lilian the finger on her way to the door.

Lillian glanced down at her work tablet. She considered it for a moment.

"Well," she finally said, to herself. "Probably wasn't her."

That was definitely the takeaway.

Udo hadn't seen Laiken since that first session, days ago. She'd come out of the trance in a bad mood, had barely been able to preserve decorum with the woman while excusing herself back to her dorm, and that was mostly where she'd been this entire time. She'd gone to the Survivors meeting, but that was it. She'd called in to ApplOcc, said she was recovering from the heavy duty thaumaturgy, and nobody questioned it. Probably she wasn't known for extravagant acts of micamancy in this timeline. She hadn't been in the last, or the one after that either. She had to keep resetting people's expectations; it might have been exhausting, if her memories hadn't been wiped every time.

Eventually she got tired of cooking pot noodles in her room, and reporting the consumption to Styles' office. Odds were good he was preparing to send one of LeClair's nurses her way, armed with a packet of information about the value of proper nutrition in survival situations. If that was the case, it would go better if she had something to say for herself.

This was the excuse she used to get out of her funk, through the halls, and into the main cafeteria.

Hot meals had once been prepared here around the clock, but now the times were fixed. 'Leftovers' had become a synonym for 'waste'; nothing would be prepared if it wasn't going to be eaten right away. She'd seen the projections, and even with the hydroponics going full tilt, it was going to be tight if they didn't tighten their belts.

But it was half past six in the evening, and the cafeteria was still serving. She let old Wyers ladle some vegetables and chicken into a bowl for her, and her body reacted to the smell like she was huffing ammonia inhalants. It was revitalizing. This was what five pot noodles in a row did to a woman.

She scanned the room. There were a few clusters of researchers and techs, but nobody she knew. Ordinarily she'd take her meals upstairs, in ApplOcc's little café, but…

Actually, you do know that one.

Yes, she did, but…

But nothing. It didn't matter anymore. It should never have mattered in the first place. It was absurd for her still to be hung up on this, years later, even if the man had died. He'd been a bastard. He wasn't worth it.

And Phil looked lonely, though it could have been only that she was used to seeing him with constant company.

She took her tray, and went over to sit across from him. "Hey."

He looked up in surprise. He'd been daydreaming, or nightdreaming, or whatever the hell. Nobody really knew what time it was unless they were on shift, now. "Oh. Hey!"

"If you don't mind?" She settled the tray on her side of the table, and starting picking at the chicken.

"Mind? Oh. No, I don't mind." The plate on his own tray was empty, but he picked up his fork and tapped at it pointlessly anyway. It was guilelessly charming.

"How've you been holding up?" It was easy to talk to him. Too easy. She considered bolting for the door, but something in his eyes kept her seated.

He looked, she thought, like he was considering bolting for the door.

"Oh. You know." He shrugged. "I keep thinking."

"Your parents?" The words wrung themselves out of her. She popped a piece of chicken into her mouth to stop it happening again. A sudden rush of nausea made her wonder what would happen when she tried to swallow.

"Dead. No, I'm just…" He looked up at the ceiling. "My brother. You know?"

She stopped chewing, and stared at him.

"He was out there, somewhere. Do you think he still is?"

No matter what else happened, Dougall Deering always died in the Breach. He'd been dead in the two prior timelines. He'd died over and over in baseline, ten times now. Aside from her own inadequacy, she'd thought that was the only true throughline across every situation. But of course there was one other still.

Philip Deering never finding out.

She swallowed. "Yeah. I'm sure he's fine."

He smiled at her, and the chicken settled in her stomach without issue. She took another bite.

1998

20 November

Atlantic City: New Jersey, United States of America

She lay very still, so still he could almost imagine she wasn't breathing. But she was, and without the help of the machines. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but the mass of scars all over her hands and arms gave him pause. If he touched her, would she wake up? If she woke up… what? Would she be glad to see him? Would she remember what had happened? Why she was here?

Would she remember the crash or the argument first? If she remembered the argument first, then maybe it would be okay.

What if she didn't remember the argument at all?

They said she should be awake soon. They wouldn't have to keep her under much longer.

He thought about saying something, but he didn't know what he would say. Offer an excuse, maybe. An apology, probably.

She'd had enough apologies from him. She'd said so. But there would always be another, and another, and the reasons for that would never change.

So he stood up, and he walked out.

"There was that one time," said Wettle, very slowly, as though taking great care to get it right, "when I left Wrigley Field early to beat the crowds, and they hit a grand slam out of the park, and I was in the front seat of my car when the ball broke my windshield." He blinked. "I'd rather have found out later. I've never seen a grand slam, and I was looking at my phone."

Karen made a face of such pure and unconcealed disgust that he had to laugh. "Don't like it?"

"No," she gulped, "it's great. Really great. How is it for cleaning drains?"

"Must be the vodka." Harry chugged the Mott's Clamato Caesar, relishing the taste. It tasted like tomatoes and hot sauce. The vodka was barely detectable, which in his opinion was very nearly the best way to experience alcohol.

"Vodka I know." She set the drink down on the coffee table, having only taken one sip, and picked up her glass of gin again. Her fingers fanned across the glass like she was auditioning as a hand model for Tanqueray. "That tasted like a pizza gone bad."

He curled up on his end of the couch. "Can't believe I wasted it in a philistine like you. I've got four more bottles left to last me the whole damn year."

"Well, you can finish mine."

The cat was in her lap again, and she was stroking him absent-mindedly with her free hand. Harry was surprised how quickly Scout had taken to her, though really he shouldn't have been; the cat didn't hate anyone, rather like his namesake. It was more surprising that Karen had chosen to reciprocate the affection. So far as he knew, she hadn't done that for any living creature since just after the turn of the millennium.

The faint buzz was not enough to make him forget his tasks for the day, however much he might have liked to. "You talked to LeClair lately?"

She sipped her gin, gingerly. Daintily even, though that wasn't as funny. "This afternoon. She says the cabin fever's getting worse."

"Lightweights." In a burst of sudden onset karma, he hiccoughed loudly.

She slipped off her Pradas and turned on the couch to face him, their feet just inches apart. She cradled the drink with her hands and knees. It didn't look precisely casual. More like the Sears catalogue approximation of casual. "You don't get stir crazy?"

He shook his head. "Pretty sure I could go my whole life without going outside, or talking to more than one person per day."

She thought about that for a moment. "You know what? I feel the same way."

He wasn't sure he believed that.

She cocked her head to one side. It looked like a photoshoot pose from where he was sitting. He wondered if she could calculate perspective that precisely. She pursed her lips, then asked: "What made you ask about LeClair?"

He'd prepared a response to this question, but in the moment, he simply wasn't feeling it. Instead he said "I dunno. She seem forgetful to you lately? Seems that way to me." It wasn't true, but it was closer to the truth than the cagier answer he should have given.

She raised a brow. "Not particularly. Well, a little. She's been on again, off again for years, you know. But it must be a personality thing, because she's forever getting tested."

"For what?"

"Dementia. Alzheimer's, I guess."

Harry nodded, slowly. "Forsythe make her do it?"

"No, Van Rompay."

"Oh. Huh." He considered. "What's going on with those two, anyhow?

She rolled her eyes. "I honestly do not know. They've been together for years, and it makes no sense. They have nothing in common."

"Mm."

"Their personalities are total opposites."

"Yeah."

"And she could do so much better than him."

He became aware that she was staring at him, with a faint smile threatening to blossom into a strong one on her lips.

He made a thoughtful face. "Maybe he's got good qualities we don't know about."

"He's pretty upfront about his personality. I've always found it pretty obnoxious."

"She's a bit aloof."

"I don't think I've ever seen a genuine emotional reaction from him."

"Well, I mean, her either."

"She's got a hard job to do."

"So does he."

She ran her feet over his. "Not so hard."

"You'd be surprised."

She laughed.

He hadn't heard her laugh in nine years.

"We live in an age of miracles," he said.

She curled her toes against the top of his foot. "Don't get ideas. It's just the wine laughing."

"White wine? Hardly. White wine gives you sour thoughts."

She raised both eyebrows this time.

"I've never told you about drinks that think? So, there was this guy…"

Later that night, when Karen had returned to her quarters, Harry reached for his tablet and tapped out a message for Lillian.

H_Blank

Not just LeClair. Van Rompay too.

The responses came in quick succession.

L_Lillihammer

Great.

L_Lillihammer

I get to antagonize a power couple.

L_Lillihammer

Said power being to shoot me with a gun and refuse to treat my gunshot wounds.

L_Lillihammer

What could go right?

14 September

"I'm afraid not." McInnis sat down, carefully smoothing out his sweatervest and tugging out the cuffs of his work shirt. "They've both agreed to be seen eventually, and we're going to need to respect that, or it will seem suspicious. There would be no reason to bump them up in your schedule unless they were active suspects, and if they know you know something…"

Lillian said something inarticulate.

"They're being cooperative, by their standards. We need to respect that, not least because if we start behaving arbitrarily, that might lead certain parties to examine our actions more closely — and we most certainly have something to hide. Several of your other targets have completely refused to be interviewed, correct?"

"Yeah." Lillian glanced down at her tablet, not that she needed to. The prop drama of human conversation. "Laiken says AcroAbate can't spare her, which could be true. Probably doesn't have any regrets anyway. Holt's guarding the drunk tank in F-A, and she's the only guard taller than the guy who's in it right now. Du and Bremmel are too busy doing a teardown on the DUDU Core. Daniil won't say yes unless it's a date. Et cetera."

McInnis' eyes widened. "He said that?"

"No, he just said 'no'. But I know what he meant."

"I wouldn't have thought a single word left much room for interpretation, but I trust your judgement. You see the point, though? If I order Dr. LeClair and Chief Van Rompay to attend you, they will sense they've been singled out."

She shrugged. "So order everyone. I don't mind being your favourite."

He shook his head. "Unethical. Everything is very delicate right now, as you well know. There can't be the faintest hint that any of us are abusing our authority. Indeed, the favouritism I show to you and the rest of our group has not gone unnoticed already."

"You want me to figure out how to mind control the lot of them? I'm sure I could swing something."

He grimaced. "I know you're joking, but I don't find it humorous. First, the possibility remains that Researcher Wirth might still be able to employ that ability—"

"I've left my mind open, the trap set, and he hasn't walked into it yet. I think he's spooked."

"—and second, the fact that we are engaging in subterfuge is offset only by our noble intentions, and the effort we make to remain above-board wherever possible. Even if no-one is looking, we need to set a good example."

She sat forward very suddenly, like a leopard pouncing on prey. He didn't flinch. "I'm really glad you feel that way, Allan, because you have a great opportunity right now."

He glanced around the converted chamber as though seeing it for the first time. "Ah. I see. Well, then."

1997

26 December

He had an orderly mind.

He never lied to himself, and he never lied to other people either if he could help it. Habitually telling the truth meant having fewer versions of reality to keep track of. This freed him up to consider the perspectives of others, since he took only one perspective himself and the human brain had evolved with a staggering capacity for doublethink. This arrangement gave him a knack for empathy and an ability to predict people's behaviour far outside the norm, and these things had served him well in his career.

Sometimes, though, he could see a problem on the horizon which could only be delayed.

And sometimes those problems suddenly accelerated out of the horizon, struck him at speed, then sat there in a wreck waiting for the police and the insurance people to descend.

She hadn't scheduled an appointment, but he recognized that it was Karen Elstrom knocking nevertheless. It seemed absurd to suggest that someone's bones rattling against wood could sound more or less 'stiff' than anyone else's, and yet.

"Come in," he called out.

Karen entered his office. She was dressed, as usual, in a bright shirt and dark slacks. She was wearing her hair down. She was smiling nervously. He had expected something funereal, after the events of Christmas Eve, but he wasn't sorry to see her taking a different tack.

"Sit down," he gestured.

She remained standing. "Sir, I guess you know what I wanted to talk to you about."

"This entire facility was under an anomalous effect," he said smoothly. "Things were said and done which were not intended, and do not reflect on the character of the people involved." Specifically, something about Site-43 had interacted very badly with the Christmas decorations and bestowed a college student's libido on them all, minus one. Hiring and Regulation had spent most of the holiday helping people fill out forms, and Ngo's schedule was packed into the new year.

"That's just the thing." There was something very gentle in Elstrom's eyes. "I think a lot of it was a pretty clear reflection, actually."

She wasn't wrong. Quite a few awkward dances had concluded for the better, and there was no indication that anyone had done anything against their will or better judgement. It had rather been a general lowering of inhibitions. That didn't make this conversation any easier, though. It made it considerably more complicated.

Karen had spent the entire Christmas party attached to his arm, or attempting to be.

It was, by the standards of the day, not anything at all. But he knew she put a lot of stock in appearances, and the uncharacteristic emotional expression would be eating at her. That was why he'd thought she would show up to work in a business suit, with her hair done up and her mouth zipped shut. The fact that she hadn't…

Oh dear.

He tried to match the gentleness with his own. "Karen, I am flattered. Truly. But there is something I have to tell you about myself, something inherent to who I am, which makes what you might be asking for impossible."

There was not a single thing that either of them could do about it. He wouldn't have changed the situation if he could have. It was simply a fact of his existence, of the core of who he was. But that didn't make it any easier to see the little light that danced behind her nervous squint go out.

1995

He reached up to place one hand on each of Nimkii's shoulders, feeling a rush of frustration that it should have come to this between them. "I hope this doesn't change anything," he said, with an undercurrent of fear that it definitely would.

The big man smiled sadly down at him. "It changes everything," he admitted, "except the things that actually matter. Thank you for your honesty."

1991

Ilse laughed. "Of course. How could I have been so stupid?"

"That is one thing," he told her, "which you could never, ever be."

"First Scout, and now you. I think I must be defective, Allan."

This time it was him pressing flesh to the glass, fingers spread, reaching out symbolically to where no touch could reach. "We can neither control what we want, Ilse, nor what others can give."

She kept her hands to herself, the cord from the pencil snaking out from her left pocket. "I know all there is to know about not being in control, Allan."

1980

She looked like a scene from a romantic comedy, courtesy the showers of May, standing wet and shivering on his front porch. Vulnerable. Shaking like a rabbit, but not from fear.

He stepped back, and she stepped in. "Anjali," he said. He didn't know enough about what was happening to say anything more.

And then she was clutching him tight, clawing at his shirt, and weeping. "That son of a bitch," she cried.

He placed one hand on her back, and shut the door against the storm with the other. "Obi?"

Her husband's name struck like lightning, and she vibrated with rage, indignation and hurt. "How could he? I don't understand. I was so fucking worried. That son of a bitch."

He held her closely, because that was what was expected. Perhaps too closely, or perhaps it would have happened anyway, but for whatever reason she looked up — not so very far up — and into his eyes, and then she moved even closer and pressed her lips to his.

The disentanglement which followed would remain a fatal flaw in his belief, once immaculate, that conversation could sort out any difficulty.

Karen had lost maybe an inch in height, and her expression was slack. Even her hair seemed limp where it had been bouyant just seconds prior. "I see. The ASC?"

He shook his head.

"Someone else?"

He continued to shake his head.

She stared at him.

"Oh my god," she said. He felt certain she wanted to say she was sorry, but by the way she suddenly turned on her heel, he knew that other considerations had intruded. The only thing worse than being caught pursuing someone romantically, for Karen Elstrom, was being caught with tears in her eyes.

He wanted to say he was sorry, instead, but it would send the wrong message. He was only sorry for her.

"I feel sorry for you," she said, and then stiffened as though knowing she had said something wrong. Something terrible. Something she didn't mean.

He thanked her for it anyway, as she left, but she probably didn't even hear.

"I find my regrets are not wholly my own." He glanced to the side. He never looked away from someone when they were talking to him. "Perhaps we might talk about something else, to keep up appearances."

Lillian shrugged. "Sure, this is just for show anyway. Got any cigarettes?"

Bremmel's voice drifted up through the conduit. He'd wanted to work on the upper circuits, mostly so he wouldn't need to take the ladder down to the Core's lower levels, but Du had insisted on the reverse arrangement. The old man was too annoyed to ask why, which was good, because he probably wouldn't have reacted well to Du's reasoning: Bremmel spat when he talked, and Du didn't want that raining down on the narrow tube of circuits and wires, or onto his own face. So when Bremmel spoke, it rattled up to where Du lay prone with his screwdriver out: "That bitch ask you to talk to her yet?"

Du considered. Bremmel wasn't misogynistic, but rather misanthropic; anyone he was forced to interact with stood a good chance of becoming 'that bitch' or 'that asshole' when described after the fact. It was difficult to know who he was talking about, which was probably the point.

Bremmel liked to talk, but he hated to listen. Making Du ask what he asked next: "Which bitch?" was the engineer's way of letting the other man say a few words on his terms.

"The Hammer." The sound of a socket wrench twisting ricocheted up around Du's ears. "She call you in for a cry-fest yet?"

"Yeah." Du pulled up the schematics on his tablet, and considered the overhanging circuits with care. Was that right? It didn't look right. "She did. I told her I was busy."

Bremmel snorted. "I told her to fuck off, and also that I was busy."

"What do you think she's trying to get at?" He wasn't sure why he felt suspicious of Lillihammer, other than the fact that she'd clapped him in the head to exorcise a ghost from his skull. Perhaps that was reason enough, actually. He still had bruising. He was starting to think he always would.

"From what I hear," and the old man grunted as he finished torquing something up, "they're all talking about their widdle feelings. Everything that's made them sad. Some new-age bullshit Ngo probably made up, or else Styles. Reeks of HR. Let's all get in touch with our inner children, because of the oh-so-tragic situation that's befallen us. Woe, woe is me."

Du turned over onto his stomach and glanced down the conduit's length. Bremmel was staring up at him, bushy beard glowing green in an LED backsplash. "Sounds pointless."

"It is pointless. I hear Mataxas was in there moaning about how his brats need sunlight and fresh water. I told him he should stick them in hydroponics."

Du laughed. "Ridiculous. He should count himself lucky they were inside when it all disappeared."

Bremmel coughed.

"Ridiculous," Du repeated. "That man dotes on those children."

"Hardly children," Bremmel growled. "They're college aged. They should be in college. They say they're trainees. I wouldn't stand for it, I was him."

"He's a soft touch. Doesn't believe in firm discipline. Showers them with praise. How's that going to harden them up for life at the Foundation?"

"Exactly. Exactly." Bremmel waved his wrench at Du. "They eat dinner together every night, he says. They talk about their days. Can you imagine anything more dull? My dad, he never wasted time on any of that nonsense. Never asked me what I was doing. He had his projects, and I had mine, and that was how we both liked it."

"Yeah," Du agreed without enthusiasm. He decided to change the subject, but that was always difficult when talking to Bremmel, who only suffered turning his monologues into dialogues under protest. "So, are the tolerances down there—"

"I never sat around moping because he never told me he was proud. Of course he was proud. Why wouldn't he be proud? And Joanna—"

He coughed again, and Du recoiled. "You really ought to get that checked out."

Bremmel cleared his throat. "It's nothing."

"You were saying about J—"

"The point is," the old man interrupted, "that Lillihammer's wasting time. She should be down here checking torque and tolerances with us, not playing grab-ass with a clipboard. It's disgraceful."

Du nodded, and rolled back around. Bremmel was right.

What did regret have to do with anything?

2011

12 August

McInnis kept his expression carefully neutral as he scanned the letter, and Nascimbeni knew what the answer would be before it came. "Hmm."

"Yeah," he agreed.

"Hmm." McInnis placed one hand on the page, and gently slid it closer to Nascimbeni's side of the desk. "You know I can't accept this."

Nascimbeni shook his head. "I don't know that."

"You do. You are needed here. Very badly."

"I'm not."

"You are. Not only because of the Breach. You're the only person who can do what you do."

Nascimbeni scoffed. "Not remotely true. Banerjee could do it."

"Perhaps in a few years. Not now."

"Holding retirement out like a carrot? That's not your usual creativity." Nascimbeni finally sat down, hard, on the chair the Director had indicated several minutes ago. "Allan, I'm done. I'm spent. Just let me go."

"As I said, I can't. It wouldn't be the best thing for the Site. It wouldn't be the best thing for the Foundation. It would most certainly not be the best thing for you."

It took all his self-control not to stand up again in a rage. McInnis would remain calm, so if he wanted to win this argument, he would too. "Don't pretend this is you being charitable. You don't know me well enough to help. I've got ideas of my own about what I've done wrong, and it's time to find out if I'm right."

McInnis slid the paper farther, right to the edge in front of Nascimbeni. "You may take this up the chain of command, if you believe you'll find a more sympathetic ear. But I suspect they'll tell you exactly what I just did. You're needed here. Please make your peace with that."

He didn't answer for a moment, regulating his breathing the way Ngo had taught him. When he finally spoke again, it was deadly calm. "Allan, if you force me to stay, you need to make peace with the fact that sooner or later it's going to fuck you over. Nobody who relies on me for long gets out alive."

"Wow," Lillian nodded. "Dramatic and poignant. Bet he wishes he'd taken you up on that offer before you got the whole human race erased, huh?"

Nascimbeni nodded back. "Can I go?"

Lillian shook her head. "No, I'm not doing this to record your political statements. You can go when you give me the real answer."

God dammit. He should have known better. He couldn't out-calm McInnis, how could he possibly out-guile Lillian? "I gave you an answer. That's more than I want, and more than you need. It obviously wasn't me who caused this—"

"In the present timeline, you mean? Because you definitely caused the present timeline."

"Yes. Obviously. I mean that I, Noè Nascimbeni, did not stick Site-43 into a pocket dimension. Why are you interviewing the Survivors? You know it wasn't us, and it's a waste of time."

"It could have been you, or at least you could have been involved. The version of you that got replaced when we showed up here."

He could hear the growl creeping into his voice, and made no effort to suppress it. "Okay, except I don't have his memories. I have mine."

"And those two sets are only differentiated by the last nine years or so. The farther back a memory goes, the more it's potentially affected your motivations and actions. Where it counts, you're self-identical with Nascimbeni-5243-C. So give me the real answer. What's your one true regret, Noè?"

He opened his mouth to refute this, to argue, to refuse. What he said instead was "I ignored my wife until she died of a drug overdose, alone, and it made my son hate me, and I didn't care, because I loved my nephew more, and now he's dead too and everything's broken, so I'm still spending all my time here, which caused the problem in the first place, and someone told me it was going to happen, and I heard him, and I let it happen anyway, and now they might all be dead, and that's my fault, too." It came out in a strained monotone, low but thrumming with the resonance of the lump in his throat, and when it was over he did stand up, violently, sending the poorly-balanced chair over onto its back. He stepped over it, opened the door, and stepped back out into the hall.

"That seemed like more than one," she said as he slammed the door.

Ibanez stood on the roof of the world, and looked up.

The tower of the topside elevator stretched away into the far distance, a little over one thousand metres, to where the overlooking gantry had been constructed. For the first few days it had been a popular thrill, once the general staff were allowed up there, but for most people it quickly became depressing and they returned to the comforting solidity of the Site interior. Only a few people still visited regularly; Harry and Karen Elstrom made regular visits, which was probably interesting to someone, but not Ibanez, and…

Yep, there she was. Billie Forsythe was leaning on the reinforced railing, only visible at this distance by the deathly pallor of her skin, since her clothes were the same colour as the vast majority of the universe now. She wasn't looking up, but down. Not at Ibanez, not at the roof, but at nothing at all.

"Captain Oates on patrol."

She hadn't heard Ngo approach. The other woman was gracile and graceful, which served her well at this posting; more than a few of the senior staff could only be wrangled into psych evals via stealth, and Ibanez was near the top of that list. She grunted in response, and continued to survey the pockmarked expanse of the upper membrane.

"Desolate place to spend an afternoon," the psychologist offered.

"Exactly." Ibanez turned to leave. "Desolate. Abandoned. Uninhabited. At least it was, until you showed up."

She could feel the other woman's warm smile on her back. "Chief, I know you're not the type to need a lot of company, but you do know that—"

"Yeah." She waved Ngo off as she headed for the hatchway. "Your door is always open, it doesn't have to be official, we can go for a drink, and by the way Lillian's hosting pillow parties in S&C if you want to go have a good cry, blah blah blah," and suddenly she turned on her heel, "how long have we worked together?"

"Over a decade."

"So why don't you know who I am yet?"

Ngo smiled.

"Maybe I do, and you just can't tell, because you don't know me."

Ibanez stared at her for a moment, then glanced back up at the overlook. Billie was still there, but now Ibanez fancied she was watching their little altercation.

"Chief," and Ngo approached her across the flat expanse, "I know you've been trapped in a place like this before. But you're not alone, this time. If you need to take your frustrations out, it doesn't have to be on yourself anymore."

Ibanez snorted. "Fine, next time I'm in the gym, you can show up and I'll use you as a punching bag." She kicked open the hatch.

"Okay," Ngo chirped. "Sounds fun."

Ibanez froze, turned to narrow her eyes at the other woman, then with a very strange feeling in her gut descended back into bedlam.

"My only regret is you."

She'd been expecting something like that, and she was ready for it. "I am prepared to deepen that regret, if you don't cooperate."

Sokolsky grinned at her. "I'm serious. This is me cooperating. I'm sorry we've never gotten involved. Can you think of a more powerful power couple?"

"People all around the Site are having spontaneous nightmares right now, and they don't know why."

He leaned forward, palms on the table. "Think about it, Lillian. The world is on pause. Nothing matters, and there's nothing you can do about it. Why don't we find out how much fucking it takes to fuck out the biggest brains in the whole damn world?"

She laughed. He laughed with her.

She said, "We're not here to talk about my regrets."

2003

11 November

Timeline 5243-A

Vast as it is, filled with banks of metal racks and a high ceiling, the server hall reverberates 24/7 with the clicking and clacking of hard drives being accessed, discs spooling up and fans gently purring. This sussurus tells the attending technicians that everything is working properly, and they rarely raise their voices above it — not only because the sound is comforting, but because any other sound will carry to an uncomfortable degree. For this reason, unlike the cozy warrens of AAF-D, there are no records of staff employing this most massive of private spaces for their more intimate rendezvous. They would very swiftly cease to be intimate.

— Blank, Lines in a Muddle

God, you are so right, she thought as she let everyone in the server hall tent city know precisely what she thought about what she was doing tonight.

She was still laughing, but he was not. "Are you going to explain that remark?"

"You've got that big brain," she chuckled. "I'm sure you can figure it out."

15 September

With nothing better to do, Udo headed for the interrogation room an hour early. Maybe there would be someone else waiting, and she could strike up a conversation. She was growing ever more conscious of the diameter of her social circle…

Phil Deering was already there, facing away from her. Staring at the door with his shoulders hunched, the way she'd once seen him doing outside Melissa Bradbury's hospital room…

"Hey," she said.

He jumped, and spun. Back in baseline, he'd long since lost his ability to be startled by sudden sounds. Life without the mirror monster had produced a very different man, and she found herself wondering…

What? What, precisely, did she find herself wondering?

He looked sheepish. "You here for the… thing?"

"Yeah. I think you're first, though."

He winced. "I told them I might not come. I think… I don't think I want to do this. Are the rumours true?"

There was that social circle problem again. "Haven't heard any rumours. What specifically?"

"That she's dredging up people's regrets?"

Udo nodded. "That's what she's doing, alright. Can't say I'm looking forward to it either."

He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. "You think if I just leave…?"

"I think Lillian Lillihammer would hunt you to the ends of the Earth. And right now—"

"That's just a few kilometres."

"And her legs are long."

"Yeah. Yeah, good points." He reached up to smooth back his hair, and suddenly…

"You want to go get a drink?" she asked. "A few drinks in, maybe we can both work out our regrets." She let the phrasing hang that way, the way his mouth was also now hanging, for a second before amending it to what she'd actually meant: "Then I can tell her what they were, and neither of us will have to go in there and relate our woes cold sober. Sound good?"

He didn't even stop to consider. "It sounds great."

1999

6 April

Dougall drove. It was Phil's car, such as it was, but that couldn't ever matter. Dougall was the elder brother. Dougall was the success. Dougall would take the wheel. Phil told himself it was really because only Dougall knew where they were headed; that felt vaguely similar to feeling better about it.

"You're sure they're hiring?" The scenery whizzed past, all evergreens and plowed fields. They were in the boondocks now for sure. "I can't just walk in and ask. I don't even have a résumé." This was a matter of pure practicality, as there would have been nothing for Phil to put on it.

"I'm sure." Dougall tapped the wheel with his hands, drumming some obscure beat. He seemed to be in a good mood, and Phil didn't want to ruin it, even as he knew he inevitably would. "Are you paying attention to me, right now?"

So it was lecture mode, then. Phil nodded, though he knew his brother wouldn't see. When he drove, he focused on the road. He was indistractible when he had a goal, and anyway took his moral responsibilities very seriously. "Yes."

"Good. You know I work for a think tank."

"Yes." Phil did know that. His brother was the thinker, between the two of them. He hoped that wasn't where they were headed.

"The think tank I work for controls the entire world."

This was a little grandiose, but it was never worth contradicting Dougall. "Okay."

"Do you know how they do that?"

Dougall liked these little rhetorical Q&A sessions. They kept him from feeling like he was monologuing, even though that was what he was doing. "No."

"They do it with a massive paramilitary force, the ability to erase people's memories, and control over a database of several thousand people, places, and things which defy all the known laws of science."

This seemed to demand comment. Perhaps it was a test. "Is this a metaphor for something?"

Dougall stopped at an unoccupied all-way stop, before the stop sign, as was the law and good practice. Phil had never seen anyone else do it precisely the same. "It is not. One of the facilities this shadow government occupies has a job opening for a technician. No prior experience required. You'll be helping to keep the place spick and span."

Phil's head spun. "So, a janitor. You want me to be a janitor at, uh, Black Mesa."

Dougall's eyes flicked briefly in his direction. "What's Black Mesa?"

"Never mind." None of this could be true. He was stating it too matter-of-factly. "Do you work at this… facility?"

"No. We won't be working together." This much rang true. "But I have a lot of pull there. The work I do is extraordinarily important." Of course it is. "I'm one of the most important people in the world, in fact, so my word goes a long way." He smiled the way he smiled when he'd deployed an inside joke. In almost every case, he was the only one on the inside. "If you're willing to pull your socks up, the position can be yours."

"Couldn't I just be a janitor at, I don't know, a bowling alley? Or an arcade?"

Dougall sneered, even though he was looking out on a sunny day with a clear blue sky. "You're better than that."

Because Dougall was better than that.

Well, we'll see.

They'd pulled up to a large, blocky building in the woods. The land sloped away to the north in a way that suggested water; his brother had mentioned there was a lake around here somewhere. Dougall didn't unbuckle his belt. "Head on in. They're expecting you."

"You're not coming?"

"I've got things to do."

Better things, Phil inwardly corrected. He unbuckled, and opened the door. "Will I see you later?"

"Maybe."

Then it could wait, as it always did. Phil got out, and closed the door. When he climbed the steps to whatever Lake Huron Supply, Control and Purification was, he looked back at his car, and his brother inside, and he waved.

Dougall waved back, then put the car in gear again and drove away.

2002

16 March

The first drawer she tried wouldn't budge. It was locked. She shot him a curious look, and he shrugged. "I'm a secretive guy."

The drawer beneath it was unlocked, and empty. She considered it carefully, then reached down to pick up her pants from the floor, pulled off the belt, and placed it inside. "There," she said. "It's official."

"I'll get you the key," Dougall yawned, and stretched his arms behind his pillow.

She leapt back onto the bed, relishing the bounce. Her own bed was better than the average dormitory slab, but Dougall's was pillow-topped and deep. "Who'm I hiding my belt from? The belt thieves?"

He pulled her into an embrace, then rolled over on top of her. "From all my many mistresses, of course."

She snorted in his face, and was preparing a vicious retort when he opened his mouth and took her breath away for several squishy seconds. When he pulled his head back and smiled, she'd quite forgotten what she was going to say.

So instead, she said "Go again?"

He snorted back at her. "It's been less than ten minutes. For a woman who can make human golems, you've got some major holes in your biology knowledge."

She rolled them around until she was back on top again. "That leaves pillow talk. You'll start. Tell me your secrets, o secret keeper. What's in the drawer?"

"My drawers. The Serpent's Hand has tried and failed for years to put itching powder in them. It's vital to Foundation security that my crotch remain unscratched. My turn—"

She clamped her hands over his mouth. "Your turn nothing. Tell me the truth. Or at least give me a hint."

He said something unintelligible into the palm of her hand. She pulled the both back, and he smiled up at her innocently. "—and that's the honest truth."

She mock-slapped him, and kept her hand there to scratch at his tidy beard. "I take it you won't be telling anyone about us, either, then."

He nodded. "My love life is one of the most closely-guarded secrets of the Veiled world. Men and women have died for that knowledge, and—"

"I'm kinda being serious," she said, at the moment she realized she was.

He gave her a sad, sympathetic look. "I'm only halfway joking about the Serpent's Hand. They try to assassinate me at least once a year. As long as I have this job, and as long as a few other things I can't tell you about are going on, it's safer for everyone involved that they don't know who is and who isn't important to me."

She reached down to pull gently on his chest hairs. "Am I important to you?"

He kissed her again.

She turned her head to the side, considering him from every available angle. "That wasn't precisely an answer."

"I think it was." He yawned again. "You're going to have to go get dressed soon, you know."

She rolled her eyes. "Are we seriously going to that?"

He laughed. "She's my partner. It's her birthday. And you're our star employee. Of course we're going to that, you and me. Wear something nice."

She raised an eyebrow. "I don't own anything nice." She glanced back at the dresser. "Do you?"

"Nothing I'd let you wear."

She pulled a little harder, and he winced. "Laiken's party is in the lounge?"

"Like I told you. Yes."

"The lounge with the little attached kitchenette?"

His grin forced his eyes into narrow slits. "That's the one."

"I bet you've got a key for that, too."

Beneath her, she felt something shift.

"You know what? I think I do."

She had other questions she wanted to pose, but their fifteen minutes were up. Dougall's biological clock was punctual and uncompromising.

He told her his story precisely as it had happened, give or take a few hiccoughs. She told him only a little of hers — certainly nothing that would place it at Site-43 — in the dim and musty saloon, then showed him the rest in her dorm room.

She wasn't the only one who had a key, but if any of the other Survivors came calling, they'd find a thick caulking of red sand between the door and its jamb.

Noor Zaman, Deputy Chief of Hiring and Regulation: I spent three years playing nice and having friendly chats with a child-eating psychopath. My daughter turned eighteen back in January. I still think about him every time she passes a milestone those kids in Québec never got to reach.

Sandrine Holt, Agent: You have to promise—

Lewis Bosch, Agent: —not to tell her.

Charles Carter, Technician: Oh, lots. I don't know. That time I locked myself in the broom closet accidentally, and 106 got loose and killed everyone else in my detail. I guess I don't exactly regret that, but, you know, it bothers me sometimes. Oh, you know that guy who let 096 out a few years back? And it killed all those people on that highway? I think I knew he was going to do that. He seemed really tense all the time when I was working there, I remember noticing, like something was eating him up. I probably could've done something about that. Don't like to think about it. Maybe he wouldn't have listened to some technician anyway, but I could have tried… Oh! I know what it is. You ever see 058? I was on feeding duty, but I came down with botulism — no idea what skip caused that, there's a whole list — and my friend Jack agreed to take my shift. I thought I told him the procedure right, but he got it all backwards and… yeah. It split him in half, and not clean. Kinda diagonally? Corner of his neck to the opposite thigh. They had to move it to a new chamber eventually because they were still finding Jack's blood in the corners of the wall plates— what? I thought we had an hour blocked out. Are you sure?

Nhung Ngo, Deputy Chair of Psychology and Parapsychology: Scout once told me regrets are just prompts for further action. I act on my regrets every day. On that note, if you and Chief Ibanez could find some room in your schedules, we have over a decade of missed appointments to catch up on…

Roger Pensak, Agent: Pretty pleased with how things are going right now, if we're being honest.

Ji O, Agent: Wish I'd said something to Wirth. I don't know what. But I still feel like it's my fault.

Lillian awoke from her stupor. "Say that again?"

As most people with an imagination and any amount of selfconsciousness would do, O paraphrased instead. "I could have said something to Wirth. Given him a reason to live. I don't know what I could have said, but—"

"You think Wirth killed himself?" No-one else had opined anything similar.

O sighed miserably. "We used to chat sometimes, when I had A&R duty. Patrolling the salt mines, lower case. He'd be looking through the archives, and sound carries pretty well down there, so you could hold a whole conversation without standing next to each other."

"What did he talk about?" For the first time in over a day, one of her interview subjects had her full and undivided attention.

"I thought he was talking about the project he was working on, which nobody knows anything about. Turns out he wasn't doing any of the stuff he'd been assigned to do — I'm sure Blank told you that already — but whatever he was doing, I thought he was being poetic about it." She wrinkled her nose as though fending off a sniffle. "He kept saying stuff like… I don't know, that he was facing down an abyss. Looking into a pit. Standing on the edge. It sounded like that faux philosophical mumbo jumbo scientists use sometimes to make their work sound more profound." She smiled apologetically.

Lillian nodded. "Yep. That's a thing."

"But one day Yancy found him at Rock Bottom, capitalized." The underside of the Site. "Looking at the big black empty surrounding it all. The guy said he just needed somewhere to be alone, to think about things, and Yancy brought him back upstairs. Didn't report it. Told me he gave Wirth a pep talk, thought it went well. When…"

She did sniffle.

"When they said Wirth was missing, I knew that was what had happened. I told Yancy, and he told me I was crazy. Wirth wasn't suicidal, he was just lost in thought. Probably tried to run off and put some crazy scheme in place, like Van Rompay said. And that's what everyone thinks. I filed my report, my minority opinion, but it went nowhere. No big surprise; we're not allowed to send people down into the pit, not even the Pit Bosses for some reason. He's probably still down there."

"And you filed a report about this? With who?"

"Who else? It was a missing persons case. I had to file it with Van Rompay."

16 September

Site-43's Chief of Pursuit and Suppression wasn't scheduled for an interview for another two days. When Lillian tried his pager, she got no response.

Probably he wouldn't even show up. He might even have a plausible excuse. It might even be something he hadn't drummed up himself.

She'd been less and less subtle with her implications. The last time they'd spoken, remotely of course, she'd all but suggested he'd been directly responsible for the erasure himself. It was simply too absurd to get him riled, however. He had a soldier's temper: it only flared when he needed the anger to fuel his vengeance. He could wait her out indefinitely.

LeClair's interview was meant for today, but she'd already cancelled. Something about Billie Forsythe's treatment for whatever the code word was for her mother's hypochondria by proxy. She'd probably cancel the rescheduled date too, and with the toll the isolation was taking on everyone, she'd have the perfect excuse for it too. Time and again.

"What makes you think," Wettle began. They were heading down the stairs from ApplOcc, after inviting Udo to grab something grey and nourishing from the cafeteria with them. Three wasn't a crowd when Wettle was your third. He only became a problem one-on-one, as he was right now.

Until instead of finishing his sentence, he put his foot down sideways and screamed.

LeClair tutted condescendingly. It had been years since anyone had made sounds at him in any other tone. "You're a little old not to know how to walk, Dr. Wettle."

"Yeah, well, you know." He leaned back on the folding exam table as she wrapped his swollen ankle. "The floor snuck up on me."

She shook her head. "You need to take better care of yourself. At your age, these constant injuries will start to take a toll."

Indeed, he'd never felt so old and beaten-down. It was one reason why he knew Elstrom's story about the elixir of life had to be the truth. That was the reason he was comfortable with.

He hated that the other reason was that Lillihammer believed it.

"I'm not good at taking care of myself." He started bobbing his foot up and down, because it wasn't touching the ground and that was something of a new sensation, and she flinched back to avoid getting kicked in the face with a sneaker. "Everybody else has someone to do that for them."

She smiled. "I would recommend it."

"You want to get a coffee some time?"

She finished the wrapping, and tied it off. "What I meant," she said as she slowly rose back up, knees obviously having seen better days, "was that I have someone to talk care of me already. And I would say that you're right, it can make a big difference as you get older."

"I thought you were single," he said. "Aren't you supposed to be single? Isn't there some ethics thing with doctors? Or is that only real doctors? Not Foundation doctors."

A cloud came over the old woman's face. "I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're trying to draw. I'm bound by the Hippocratic Oath. But that doesn't mean I can't have a relationship. It just can't affect the treatment I provide."

He grinned at her. "I bet you provide real good treatment, too."

Her eyes flattened out to a pair of straight lines. "I understand you're deflecting because I've embarrassed you. But don't say anything like that again. My relationship with Chief Van Rompay…" She paused, blinked, then continued. "…is an open secret, but I'll thank you not to make light of it. Like I said, he takes good care of me. I do the same for him."

"That's fair." He tested the wrapped-up ankle. "Can you give me something for the pain? I'd like an Advil, if you've got it."

"Hard drugs, eh? I think I can spare that." She reached up and rifled through the medicine cabinet over the sink, and pulled out a white bottle with a blue cap.

She paused.

"You're allergic to Advil," she sighed. "You take Tylenol instead. William, we've talked about this."

"We have!" he agreed. "We talked about it when I stubbed my toe back in 2010, and you tried to give me Advil because you didn't remember my file."

She froze.

"We talked about how bad your memory was getting, and how you were gonna get something to treat that real soon, and you figured it was really gonna help. I guess it did, huh?"

She unfroze, but just barely. Enough to look down her nose at him. "Get out."

"If you're wasting my time," said Lillian, and then the door slammed open.

Van Rompay was standing in the door to Wettle's dorm, hamfists raised pugilistically, face red. In the dining nook, Wettle recoiled so far that his feet reached the seat of his chair, and slid up to his buttocks. He yelped in pain as his twisted ankle bent awkwardly against the wrapping.

On the couch, Lillian waved. "Looks like you made a space in your schedule," she purred. "While you're in our neck of the woods, why don't we get that pesky interview out of the way? If we do it efficiently, you'll still have plenty of time to beat the shit out of Willie."

Gedeon Van Rompay was a self-made giant, but nature had nevertheless definitely intended him that way. His arms and legs bulged like the trunks of a Manitoba maple, and Lillian imagined his chest would make a metallic ringing sound if she knocked on it, but his head and neck were already broad, chiseled and masculine from birth. He'd become what he was always meant to be, and she could certainly respect him for that.

She would never be sure if the sentiment went both ways.

"How fast can you do this?" he asked, both sets of bulbous limbs crossed, double chin jutting out in obvious challenge. "Because I'm trying to keep a bunch of idiots from killing each other." He was, in fact, still wearing his combat armour.

"As fast as you let me." She dumped the contents of a manila envelope out on the table, upside-down. "We should've been done days ago. You've been avoiding me."

"Dirty fucking trick you played," he snarled. "Leave Emilié out of your schemes from now on. Do you hear me?"

"What trick?" She managed an innocent face very easily. She wasn't sure how Wettle had managed to push the right buttons by sheer accident, but not having to lie certainly improved her performance. "You accusing Wet Willie of being a master manipulator? Or even an effective assistant? I think you know better."

He looked away. "Whatever. I'm here now. Get it over with."

She picked up the sheaf of glossy photos and began slapping them down upright, one at a time, totalling four. "Let's talk about these dead idiots."

The old soldier didn't ruffle easily, but the casual way she described his victims obviously irritated Van Rompay. He looked down at the photographs, three of them staged like crime scenes, one a file photo, and examined them closely as though proving to her that he had no unsettled feelings about what he'd done. "What's there to talk about?"

"Your report says Mukami, Radcliffe and Gwilherm tried to attack you in your barracks."

He nodded. "I don't like the way you put it, but yes. That's what happened. Are you disagreeing?"

She shrugged. "I wasn't there. LeClair's autopsy suggests they all had serious brain abnormalities which weren't obvious after the breach," she tried very hard to say the word like her life hadn't revolved around it since it had first occurred, "but probably developed because of it. You say they weren't acting like themselves, and you had to kill them in self-defence. The two reports confirm each other."

Van Rompay tensed and released his muscles regularly, as though his aging physique required constant maintenance while he was awake, so it wasn't entirely clear to her whether he was stiffening or not as the questioning went on. "As they should, since they're both true."

"Right. Well, what about this one?" She tapped Wirth's headshot. "Why'd you let him go?"

The big man's eyes narrowed to slits. "Let him go."

"That's right."

"You read that report, too?"

"I did." It stated that Wirth had used the distraction caused by the security guard attack to flee the Site via the topside elevator. There was transit data to back this up, though the relevant cameras had been mysteriously blacked out. When Ibanez had looked over the details, they first thing she'd pointed out was that four people at Site-43 could make the elevator move remotely without a passenger, and without an entry in the Site's activity log: the Director, and the Chiefs of I&T, S&C, and P&S.

The Chief of P&S grunted. "You're calling me a liar."

"Yeah. I'm calling you a liar." Lillian folded her hands and leaned forward. "LeClair's electronic medical history has an MTF lock on it. Why is that?"

"You fucking know why." All of the man was tensing up at once.

"Don't tell me it's because you two are boning." She clicked her tongue disapprovingly. "That's always such a garbage argument. Extra security to protect the innocent. Nobody down here is innocent, Ged, and everybody's already plenty protected. You locked her medical history because you don't want anybody to know that she had Alzheimer's Disease."

He was incandescent now, but somehow his tone of voice never changed. "Are you saying you broke into an MTF-locked database file? Because I think that's a little out of your clearance range." The syllables were getting clipped, at least. He was on the edge of losing it.

"Nope. I've got sources of my own. But go ahead, deny it. Or else explain to me how your girlfriend has far outlasted the early stage prognoses for a degenerative mental condition. Can you do that? I know you're a good liar, but this isn't shit you know anything about. How bad you think you can bullshit me right now, when I've already got your number?"

He wanted to say something scathing. He wanted to crush her windpipe. He wanted to run out of the room. She could see it all on his bluff features, plain as day. He desperately didn't want to do what he did next, and she even felt the slightest pang of sympathy as he gave in and finally did it.

"Okay," he snarled. There was finally malice in his timbre, and she knew he was going to tell her the truth. "You win. I did let him go."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

"Why?"

2003

"Wait!"

Van Rompay kept the rifle trained on the freckle-faced youth. "Don't move a muscle, kid. Not even a twitch. You won't even see my finger move."

Reuben Wirth stood in the Arms and Equipment lab, hands in the air, an open cabinet door on either side. There was a sack on the floor, and a few gadgets Van Rompay couldn't begin to identify piled up inside. "I'm not gonna move. Don't shoot. Don't shoot."

Van Rompay advanced, keeping his sights trained. He didn't flick on the lights in the darkened room. The window to the hall gave him more than enough illumination, as long as he moved counterclockwise. "We're heading to S&C. Leave the sack."

Wirth's eyes were wild in the distant light. "You're gonna let me go, actually. That's how this goes down."

"You figure?" Van Rompay settled into the corner of the room, and quickly gestured with the end of his rifle. "To the door. Now."

The other man made no move to comply. "Here's what's gonna happen: I'm going to do something for you, and you're going to let me go."

Van Rompay snorted. "I don't know what sort of bargaining chips you think you've got in that bag, but I'm not buying. To the door, son. Now."

Wirth was a statue. Only his mouth moved. "It's not in the bag. It's not something you can hold in your hands. Well. That's not really true." He smiled coldly. "I'm offering you something you can hold in your arms. Something you already have, but you're going to lose it soon. Not if you help me. If you help me, you'll have it forever."

"I don't know what you're talking about, and it doesn't matter." He focused on the task at hand. He refused to consider what the researcher might be implying. That was one of the most basic tenets of basic training: don't negotiate with affected personnel. Something was obviously affecting Wirth. He wasn't going to infect Van Rompay with it.

"It does matter. I can help her, Chief. I can fix it."

He tightened his grip on the stock, and fought to retain trigger discipline. "Walk. Don't talk."

"Fine." Wirth's smile widened. "No more talking."

This is far more direct, anyway.

Van Rompay tried to pull the trigger, but found that he couldn't. He didn't control his own hands anymore. The gun was lowered, gently, and he took his finger away from the trigger guard.

"Get out of my head," he tried to say, but it went no farther than the inside of his skull.

I could put the gun to your neck, Wirth's voice said. There was no anger in it, only a bald statement of fact. Blow your brains out. But I won't. You're a symptom of a wider disease, and I'm going to cure it. And you're going to help me. After a show of good faith.

Van Rompay tried to squeeze his eyes shut. They didn't respond. How are you doing this?

That doesn't matter. What matters is, I can. I can make you do anything I want. I could do rather a lot of damage before they stopped you, and when they stopped you, I could do even more damage with them. But I won't. Because you're much more useful to me alive and well, and anyway, I'm not the bad guy here. I don't like poking around in your grey matter. I want to give you options, Chief, not take them away.

It was almost difficult telling Wirth's monologue apart from his own. The words were all the more convincing for being beamed directly into his head. The other man's face was a mask of concentration. What are you proposing?

I'm going to rearrange your lover's brain. I'm going to give her back to herself. And I'm going to offer a long-term service plan, so long as you keep my little secret, and keep prying eyes off my work. Do you think you can do that? Would you do that for her?

He wanted to make a moral stand. No, that wasn't true. He wanted to want to make a moral stand. The difference in strength between those two positions was catastrophic. I'd do anything for her. But why would I believe you? What's stopping you from just killing us all when I let you go?

And now the gun suddenly was against his throat, finger back on the trigger. Nothing is stopping me from doing that right now. Ergo, I am telling the truth. I'm telling you, Chief, I just want to help. Wirth suddenly smiled, though the voice was still only in Van Rompay's head. Like I said in the ward room, I really do hope things work out for the two of you.

Everyone looked to her when she entered the room. Of course, this was partially because she was arriving late to the meeting, and was an intended result. But even if she hadn't, they knew she was the one with the answers. That was her role, and she wore it well.

She flopped down on her chosen recliner — she much preferred the more broken-in furniture in Udo's dorm, not least because she herself had broken much of it in — and folded her hands on her chest. "Ask," she said, "and the oracle will tell."

McInnis took charge. This was his role, and not wholly because he'd been assigned it by the Overseers. "Do you know what happened?"

She could have played coy about his meaning, but there were revelations she was proud of having had that she was itching to share, so she didn't. "No."

Del stood up.

Lillian waved her back down. "I don't need to know what happened. I know why it happened. It was Wirth."

Del remained standing. "Of course it was Wirth. That's all you've got?"

"That's all I've got in response to that question." She smiled at McInnis.

He considered. "It might be easier if you simply told us everything you've learned."

She wasn't so conscientious with her interpretation this time. A little mischief was the price of doing business with her. "I've learned that Polly Mataxas did weed once in college and feels guilty about it, which is ridiculous; that Site-19 is a gore-fest all year 'round, which is pretty well common knowledge; and that the nothing which happened when we showed up on the 9th was all of our faults combined."

"I thought it was his fault." Wettle gestured at Nascimbeni, who furrowed his brow.

"Symptomatic. The thing that was eating Noè is in good company around here. Everybody's full of brain-eating parasites in the form of bad memories. No, Willie, I'm not being literal. You'll give yourself a scalp rash, cut it out. I'm talking about regrets."

"Why are you talking about regrets?" Harry asked. "And why did you get on that topic in the first place? You were throwing that word around from the start."

"Because Rydderech told me that was the key, in his usual cryptic bullshit way. So I pushed, and I pushed, and every one of you turned out to have mind maggots crawling just underneath the surface. Wirth was a sensitive guy. Thought about stuff too much. He probably watched all of you moping, and decided he could do something about it."

"Except Wirth is dead." Ibanez sat back down, but kept her back straight and did not relax. "He was acting like a loon, and then he escaped."

"He possessed people back in -A," Udo pointed out, using their internal terminology for the three alternate timelines they'd entered so far. "And we never found his body, according to Lillian. Maybe he doesn't need one."

"I'm pretty sure he does," Lillian interrupted. "They always do. And when you destroy the body, that aspect of the Victims is dead for the time being. No, he's got a body somewhere, and I'm pretty sure it's a warm one, too."

"And by somewhere," the All-Sections Chief suddenly rumbled, "you mean Site-43."

"She'd better." Udo looked pained. "Because if he did this to us, and he's not here, that means either he wiped himself from existence in the process of doing the thing, and he'll never be able to undo it for us, and we'll never be able to figure out how he did it, or it means he put us out of reality and he's wreaking havoc on the world in our absence."

"Thanks for enumerating the theoretical stakes." Lillian flashed her a thumbs-up. "They're inapplicable. Wirth is here, and he's alive."

"How do you know that?" Nascimbeni asked.

"Because ghosts, as Mataxas would tell you, are pack animals. And his pack's been looking for him here for years." She paused. "And also Van Rompay basically told me so, but first things first."

2011

9 September

She'd seated the Tarrow twins on either side of Alis, for symmetry. There was something really unpleasant about having them side-by-side, a sort of Uncanny Valley terror likely picked up from Full House reruns she'd seen at university.

She'd seated herself, Ngo and Sokolsky in order of increasing height, since symmetry would have been impossible and anyway it indicated her preferred interpretation of the interrogation's authority scale.

"Honest answers only, please," Lillian instructed with a cheerful lilt. "Until you show me otherwise, I'm assuming you're on the side of the world continuing to exist, because your death cult wanted universal annihilation on an entirely different premise than this, so don't show me otherwise if you value your…"

She stopped.

She started again. "Was this your death cult's premise?" She stabbed a finger at Alis. "You told me — you won't remember telling me, but you told me — that the gifted kids want to kill everyone and escape from reality. Is that what this is? That isn't what this is, right."

All three of them were visibly racing to keep up. Ngo looked similarly baffled. Sokolsky's face was graven stone, as always.

Alis managed a curt nod. "No, whatever is happening, it wasn't the plan. You haven't actually said what's happening, though."

"Oh. Right. Well, everything but Site-43 just disappeared."

Three pairs of eyes widened in tandem.

"See, that's what I'm talking about. Those looked like genuine physiological reactions. Now, I'm a pretty good judge of bullshit, but I want you to know there's a sort of confidence thing going on with you right now. Del, she's not going to trust you too easy. Right, Daniil?"

Sokolsky nodded enthusiastically. "She doesn't trust at all. She'll be looking real hard at anything you bunch say, and if it doesn't smell right, she's going to go MARSTON on you. You know what that means?"

They all nodded, eyes even wider. MARSTON Verification Protocol was a polite euphemism for the world's only actually effective form of extreme rendition. Ngo looked uncomfortable.

Lillian made a mock cheering gesture. "Awesome. So yeah, the world disappeared. We'll work up to figuring out why that is. The first thing I want to know from you is this: why were you here?"

"We were looking for him," one of the Tarrows said immediately.

Alis gave her a mildly dirty look. "You could've at least stalled a little, for appearances."

"And by him," said Lillian, "you mean Wirth."

Nods all around.

"Because you think he's the leader of your cult."

"We think he's an aspect of it," the other Tarrow corrected her. "He's the only link we have to our history now. Whatever happened back in 2002, it splintered the origin of our powers and made most of it antimemetic. Wirth is the only thing we can concretely focus on when we try to conceive of our own origins."

"Obviously you haven't found him yet."

"Obviously," Alis agreed.

"How long have you been trying?"

"A few months. We came here when it all started, because everyone had trouble remembering Site-43 existed, so it seemed like it had to be at the core of whatever was going on. When we didn't find anything, we left. Followed the trails."

"What trails?"

The second Tarrow chimed in again. "Now who's being dishonest? You know. Zlatá and Del Olmo."

"Mm. You were trying to see where they went, and what they were doing. Because they were memeticists?"

Nods again.

"And what did you find?"

"Not a damn thing," the first Tarrow sighed. "Not a damn thing for years. We eventually gave up, until suddenly…" She closed her mouth.

Lillian gestured. "Go on. Suddenly…"

The three of them exchanged glances.

"Listen," Sokolsky smiled. "We've got the equipment ready—"

Alis and the second Tarrow stumbled over each other to respond. Alis won out. "For a moment, just a moment, we all could remember. We can remember remembering."

"Remember remembering what?"

"The source. The origin. It all came back together for an instant, and everything made sense. And then it didn't again. And we knew where the flash had come from. It came from here."

"So you came back."

"And still didn't find anything."

"And now the anything you didn't find has turned everything into nothing. Terrific. Now, what do you think I ought to do with the three of you?"

"Probably you ought to murder us," Alis remarked dryly. Ngo started shaking her head, but nobody was looking at her.

"Probably," Lillian agreed. "We've done it before." She left this unexplained. "Still. You might be helpful, if and when we do find Wirth. Not of your own volition, obviously, but still. You fine with sticking around among the living until we get all this sorted out?"

The first Tarrow shrugged. "Unless you're gonna pass us some cyanide capsules with our dinner, we don't have much choice, do we?"

"You two are so morose," Alis scolded. "Cyanide capsules, Christ. Lighten up."

"We have a duty," the second Tarrow snapped.

"Well, I'll see if I can't get you out of that duty you've stepped in." Lillian stood up, and drummed the table. "Anything else you'd like to volunteer?"

"Yeah." Alis met her gaze evenly. "If you do find him, just send him our way. It'll be better for everyone concerned."

Lillian nodded. "Of course. Obviously I trust you to do what's best for us." She nudged Sokolsky in the ribs. "I kept a straight face there."

"Very impressive," he nodded impassively.

"Why was I even here for this?" Ngo muttered.

Udo grunted. "So, he's here. What were you saying about Van Rompay, though?"

"He's been running interference. We were right to zero in on LeClair's clarity as the biggest question mark. I think Wirth rearranged her brain chemistry every once in a while, keeping the Alzheimer's dormant, in return for Ged making sure nobody looked too closely into his disappearance."

Del was frowning. "Does Alzheimer's even work that way?"

"It's neurodegenerative. Wirth has brain powers, and chaos powers. Chaos and decay. I'm sure he could swing it."

McInnis was nodding. "I've noticed the occasional lapse from Dr. LeClair in this timeline. I suspect the condition has merely been kept at bay, not cured. Dr. Wirth, or the entity masquerading as him, may merely be simulating a working mind for her. Providing a functional structure."

"That's horrible." Nascimbeni wrinkled his nose. "And it makes a lot of sense."

"Sure," said Wettle, and everyone but McInnis seemed startled to notice he was there. He always sat on the floor, so he was out of their sight lines.

"Hey." Harry nudged the other man's shoulder with the tip of his steel-toed boot. "I heard you saw LeClair before Van Rompay showed up on the warpath. What did you do?"

"Just got lucky," said Lillian.

"Wow," Harry smiled. "No wonder the guy was so mad."

Wettle shrugged. "I don't know what anyone is talking about."

McInnis cleared his throat. "So, you're saying Dr. Wirth is performing some sort of experiment somewhere at Site-43, Chief Van Rompay was covering his tracks, and Dr. Du was unwittingly acquiring extra information for him. That's all well and good, but we have just completed a comprehensive overview of this entire facility. There is nowhere left to hide. So where, within nowhere, is he hiding?"

"That, Allan," Lillian grinned, "is precisely correct."

12 September

Veiksaar gestured at the bizarre hybrid of ancient and modern computing technology nestled in the corner of AAF-A's bottom sublevel, and sighed. "This is it."

"This is what?" Nascimbeni had never seen it before. He'd never been in this room. Only the I&T techs ever came in here, and only the ones with the highest clearance. He was used to that sort of compartmentalization, so he'd never made a fuss.

Well, that was part of the reason. He'd been making fewer and fewer fusses since shortly past the turn of the millennium.

"This," Veiksaar sighed again, as though she could only convey the information breathily, "is the DR-RHETORIC interface."

"The supercomputer that isn't," Nascimbeni agreed.

Veiksaar blinked at him. "You know?"

He immediately began kicking himself, mentally. Lillian had explained the entire thing to them all, of course, but Veiksaar wasn't supposed to know that. Not for the first time, he resented being made to carry and keep secrets, and keep track of who was allowed to know what, and who was allowed to know who knew what, and so on and so forth along the fractal curve of escalating dishonesty. "I know. We can talk about why I know later. But you can skip the explanation."

For the third time, she sighed. "That's good. That's great. I don't like explaining this. I hate talking about this at all. This is my least favourite room in the site. But yeah. This is the DR-RHETORIC interface, like I said. Or, that's what it's supposed to be. Right now it's just a dead terminal."

"Because everything under the Site is gone," he nodded. "Rydderech's dead, then."

"I don't know that. I don't know how I'd measure a thing like that, him being what he is. But he's definitely not responding. There's no interlink. I… sorry. It's taking me a moment to process that you already knew. Someone should have told me. Why didn't they tell me?"

"Compartmentalization gets us all eventually."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Sure. Alright. So, you get why this is big deal?"

"Rydderech is an extraordinarily powerful reality bender."

"Right."

"And whatever happened, it might have erased him from existence."

"Right."

"That would suggest what we're dealing with is… what do they call it? Semigod level, or worse."

Veiksaar's eyes widened. "You mean demigod?"

His internal monologue was now nothing but curses. "Yeah. Sure. That. Not clear on the terminology. I'm a tech guy. But even I know it would take something really big and bad to wipe out someone like Rydderech. He's practically off the scale."

She nodded, then bit her tongue. "Of course, he might not have been wiped out at all. The disconnect could also mean that we really have been pocketed, and Rydderech and his factory are still back in baseline, without 43 to contain them."

"Which would… not be good," he said.

"Which would really suck. But it's not really our problem. You guys are moving on to drone-test the area where the factory used to be, right?"

"That's the plan."

"Let me know how the plan turns out." She narrowed her eyes at him. "And I mean that. Actually keep me in the loop, this time, please. Secrets are how shit like this flies under the radar."

"You'll be the first to know," he told her. He hated how true he could make it sound.

"And the drones found…?" Lillian prompted.

"Serious electromag interference," Nascimbeni answered, "and nothing else. No factory. We flew right through where it ought to have been."

"Uh huh." Lillian folded her hands on her chest. She had a look on her face that reminded Harry of his cat, sitting in Karen's lap. Contented.

Udo's mouth switched sides several times, and she broke the silence first. "Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?"

"You could have just said what you think I'm suggesting," Lillian said. "It would have taken fewer words."

"So would answering my wordier query."

"I'm suggesting what you think I'm suggesting."

Wettle grunted, as though startling away. "What do you think she's suggesting?"

"That Wirth is hiding in Rydderech's factory," said Udo."

"Which Eileen and Noè have established doesn't exist anymore," Harry finished. "So."

Lillian gave him a sympathetic look. "There's a big difference between something not being visible and something not existing. You can take that from me."

Sokolsky had been silent the entire time, even more so than Wettle. Harry was sitting beside him, and he couldn't even hear the man breathing. He finally spoke up now, voice very soft, almost contemplative. "A memetic cloak on the factory? And the electromagnetic interference was just to cover it up?"

Lillian snapped her fingers at him. "Exactly. The drones passed through spaces that were available to be passed through, and steered away from bumping into anything. Instruments selectively disabled, positioning altered to maintain the illusion. It's down there."

McInnis looked sad. "Dr. Rydderech is never spared his toil."

"I'm not so sure about that." Lillian matched his sadness with a grim look of melancholy. "I don't imagine he'd be thrilled about taking on a lodger. I don't know if Wirth could have killed him, but I think we have to consider the possibility that he has."

"Good god," said Harry. There was really nothing else to say on the subject.

This prompted the final silent party to make himself heard. The ASC stood up, and they all looked up at him. "Do you propose an expedition, then?"

"I'm not really sure," said Lillian. "Thing is, the factory is passively antimemetic if it's really down there. I tried the old accessway to the abyss, and I kept ending up turned 'round. Even took mnestics. No difference."

Del made a wry face. "We could set off SUNDOWN Protocol."

"Jesus Christ," said Harry, and then, "You guys need to stop making me sound religious."

"What's SUNDOWN Protocol?" asked Wettle, the only one who didn't know. Well, Sokolsky officially didn't, but they all knew how far that went.

"It's a measure to neutralize Rydderech." Harry grimaced. "Fills the factory with expanding foam. Scout tried to use it once, when he thought Rydderech was too far gone and begging for death. It's what lost him the Directorship."

"In the immediate sense," McInnis noted. "By that point he was quite finished with the Foundation."

"Sure," Harry allowed. "But anyway, it won't work for us."

"Why not?" Wettle asked, looking back and forth between them.

"The foam is activated by water from the Lake Huron floodgates," Harry explained. "And there's no Lake Huron anymore."

Nascimbeni looked thoughtful. "Could the geists help us find a way in? Alis, maybe?"

"Maybe." They'd all expected Lillian to answer; they were all surprised that Wettle had instead. "Antimemetics aren't really her thing."

Lillian scoffed. "She is antimemetic, Willie."

"Yeah," Wettle nodded, "but she doesn't actually want to be. It's not intentional. It's a side effect she's learned to weaponize. I don't think she's so good at it that… what?"

Lillian was staring at him. "Where are you getting all this from?"

He blinked, slowly, for several seconds. "We've been talking," he said finally.

"When?" Harry pressed.

He shrugged. "Whenever."

"Whatever," Lillian snapped. "I was going to say, as much as I hate to support Willie even tangentially, that Alis isn't our gal here."

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "She's Wettle's gal."

The other man did not disagree.

"Who is?" McInnis asked. "You, Lillian?"

She shook her head. "I'm a brainworker. No, this calls for an outside contractor."

17 September

Eileen Veiksaar's office wasn't cramped, but by the standards of her peers it wasn't the most spacious. There was always a lot of computer equipment laying around, most of it archaic; in this sense it was not unlike Nascimbeni's quarters, where old machinery went to not die. The recent comprehensive inventory had relocated everything which could be repurposed to the manufactories of J&M, but there was still little room for pacing or dramatic gesture when you packed more than a couple of people into the space.

There were more than a couple now — a trio, to be precise — and they were all bunched up at the back of the room, looking at Eileen's terminal over her shoulder. It was an intimate occasion, and the events they were monitoring were no less so.

One of the Tarrows was sneaking through the facility, and Eileen's CLIOMETRIA was tracking her across a wide variety of electronic media.

The cameras were the most obvious bet, but of course the giftschreiber knew that, and was selectively rerouting the feeds. She must have had some sort of technical knowledge, which was an interesting wrinkle Lillian hadn't previously suspected. In any event, watching Tarrow on the cameras when she didn't want to be watched was a bad idea, because odds were they'd all suddenly stop caring about the hunt, stand up, and wander off to do something else. Chasing an antimemetic threat was something a human being couldn't practically do.

But CLIO was nothing but raw code, lacking not only the personality driver that made an .aic a virtual person, but most of the electronic superstructure that supported it. The program could follow each fluctuation, each change in temperature or pressure, the source of each feed alteration — Tarrow was forcing the cameras to replay old footage, a trick Lillian remarked disapprovingly had been lifted straight from Speed — to trace the woman's course through the undercrofts of AAF-A with something approaching precision. She was circling, spiralling, veering off at strange angles down corridors nominally leading nowhere, navigating an antimemetic maze which only she could see.

It was probably not the quickest path to her quarry, since she had obviously never actually found him yet, but there was time to streamline. She'd already made dramatic improvements on the path she'd taken yesterday. In a few more days, she might actually have found the point of access.

"Assuming there's a point of access," Eileen pointed out. "Could be Wirth just lowers the entire antimemetic field when he wants to leave."

"Could be," Lillian agreed. "Bremmel's working on a solution for that, too."

"Which is what?"

"A big bomb."

Eileen struck a key, and the second tracking routine CLIO was running took over the screen. The other Tarrow was on the level above, spinning in place, hands outstretched as though feeling for walls in the dark. So far as they could tell, neither sister was aware of the other's activities. They weren't comparing notes. They were searching separately.

Udo shook her head. "It's so weird that they're working against each other."

"Not so weird," said Lillian.

"No?"

"They've got power. Too much power." Lillian waved her hands, and Eileen pushed them out of her face so focus on the screen. "Blah blah blah, the saying that goes with that."

"The saying that goes with that is four words long," Udo sighed.

"What are you today, the fucking word police?"

"I'm just…" She stood up, and performed the limited amount of pacing allowed by the room's narrow profile. "This is all freaking me out a bit. I thought I understood where the lines were. Who was on what side. Now there's more sides than I was expecting. This isn't a coin, it's a polygon."

"Coins are polygons," Eileen murmured.

"Yeah, but the space between the sides isn't so overt. What do all these interest blocs want? With us? With the Victims? How have we been in this mess for like a decade, and yet still we aren't any closer to figuring it out?"

Lillian stretched, then walked over to where Udo was treading carpet and reached out to still her by the shoulders. "We're a lot closer to figuring it out. We have a metric fuckton of details we haven't explained yet. The explanation is like, five percent of the winning formula. We'll lick it soon enough."

"Not soon enough by half," Udo grimaced.

"Aaaaand there she goes," Eileen suddenly crowed. "Track down, and lock. Okay. Walk us through it, Imogen."

24 September

There was a door in Health and Pathology which opened on the abyss. Well, there were several, but only one of them mattered to Billie.

Because it was the one LeClair's keycard opened.

It was beyond the back of her office. The back of her office featured a wall panel that slid aside if you tapped it with her keycard, and the tunnel behind that panel — Billie knew it had to be an escape tunnel — had a door halfway down its length which opened via a more traditional keycard interaction, and behind that door was nothing. Not the nothing she could see from the elevator platform, or the nothing which surrounded the Site's enormous exposed roof, but a nothing she could have all to herself, if she wanted it.

Every once in a while, she stole the old woman's keycard and returned to visit the void. She wasn't sure what she wanted from it. She knew there was something nihilistic about filling her vision with darkness, about placing her spindly fingers on each side of the doorway and locking the soles of her overlarge boots to the floor tiles on the edge of forever, and projecting her upper torso out into… well, just out, really. But she wasn't sure it was the call of the grave that moved her to do it. There was also something beautiful about the gesture, about having access to the entire known world, and looking in the only direction where nothing existed. Moving into the unknown.

She wondered what it would feel like to plunge into that black pool.

Knowing that she could, if she so chose, was a kind of comfort. It suggested she still had agency.

"Still?" she snorted. When had she ever had agency, before this moment?

She closed the door again, and headed back into LeClair's office. The emptiness would keep. It would still be waiting for her when she needed it.

She hummed to herself as she shut the panel, blissfully ignoring the question that phrasing provoked.

1 October

Both Tarrows were in custody again, their fictional liberty revoked with prejudice, and that left only this final matter to resolve before the Survivors took action. Lillian wasn't at all sure that anything useful would come of it, but it was best to have all the available information before you made a decision.

The DUAL Core had been constructed for the specific purpose of making 'all the available information' and 'all possible information' into the same dataset. So, it was worth at least a brief visit.

Du started talking as soon as she entered the control room. "We figured it out."

She made a good for you face. "Welcome to the club."

Bremmel's arms were already flapping. Du took a step away from him. "Whatever you figured out," the podgy engineer cried, "it wasn't this."

"Can I tell her," Du asked, "or do y—"

"We're not in a pocket dimension," Bremmel blurted. He was almost shouting.

Lillian shrugged. "Okay."

"Everything else has-."

Du pulled the nearest hand out of the air, and when the older man stopped talking to react, the younger interrupted. "You're not explaining it. I figured it out, and your interpretation is invalid. Nothing in the simulation suggests—"

"What would you call it, then?"

"Restructured absence."

"Distinction with no difference."

Lillian snapped her fingers. "Boys."

Bremmel was fuming, so Du was the first to resume the explanation. "We've been comparing all the readings from around the Site exterior, particularly Dr. Okorie's micamantic explorations and the drone telemetry, with simulations run within the DUAL Core. We've still got access to data from the old Temporal Affairs Department database, as well as an ontokinesis baseline read of our home temporality from Site-120."

Anyone else might have trotted out that exhausted old 'English, please' line. Not Lillian. "Right. And?"

"And we can state with almost absolute certainty that we were not severed from the world, and the world was not erased. It's a third option."

"Matter of interpretation," Bremmel sniffed.

"What interpretation?" Lillian looked down at the Core, which was no longer spinning. Its work, for the moment, was done. She felt a brief, complex pang of envy. "What third option?"

Du was smiling, but it was not a happy smile. "We cracked it when we realized the parallels with the Core itself, the things you said it was capable of doing under severe orphic stress. Whatever produced this effect—"

"—and it would have to be a being, or a machine, of extraordinary, unprecedented potency," Bremmel interrupted.

"— the effect was this." Du took a deep breath. "Reality was not altered to remove us from baseline, or baseline from around us. Reality was rebuilt from scratch, with only us in it."

"So," Lillian concluded, "obviously I'm going."

McInnis tented his fingers. "I don't see why."

The Survivors were gathered in his dining room, which had become their makeshift boardroom. The dinner table was polished oak, and very heavy, but not too terribly large. It was close quarters, but none of them particularly noticed. They'd been in tighter spaces together before, even if they didn't remember them all.

"If he tries to hop into my head…" Lillian made a quick little explosion gesture at her temples with both hands. "I can kill him again."

Harry looked ill. "He was only able to do that when you let him. We're immune to control."

"Well, who else then? I'm the most qualified."

Del placed her pistol on the table. The scalloped lower edge caught the light just so, and it looked like a row of gleaming teeth. "Depends on what qualifications we're looking for."

McInnis shook his head. "We aren't going to simply shoot him."

"I could shoot him creatively," she smiled.

"I want him to explain himself." McInnis looked from face to face to face, implicitly seeking consent he did not need. He had learned it from his deputy, who was watching now with both approval and trepidation. "I want to know why he did what he did, and how."

"You think he's just going to tell us?" Udo asked.

"He might tell me. I have something of a gift for gab."

The ASC was smiling, but there was a hard line at the middle. "I'm going to have to object very strenuously to sending you, sir."

McInnis nodded. "Your objection is noted."

"You know," said Harry, "in situations like this, I'm not really sure the existing hierarchy serves us all that well."

At any other time, McInnis might have willingly entertained this line of thought. He pretended to entertain it now. "You have a better suggestion?"

The archivist shrugged. "We could take a vote."

"I'm not sure that's necessary."

Nascimbeni grunted. "Go figure."

"The authority vested in me," McInnis said in his finest not-lecturing voice, "was not conditional on the state of reality. I am still the Director, and this is still my decision. And I am deciding to go." He straightened in his chair, and reached down to smooth the wrinkles from his pullover; informing them with body language only that the matter was now settled.

Del picked up the gun again. "At least let me go as backup."

"No. If he feels threatened, he might do something rash."

Nascimbeni pursed his lips. "Could hardly do worse than he already has."

"That is a risk," McInnis told them, "given the present circumscribed state of our entire reality, which I am wholly unwilling to take."

It was, McInnis thought, a not unpleasant inversion of responsibilities.

His people started him out on the path, then directed his every move. He'd made an effort to memorize the earliest steps, the strongest ones, the ones the two Tarrows had arrived at as the absolute best starting positions, and a great deal of what came after. Eventually the sequences became too complex for anyone but Lillian to remember, and so Lillian piped them into his earpiece, and he followed her instructions to the merest inflection of every letter.

He passed Ilse Reynders twice, coming and going. He wondered if anyone had thought to ask her what she regretted. He regretted that he had not.

Then again, it was probably no big secret.

It took over an hour to reach the point where the winding path reached the Site's outer skin, and penetrated beyond it. This was the moment when Veiksaar had realized one of the twins was on the right track, because she kept walking where there was no more ground to tread. McInnis had several minutes to prepare for the decision he had to make — or rather, to prepare not to make a decision. To do what his body would on no accounts do of its own volition, as soon as Lillian gave the order to his mind.

"Open the door, and go through," she said, and he did.

He wasn't sure what he expected to happen. His sense of vertigo suggested he would fall into the dark expanse, tumble through the space between worlds — no, the space enshrouding the only world that remained. That wasn't what happened. His imagination suggested his toe would encounter resistance where there should be none, and he would begin to walk on thin air. That wasn't what happened either.

What happened was

he was suddenly standing in a room with a hundred foot ceiling, every inch of it plastered with blinking lights and glowing lines of exposed wire. There was flame crackling across each string of copper. There were tones that made his teeth ache. There was, though very faintly, "Point Me At The Sky" by Pink Floyd in something between Morse Code and a lo-fi mix.

There was Reuben Wirth, bent over a tiny control unit, sitting on the tile floor. The tiles were cracked asbestos, pink and spackled with white. Like an ancient science lab.

Like somewhere Wynn Rydderech might once have worked.

Wirth looked up, blinked, and then blinked again. "Who's there?!" he asked, though they were not ten metres apart.

McInnis approached, hands spread to show he had neither evil intentions nor the means of effectuating them. "Director McInnis."

The young man, no longer so young and eyes very old, very tired, struggled to his feet. His blonde hair, now streaked with grey, was matted across his forehead. His labcoat was a mess. There were sweat stains all over him. The air was very humid. "How did you find me?"

"Rather a lot of effort." McInnis looked up at the machine again. It was black-panelled and gleaming, polished so finely that he could see it reflected in itself. "I imagine that was the idea."

"The idea was never to be found." Wirth spun, and reached up into the air to indicate his grand creation — for McInnis was certain, without knowing why, that this was nothing Rydderech could ever have made. There was something familiar about it. "I have to fix this. I can fix this."

"Assuming we're speaking on the same subject," McInnis began walking the perimeter of the room, taking in every socket and plug, "I take you to mean our present situation was not intended?"

Harsh laughter, of a kind he'd heard before several times out of several different throats. "Are you joking? Of course it wasn't intended! I didn't mean to wipe out six billion people!"

"You, or others like you, have done something like that before."

Wirth waved dismissively. "That's just the cycle. This was too sudden. Too much. It didn't mean anything. I didn't mean to do it! I thought I had it all figured out, but I can't," and suddenly he was pounding his forehead with one labcoat-tangled palm, "seem — to — think — straight!"

"Software/hardware conflict, perhaps?" McInnis suggested.

"Yeah. Something like that. Look." The other man suddenly darted forward, and seized McInnis by his jumper with greasy fingers. "Do you understand what it is you're seeing, here?"

"It would appear to be a very large machine."

"'Very large'." For a moment, it looked like Wirth was working up to spit in the Director's face. "You know what I used for the raw materials?"

"The entirety of Dr. Rydderech's factory?"

A flicker of uncertainty in the eyes. "Hardly a fraction. But you've got the right idea. This is the single most powerful ontokinetic engine ever constructed. With a single thought, you can change the very nature of reality. Shape it in your image. Alter even the minutest detail."

"It hardly seems necessary to reduce all creation to a blank slate to test such a power."

"That's not…! I already told you, that wasn't what I meant to do. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it." He was near tears. "I was just trying to change the wallpaper."

"The wallpaper?"

"That was my first test. My only test. Turn the wallpaper in my quarters pink, just to see if it would work. I looked up all the blueprints for Site-43, pictured the whole thing in my mind — like a cutaway drawing, perfect in every detail — and willed my wallpaper pink."

McInnis withdrew from the other man's grip, and stepped back. Just once. "How were you able to conceive of the entire facility all at once?"

"You'd be amazed what your hardware can do, with the right software."

"But what went wrong?"

Wirth spun again, and snatched up his remote control. There were a great many buttons on it, and a pair of medical-looking leads. "I misunderstood the plans. I got the functions wrong. I thought I was visualizing. I thought it was helping me visualize. But I was defining, instead."

"So… you visualized everything but Site-43 out of existence."

"No, I pictured Site-43 with pink wallpaper in my quarters, and the universe became Site-43 with pink wallpaper in my quarters." Wirth sighed ruefully.

It seemed an enviously mild reaction to McInnis. "I suppose we're lucky you did all that research first. If you had simply focused on your quarters instead of the entire Site… well, whoever thought pink wallpaper would cause the big crunch?"

"You came here to blame me." The long-dead researcher shook his head, soggy locks flipping from side to side with the motion. "I knew you would. But you came at just the right moment. I bought myself enough time."

"You might have remained hidden much longer had you constructed your machine in a far-off tunnel. We might never have noticed it, were it not physically connected to the Site."

"Pah." This time Wirth did spit, on the floor, then stared at it as though startled at what he had done. "I'm not down here because I thought you couldn't find it. I thought you couldn't find it, and I don't know how you did," and his eyes narrowed for a moment, only a moment, "but that wasn't the reason."

"Then what?"

"How often do you think of Acquisitions and Liquidation?"

There weren't many terms that could bring McInnis up short, but that was one. He made no effort to keep it off his face, because he knew he couldn't do it convincingly. "Every once in a while."

"And the pack of cigarettes in your desk?"

"Less often. But occasionally."

"Was there anything you could have done differently?"

He had a sudden image of gratuitous violence. His staff fleeing from him in terror. Smashed furniture. Blood. A red haze. And then a bricked-up wall, and one less Section at Site-43. He'd seen it before, in his dreams. He'd seen it once before that, in livid colour.

"No," he admitted. "Compulsion is compulsion. It happens to the best of us. Most personnel who last long enough are forced to face the spectre of a loss of control. Few so completely as you, of course, Dr. Wirth. You have my deepest sympathies."

The other man laughed. "Don't try to change the subject. I'm not under any sort of compulsion. I'm just not who you think I am, which is honestly very embarrassing, because we've met before, more than once, and you really ought to recognize me. I've seen you fail, and fail, and fail again, Allan. I've seen you fall short of your lofty intentions. I've seen you take shortcuts. I've seen you make mistakes. And today, I can feel them all. Right here. Right now."

"Right here," McInnis repeated. "At the peak of Rydderech's factory?"

"At its heart. You're thinking with lines instead of curves. We're standing where the man once lived, Allan. Where he suffered every day for half a century."

"But no longer?" The words seemed to echo.

"No. I've taken up his post. I've absorbed his guilt. Do you know how lonely he was? You think you do, but you don't. You think you regret what you've done to him, but you don't understand the half of it. You're too caught up in all the things you've done wrong that you can't take back. All of you are. Every last one of you. You're anchored to the same shoal by the weight of your shame, and you've polluted every inch of this place with it. It's in the walls. It's in the asbestos. It was giving you cancer. But I'm going to burn it all away."

"Burning asbestos is inadvisable," McInnis murmured.

Wirth glanced down at the controller, and smiled. "I'm a liberator," he said. "I'm going to present you with the finest freedom of all."

"And what is that?"

"Freedom from guilt." He raised the remote, not to use it, but to fix the Director's attention on it. "I'm almost there."

"Almost…?"

"I know what went wrong. I know how to fix it. I have fixed it, the machine I mean." McInnis searched Wirth's eyes for uncertainty, confusion, dishonesty. There was only a crazed determination. "It works the way I thought it would work, now."

McInnis turned away, and examined the computers behind his manifestation point. "Why was there such a gap between conception and construction? Was it not your plan you were executing?"

By the sound of his voice, Wirth was frowning. "I and me are two different things, and sometimes more. Sometimes seven. You know what I mean. You've been through this rodeo twice already. So you can excuse me for being a little mixed up, given the circumstances."

"Given what you've done," McInnis brushed the cold steel and polymer with his fingertips, "forgiveness is entirely beyond my authority."

"There won't be anything to forgive, soon. It'll all be back to normal. It'll all be back. Then you can do whatever you want. We can shape it however we please."

McInnis let his hands fall back to his sides. He began adjusting the hem of his jumper. "My desires are now being taken into account? You're no longer a unilateral Creator?"

"Just leave me alone," Wirth cursed. "Leave me down here, with the machine. Let me finish my work. You just need to give me another chance." His voice was growing louder. He was approaching. "When I'm ready, I'll set things right again. I'm the only one who can."

McInnis turned to face him again. "I absolutely believe you."

She found him at the door, one hand on his temple, the other clutching the jamb. He didn't look up when she approached, but he did nod. "The matter is settled."

Lillian frowned. "Meaning?"

"Meaning the matter is settled. There is no further threat from Dr. Wirth." He looked up, and she saw his eyes were closed. He opened them. "Your hypotheses were entirely correct. As were Dr. Du's, and Dr. Bremmel's. I'll thank you to inform them."

He started down the hall.

"Where are you going?" she called after him.

"I'm feeling fatigued. It was a taxing interaction. Please do not attempt to enter the factory tonight; we will begin promemetic treatment tomorrow, to make the space more easily accessible."

Nascimbeni was waiting around the next bend, and he heard the tail end of that sentence. "Accessible for what?" he demanded, as the Director brushed past him.

"Hey," Lillian called. McInnis was moving fast for a man with such short legs. "HEY. What happened down there? What was it all about?"

"You already know what it was all about, Lillian." He glanced back at her, eyes hooded, but did not slow his roll. "Regrets. Let's do our best not to accrue any more, shall we?"

Karen shook her head. "And that's that? It's all settled?"

"I guess so." Harry spread his arms around the back of the couch, clutching at the frame beneath the fabric. "We're in this for the long haul, now."

She wrinkled her nose. "Well, it's nice that we're not in danger of any further program interruptions. I wonder how Allan managed that."

Harry shrugged. "He can be very convincing, when he wants to."

"Mmm." She ran her hands along the length of her slacks. Her legs were very long.

There was something in the set of her jaw that set him to wondering. "Good day at the office?"

She smiled. It reached her eyes. "Just another day at the beach. I never realized how much heavy lifting the Oversight was doing in Admin and Oversight."

"Yeah, I guess you don't miss Overwatch?"

"Over-the-shoulder-watch, more like." She stretched, and let her hands rest on the frame where they fell. "Without them, it's like managing a condo complex."

"Still sounds pretty cut-throat."

"I can cut throats from nine to five, and not bring it home with me."

He felt his left hand creeping up the back of the couch. "Sounds like you've got a lot of free time, for a change."

"Little bit." Her right hand crept down to meet his. "What about you? What have you got to work on, for the next few months?"

He met her eyes, held her gaze. "I did have a project in mind, actually."

"Do tell."

Their hands connected.

"Maybe I could show you, instead."

It was a sudden thing, what with both of them pulling at the same time. It was a miracle neither of them broke anything.

Not for lack of trying.

Debriefing Log 5243-C (Cont'd)

Subjects: Allan J. McInnis (Director, Site-43)

Officer of Record: Nhung T. Ngo (Deputy Chair, Psychology and Parapsychology Section, Site-43)

Dr. Ngo: Did it work?

Dir. McInnis: We'd become more self-sufficient since the first incident. Between our stores and the hydroponics, even with all the damage done by the open airlock, we were able to scrape by for a year.

Dr. Ngo: I mean, did Wirth's plan work? With the machine?

Dir. McInnis: No, it didn't.

Dr. Ngo: Why not?

Dir. McInnis: Because I shot him in the head, and left his body in the black.

Next to Nothing

The Breach Goes On: Deadlined

Nothing Changes