The Night Fires - SCP Foundation

"No. He was killed almost ten years ago. Didn't you know?"

"No. He was killed almost ten years ago. Didn't you know?"

That got a rise out of him. His face turned towards her, sharp and surprised. He tried to get it under control, but she simply smiled, viciously, shifting under the covers, holding her cigarette aloft.

"How?"

"A 'joint operation' with the Foundation. You must have heard about it? It was so long ago, now. For about five seconds, we were at peace, cooperating. They were doing some experiment on a shrine near Mashhad, before he got sucked into some… other place."

"What other place?"

It was almost noon. Fatima liked the decadence of that. She shifted onto her back, flexing her toes. She hadn't taken a drag in a little while; she wanted to savour each moment, preserve it in amber. She was enjoying this. It was better for him to be in pain than to be numb.

He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, his back to her. She lifted a finger, lazily, tracing the scars on his back. He hated when she did that, normally, but now he didn't even flinch. The temperature was like ice. A good sign, she supposed.

"A mythical one. The world of the Shahname, full of beasts and kings. Except… this one was wrong. It was burnt."

A bird call outside. The curtains waved, gauzy and white.

"Esfandiari tried everything to get him back. But then the Foundation struck - you heard about that, surely? Kaveh?"

He nodded. Everyone had heard about Kaveh, whether they were within the organisation or outside it. 51 dead. A brutal killing, apparently unprovoked. But it was only one of many, now.

"One of the Foundation's own had been sucked in with him. They wanted our research - looking for a way to bring her back. And they did. They needed to burn something, something over there. And there was only one thing they could find…"

That got him. He turned, slowly, a strange look on his face - a face no longer used to contortion. "They burnt him?"

Fatima's smile widened. "Oh, yes. But it didn't work. They didn't get their agent back. I don't know why. So he died for - well, for less than nothing."

He snarled, grabbing her, clenching her arms, pushing her against the wall, as she laughed and laughed and -

A singing began, scratchy and artificial. He stopped. Fatima shook herself, her smile fading. "Time for zuhr."

He relaxed his grip, shifting across, awkward and clumsy. He watched as she got up, put out her cigarette, stretched and began to dress. A long, deep blue dress; a lighter blue hijab.

"We're not in Iran, you know. Nobody will care if you skip prayer."

"I'll care." A brief look in the mirror; a hair, brushed away.

"You commit adultery and then scurry away to prayer? Isn't that… I don't know, hypocrisy?"

It was her turn to look sharply at him. "Sin is not unbelief, Farhan. You ought to learn that." She smiled, slightly, and turned to leave.

It had been a poor blow, but it seemed to have stung. He didn't know why he'd bothered. If it hurt her, that was what she wanted. It was why he was here.

He looked around the room. It was clearly ORIA-assigned - cheap, cracked, boiling in summer and freezing in winter. They were the only landlord ever looked at with compassion by their tenants, because the tenants were too stupid to realise they were being exploited. It was all part of the mission.

Sadr was dead…

He hadn't been expecting that, he really hadn't. It had jolted paths in his brain he's thought were long gone. It didn't exactly make him feel sad, or regretful - just lit up certain lights by reflex. Sadr had been a part of his life for so long, even now, that he couldn't imagine that he was really gone.

Ten years…

The fire flickered, slightly. He still felt anger, of course. Why would Sadr do that? He had played at fieldwork, but he wasn't made for it. He was a scientist. Why would he let them put him there? Why would he let himself die?

Why would the Foundation do that?

He got up, walking to the window. Fatima could be seen, distantly, walking carefully across the cobbles. The Bosphorus glimmered in the distance. It was so quiet here. Outside of tourist season, in the autumn, Sultanahmet seemed to exist just for him.

But the domes on the mosques reminded him of Cairo…

He turned away. He shook himself. He put on his clothes and walked away.

And then the leaves fell, and it was winter.

Istanbul was freezing. The city had not known a February like this in some time. When the temperatures just kept rising and rising, snow like this was almost a miracle. Children were playing outside, throwing snowballs, building snowmen. The same pursuits as always, as everywhere else.

Farhan was inside, cleaning his gun. The heating was on, but barely; his teeth chattered in the cold. He was not in a part of Istanbul that tourists ventured into. It was a miserable little suburb, endless identical streets of low-rise apartments and cheap restaurants. It was Istanbul for the locals. He did not prefer it, but he couldn't stand the centre any more.

He'd come off a job in Bahrain, then another one here, and now he had nothing. A couple of fat paychecks would let him rest for a while. There was time. He'd never spent much time in Istanbul. He supposed it was something he ought to do, to soak up some culture. Sadr would have said so.

Ten whole years…

He barely went out at all any more. Occasionally, a need would overtake him. A woman, a nice meal, a walk. Then he'd come back here, and finish his little rituals. The gun was cleaned, over and over again. Another book, perhaps. He'd been reading a lot of Egyptian fiction recently. Interwar stuff. It helped him create a new image in his head for Cairo, something wholly different. The name would, perhaps, form different associations, different pathways in his head.

Then there was cookery. He'd become quite good. Each spice or herb had its own property, and the interaction between it and the basic elements - meat, vegetable, fish - allowed for infinite possibilities. Trying to find something new, a combination that was both novel and functional, was something that could occupy him forever.

Otherwise, his life was prosaic. Food, television, pornography. He sometimes amused himself by looking out in the street, coming up with little stories about his neighbours' lives. There was a woman opposite whose children had recently -

There was a knock at the door.

He tensed. He was expecting nobody. It was probably a salesman - but how had they got into the building without buzzing the door? He placed the pieces of his gun down, and felt for his knife. Its metal was cold, comforting.

He moved over and looked through the peephole. A woman was standing there, looking bored. She didn't look armed. He relaxed, minutely, but still opened the door very carefully.

She was in her late thirties, early forties. She looked Turkish to him. She did not smile at him, but simply cocked her head on one side. "Farhan Moradi?"

He nodded; she did the same. "May I come in?"

He shouldn't. This was dangerous. A stranger turning up at his door, knowing his name -

- but this was always how it happened, wasn't it? He'd tried other methods, but the clients were never suitable. Never had enough money, or enough understanding of what he did. No, the jobs he took were always something like this; a casual meeting in a park, a note slipped across a table. A woman turning up at his door…

He opened and gestured to her. A brief, tight smile. No playfulness. She sat down on a chair, staring at him. He smiled back.

"Tea? Coffee?"

"No, thank you."

He nodded, sitting opposite her. She continued to stare, head moving slightly, as if trying to see into his skull. He smiled again, wider. "See something you like?"

"In a sense. I have a job for you."

He nodded again. He liked this. It was simpler, easier. Every pleasantry seemed more and more of an exhaustion each passing year.

"Who's the target?"

"Not a who. A what. I need someone familiar enough with cracking Foundation security procedures to break into a secure facility. Site-76."

This took him by surprise. He leant back, considering, eyes wide. Site-76? That was in America. It held a large number of smaller items, Daevite and Central Asian objects. And the Foundation? Sure, he'd had dealings with them in the past, but he was loathe to do so again…

"That will be difficult. A number of particularly secure items are held there - the Foundation will have taken its security very seriously."

"Do you know what SCP-140 is?"

He shook his head. This woman wasn't Turkish - he recognised the accent. It was Uzbek.

"It's a book. Just a book. I doubt it will be their highest priority. Getting in will be difficult, but once we're in, it shouldn't be too difficult to locate and retrieve."

"What's so special about this book?"

"That's for me to know."

"If it has anomalous properties, then I'll need to know what we're up against…"

"I will pay you 2.3 million USD."

This was wrong. That was far too much. He stood up, shaking his head. "Sorry. You've got the wrong person. I'm not interested."

That stare was unnerving him. He saw something - a ghost of a smile, a little twitch, something incorrect. She had been waiting for this. She wanted him to refuse.

"You will do this, Farhan. Because you and I share something in common."

"And what's that?"

"Once, we both loved Parviz Sadr."

That night, Farhan slept, and Farhan dreamt.

The campfire never came to him in a jungle any more. It didn't feel the need to expend energy on such rhetorical flourishes. Farhan knew it, knew the shape of it, the intention it poured into himself. The fire understood him too; a little more mocking, a little more contemptuous each day. The relationship felt less friendly, now; more like a business arrangement.

"You need to talk to me?"

He nodded, approaching. "I need advice."

"I can see what you see. You feel what I feel. Feast on this meal."

"But…"

Ten years since Sadr's death. Closer to sixteen since he'd last seen him. In all that time, he'd barely thought about him. He hadn't had very much contact with the ORIA either. A freelance operation here and there, but his handler was someone else, someone he didn't know. That was part of a different life, a different Farhan. He hadn't thought to ask.

Sadr had always been worried. A slight nervousness; a jollity and expansiveness that would slowly, gradually, contract as an operation wore on. Sadr had cared. Sadr had cared more than anything - about Farhan, about the ORIA, about the mission. It was the bones of him, for better or for worse.

The few times he'd thought about him, he imagined that he'd taken it on the chin, when Farhan left. That he'd got over it, and was nursing a bruise, and that - yes, that one day they'd see each other again. An inevitable confrontation, or reconciliation. That they'd both come to some understanding; a peace each one of them could have been satisfied with.

"I didn't see your sediment, as holding such sweet sentiment." The fire curled, spitting upwards.

And now he was dead. A body. Meaningless. Things just kept happening.

Sadr had saved his life, saddling him with the flame. Or - was that fair? He'd chosen to bind with it. Wasn't it Farhan's choice? Sadr had just made the introductions; he hadn't saddled him with anything.

Except…

Wasn't it Sadr who had taken him from the streets, plucked him from obscurity? Become like a father, or an older brother? Wasn't it Sadr who had made him an agent, given him direction, purpose, life? Turned him into their finest tool, sent him to -

A scalpel, piercing his flesh…

"But still your body needs to eat."

The flame rose higher, almost a column. It teased and danced upwards. It snarled, over his head, flashing and twisting.

"Take her money, sate your burning heat."

Farhan stared at it. He'd already known that he was taking the job, the second she'd said his name. Maybe the second Fatima had.

To enter a Foundation site, there were five trials that needed to be overcome; five tests of strength, resolve. The first was simple: find the place. Foundation sites, with typical overindulgence, would often move, or be disguised, or have their location anomalously masked, so the searcher could never grasp the concept in his head.

This was stupid. All of these measures could be overcome; their presence was just a sign you were on the right track. He'd forged uniforms, IDs, database entries; they were guests, a routine inspection. They drove up to the site, green pines under a grey sky, rain soaking the earth and grass. Mud splashed their tires.

The second trial was to fool the guards. This was harder; they were trained to detect lies, to understand falsehood on a deeper level. But, again, this just meant a set of practices; and practices can be memorised, and countered. They nodded, bored, and waved them through. The woman did not flinch; she was trained in this too, familiar with their procedures.

She was a strange one. She had left no contact number; she simply turned up when he was ready, after all the arrangements had been put in place. He felt - not tenderness, not any more, but something similar. A kinship. There was scarring on her, he could see it - disguised with concealer, makeup, but there, under the surface, a crisscross of lines on her cheek.

The third trial was finding the anomaly. It was not unusual for an inspection to check on specific anomalies, to test their containment level. The Foundation database was vast, untameable. Different realities and timelines crisscrossed it; the organisation itself was one big anomaly, the biggest of them all, just waiting to be reclaimed.

But he didn't do that any more. Reclamation was someone else's game. He pictured Fatima, in his mind's eye. She'd joined after his time, well after - but he'd seen her work. The eyes as she stared down the barrel of a gun, focused on the target. Her fingers, laced with fine sweat. A single strand of hair, loose, the wind waving it across her forehead. She hadn't even noticed - no time for that. A trigger, squeezed, so gently…

He located the item. In a desk, in a secure vault. He nodded at the woman. She was looking at a different entry - a book, golden, with moving pictures…

The fourth trial was to enter the vault. He kept lookout for this part, after dispatching the single - the single! - armed guard. The woman knelt down, and sliced a mark in her cheek. He frowned, confused, until he saw the blood suspended in space, leaking out according to the movements of her fingers. It entered the console…

…he'd seen people spill blood for a cause before. Sadr had done it. He'd volunteered for fieldwork, ages ago, before Egypt - a bar in Volgograd, an ancient building from before the war. Two former GRU-P agents, who knew something about a reality alteration in Almaty. A knife had come out; his mentor, taken aback, stumbling, holding his arm, feeling the wet of it, and then there was the speed with which Farhan had raised his gun and -

A click. The door was open. The alarms, mercifully, did not go off. And then there was the fifth trial, the last one. To place your fingers around the anomaly, and take it. To dare to be so bold. To defy the Foundation, the ooze of it, the sprawling mass of it…

But he didn't care about that any more. He saw Sadr's face, enveloped by flame, screaming and screaming until all he believed in was obliterated by pain.

The room was stark, white, too large and too empty. Only a single desk, an old, wooden affair, stood in the centre. They approached it. She knelt down, opening the drawer - and there it was, sitting flat and inert. She couldn't believe her luck - it had been that easy. She almost giggled. She extended her hand forward -

"I think that's enough for one day."

The two of them spun around. The room had been empty, just a moment ago. But there, sitting on a chair, smoking a cigarette, smiling a sharp little smile…

Fatima raised her gun, aiming it at Farhan. "Hello, sweetheart. Enjoying the sights?"

Farhan swallowed, hard, and raised his own. "Why?"

"I can't let you steal it." Her voice was soft, almost kind. "I let you get this far. The Foundation need to be less complacent with it; they need to toughen its security. They need to know how close you got. But I can't let you actually take it."

"You're not reclaiming it?"

"Some things cannot be used. They can only be misused. The Foundation has the… capacity for better security than we could dream of, if only they'd use it. And don't bother, Nodira - I can shoot you faster."

The woman froze, her hand in midair, closing on her holster. "You know me."

"Oh, yes. We recognise you. The arrogance of it, that Foundation arrogance - not even bothering to change your face…"

"Foundation?" Farhan stepped back, looking at the woman, considering her. He blinked, fast. "Who are you?"

The woman sighed, and reached for the book. Both of them trained their guns on her. She stopped, and smiled, teeth wide and black.

"Even you won't get far, Nodira. Don't try it."

The woman laughed. She kept laughing, long and loud. The alarms started; distant voices could be heard. As they turned - a split-second lapse in concentration - the woman drew her knife, and slashed her own cheek, leaving a long, vicious scar, and the blood began pouring out, and the air began glowing red, and -

- and it was all so much stuff. It was a pantomime, these people, this place. Fatima discharged her gun, swore, reloaded, as the woman morphed, changed…

Farhan lowered his own gun. He was cold. He turned and walked away. In the commotion, he slipped out of Site-76. He left America. He returned to Istanbul. He heard what had happened months later; the woman had disappeared, Fatima had been caught but had escaped. He shrugged, and kept cleaning his gun.

It was a cold winter; it was a hot summer. Farhan did nothing. He took on other jobs. He grew older. He read more, he watched more, he fucked women in strange hotels before killing them for money. His beard began to be flecked with grey.

He didn't see Fatima again. He didn't think about Sadr. His life finished, and he expired, cold, alone. He had survived to the end, and then died.

He floated through space, through time. He saw himself. He saw his life, and moved his hand towards it. The stars here were closer, but smaller; just little balls of fire, that he could bat away with his hand. He placed a finger on his timeline…

There he was, a boy, a teenager. There was Sadr, walking, about to meet him. He brushed him away, like dust, ashes. There was Egypt, the colonel, the… he moved his hand, brushing that away too. Only ashes. Only…

He wiped it all. The death. The killing. The long, cold nights. The boredom. The black, high-rise buildings. Smoking past midnight. The nightmares. Fatima. An owl, hooting, in the distance. A lover, saying goodbye to him on a bridge, tearful, emotional, as he stared through her. The smell of the waves over concrete.

An expedition in a desert; night fires. Boarding a gas tanker off the coast of Yemen. A death, a murder, in Cape Town. Alcohol, evaporating from his mouth, turning to burnt steam. The sight of poppy fields. A clock, chiming in London. The pain of the baton, the knife.

There he was again, a child. A thief. Stealing from a supermarket. Laughing, his friends laughing, punching playfully. Friendship, camraderie. He sat down, watching it. There. That was it. That was the moment. He was innocent again.

A lamb of God.

He closed his eyes, screwing them up, silent as the tears came. He wanted to scream. He'd wanted it so badly, more than he'd wanted anything. But the fire rose inside him, and spilt out, bursting everywhere. It all came flooding back. The campfire laughed, rising high, enclosing him, choking him, enveloping him like an old, old friend…

"Wake up, sleepyhead."

He jerked awake. The sheets were soaked in sweat. He coughed, spluttering, his head aching. It was night. The thin blinds, the electric light through the window.

"Where am I?"

Fatima laughed, and stood up. "You're safe. In a hotel, in Kansas City. Not the most inspiring place I've ever been to, but…"

She drew back the curtains. More light came in, electric and stultifying but, oddly, warming. He took deep breaths, sitting up, looking around.

"What happened?"

"She did something to your head. She tried to rewrite you, your history, but it didn't stick. It's an occupational hazard, when dealing with people like her."

Voices sounded below. People laughing. Someone shouting, drunkenly, at a doorman. A fly was in the room with them, its whine turning as it flew.

"Who was she?"

"A former Foundation agent. A matriarch of the Daeva, who has lived longer than history itself. A problem. A threat. Does it matter? I thought you didn't care about those kinds of things."

He looked at her. She was smiling at him, eyebrow cocked. He sighed. "No. I suppose I don't."

He got up, stretched. He was still in his trousers, but his shirt was slung over the side of a chair. He began to button it up.

"Don't you want to know what happened, at least? Whether she lived or died?"

He kept buttoning. He felt in his pockets - good. Passport, wallet. He checked - nothing taken. His phone lit up; it had only been a day. A flight back to Istanbul was already booked for the morning.

"No. I don't."

He didn't look back. He went to the door, and closed it quietly behind him. It made a small click as it locked; the dust, unsettled, fell back to the floor.