The Only Shadow - SCP Foundation

The Only Shadow

Ibanez supported Udo, still unsteady on her feet, as she sheeted the sand over top of him. They were both weeping freely. Harry was trying to hold it back, and failing. Allan's eyes were closed, and he was saying something softly under his breath. Perhaps a prayer. Wettle was sitting in the sand, like a toddler who had just been told something so big and terrible that he couldn't understand how he was meant to react to it. Then he leaned forward, into the sand, grabbed a handful and added to the grave.

One by one, they followed suit.

And buried the Survivor together.

Udo wouldn't need to cut her hair this time.

She had found on coming back to herself that her body had been scoured of everything not jointed down.

Del sat by the sad little heap of grey dust, and trailed just a little more through her fingers. "He knew this was going to happen."

Harry sat down beside her, nursing the hamstring he'd pulled dancing into the Salt Mines on wings of sand. "Did he tell you so?"

Del's voice was softer than he'd ever heard it. "No. But he did. I know he did because…" She smiled, and took up another handful. "I knew him."

"I also know," said Lillian, "but it's because a wizard told me so." She sat down beside Harry. The other two joined them; Wettle had never stood up. Lillian gestured at Udo, whose head was bobbing in obvious exhaustion. "And I don't mean her. I mean Rydderech. He told me one of the stars in our constellation was going to flare out. It was predetermined. Noè was never intending on making it out of this alive."

She'd hardly ever called him by his first name before. It sounded strange in Harry's ears. To most of them, he'd always just been Nascimbeni.

But not to Del. She fixed Lillian with what was probably meant to be a glare, but she clearly didn't have it in her yet, so it was simply a frustrated stare. "You didn't think to tell anyone?"

Lillian shrugged. "And what? Stop whoever it was from sacrificing themselves and saving reality? No. I didn't think about doing that. I respect all of you too much."

"Even me?" Wettle asked.

She took another handful of dust. Rather than sprinkling it on the grave, she sprinkled it on Wettle's pant leg. "It was never going to be you."

He sneezed. "Yeah."

Harry looked up at Lillian. She didn't let her less explosive emotions show easily, but he knew what the tightness around her eyes meant full well. "You would have been fine with me sacrificing myself?"

She put a protective arm around him, as though there were still somehow a chance he might try. "Fuck no. I've been watching you like a hawk. That martyr complex. You're such a pain in my ass, Harry."

But she was smiling while she said it.

Del wasn't. "Sure. He couldn't do it, but Noè was fine. Noè could die."

"Of the seven of us," said Allan, "only he and I could make such a decision informed."

Udo frowned. "What do you mean?"

Allan always had the look of a man who made up his mask in the morning, and didn't take it off until he went to bed, if even then. But right now, the mask was slipping, if only slightly. His voice was a little hoarse. His smile was a little bit tight. "You need the full perspective of age to know precisely what will be lost, when you pass from this world. What you will miss. Who will miss you. What damage will be done. True sacrifice is only possible when one can see every line on that terrible ledger. Sacrifice in haste is merely foolishness. Chief Nascimbeni…" He swallowed, and looked down at the little pile of earth. "Noè, was no fool."

"He had a son." Del put her hand on the top of the grave, imprinting it with the outline of her fingers and palm. "A granddaughter."

"He knew they were safe," said Harry.

Wettle brushed the dust off his pant leg, transferring it to the other in the process. "How is everybody knowing things they can't know, now? Am I the only one who can't?"

Harry realized what the old man had been up to in the weeks before the Breach. "He told me he could sense that his affairs were in order back in baseline. Christ, I should have known what he was planning."

"It was a plan we all agreed to," Udo reminded him. "Just because he was okay with dying doesn't mean he wanted it to happen, or knew it would, or that we didn't all know it was possible. It probably just gave him courage, knowing all he had to worry about was not failing."

"And he did not fail," said Allan. It had the timbre of an incantation.

Del seemed even smaller than usual, her cheekbones more prominent, her cheeks hollow. "I guess that goes on his tombstone."

"He could still be alive when the timeline ticks over," said Udo. She didn't sound confident. "We've never… lost anyone, before. Not one of us."

"Lots of people who aren't us have died," Wettle reminded them, "and been okay when we got back home. Logically, we should expect the same for him. I published a paper on this after the last deadline. Yes, Harry, in JORTS."

Harry raised his hands defensively. "I didn't say anything."

"We're different, though," said Lillian. "We know we're different."

Udo still had enough energy left to flash her orange eyes one more time. "Maybe good different. We've got abilities nobody else has. Advantages. The deadlines are like games, and we're the player characters. There's no reason to think that what happens in a deadline doesn't stay in the deadline."

"We move to where our counterparts are standing when the shift comes," said Lillian. "We keep our memories when we arrive. We aren't the versions of ourselves that lived these lives. I think he'll be gone when we get back." She added yet another handful of dust to the pile, at the same time Del did, and their fingers briefly touched. "I'm sorry."

Del stood up. "Don't be sorry for me. Be sorry for Flora and Gallo."

"If we truly have lost him," Allan said as she walked a few paces away, aimlessly, "it is a terrible shame, and I will miss him. We should hold a service, in the time that's left to us here."

"What if we do that," said Wettle, "and then find out he's fine in baseline?"

"Then we will have found the words to tell him things he ought to know about himself." Allan stood as well, and straightened his rumpled jumper. "Things we should have told him long ago."

There was no podium, and there were no chairs. Udo had fashioned all manner of strange things from the surrounding sands over the past year, but it would have felt tacky and crass. So they stood in a horseshoe around their fallen friend, and made it a conversation.

"I have known few people at Site-43 longer than I knew Noè Nascimbeni." The Director's voice was strong, though it seemed a new line had appeared in the middle of his forehead, and his eyes were narrowed as though the words gave him pain. "He was a model member of personnel, and I mean this literally: I modelled myself, to an extent, on his example."

The others shared a glance. This was new information.

"He was dedicated to his work, and he cared about his people. He gave everything he had to give." Allan drew a deep breath. "And when I asked him to give more than that, he did. Time and again. And now I have used him up, and he is gone. It is unfair, but in this he acts as a new example to me: the potential extent of what we might lose in this crusade against nihilism which has absorbed all our lives since September the eighth, 2002." To their astonishment, all of them, there was the faintest of quavers in their leader's voice now. "It has cost me one of my oldest friends. I should have been a better friend to him, and perhaps a worse Director. It is to his credit that he rarely complained about these disparities, and went willingly to the end that now has taken him. I do not expect to see his ghost in the halls when next the hour rolls on, going through the motions like the other souls lost to this anomaly. I believe he has found his rest." He seemed to shrink, as Del had before him. "It was well-earned."

Del's mouth was a tiny, compressed slit of flesh, and it parted just a little as she choked: "I love you, Noè." And she turned away.

"He once helped me get my hand out of a vending machine slot," said Harry. All of them laughed; though her back was turned, they could see that even Del was shuddering, and not all to the bad. "I was going for one of those marshmallow rice crispies we used to have, and it didn't fall down when I paid. When he saw me, he said, and I quote: 'Isn't that basically cannibalism?'" He glanced between them apologetically. "I'm sorry. That's all I know how to do at a moment like this."

Udo placed a hand on his shoulder. "It was the right thing. He'd have appreciated it." She took off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. "He was the only one who knew I was having an affair with Dougall."

Wettle turned to stare at her, very nearly trampling the edge of the grave. "You what?"

She continued her confession without directly responding. "He found sand where there shouldn't have been any sand, and he pretended not to notice. He felt so guilty over things like that, later on. Letting things slide. He thought he was responsible for every bad thing that happened, and none of the good things. He cared about people…" She shook her head. "I think he spent so much time with machines because he cared about people too much. I always understood that about him. People can be a lot, sometimes. But he always tried. He had to keep so many secrets for so many people. More than one secret for Dougall. I know he wanted to tell Phil about his brother, but he knew it was better left unsaid. He wanted to tell his son why he hadn't been there for his family. Why what he was doing was important. But I don't think he would have, even if he'd been allowed, because he didn't really believe it was more important than the people he loved." She sighed. "He just knew it had to be done. I think that's what you mean, Allan. He had to be sure that burying his head in his work was the wrong thing for his family, for it to have meaning for him. It had to have a price, or it was worthless."

"There is little merit in an easy sacrifice," Allan agreed. "Noè was meritorious in the extreme."

"I liked him." Lillian brushed at the ragged line of the grave, rationalizing it just a little with the toe of her shoe. "That's it. He was a good guy. I can say I'll never forget him, but that's true of everybody. I thought he complained too much, and I thought it was gross that you were banging him, Del, but he was a no-nonsense get-er-done son of a bitch, and I'll probably miss him a lot when Allan replaces him with some idiot our age or younger with a boutique mental illness and a philosophy of engineering involving words like 'paradigm' and 'buy-in'."

They didn't laugh this time, but they definitely all stared at her. Even Del, who finally turned around and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand.

"The second-last of the taciturn curmudgeons," Lillian continued, "and we'd all be a whole lot happier if Trevor had died instead. Flora and Jo would probably both be better off. But life's a bitch, and death is a dick. At least Noè fucked off in style. I'm going to have a hell of a time planning a more spectacular exit." She turned to address the grave, and the simple stone they'd placed at its head, for Udo to engrave when her strength returned. Not that anyone would ever see the inscription. It was simply a matter of the fitness of things. "You raised the bar, old man, and it's not easy to impress me." She exhaled, messily, then looked to Wettle with the ghost of a sneer. "Well, go on. Talk about how he was the only one who never made fun of poor old Willie. Make this about you."

Wettle was staring at his hands. "I was going to say that every breath we've taken in five different realities came out of fans he kept spinning; every step we took was on floors he kept polished; he kept the roof over our heads and the lights on and the waste out of sight, out of mind. We're how much percent water? Out of his tanks and pipes, mostly. The Uncontained didn't kill him. It couldn't. Not without killing all of us, too."

He shrugged.

"Holy shit," said Harry.

"If he really is gone in baseline," Del whispered, "I'm making you repeat that at his funeral."

Wettle nodded. "Of course."

They stood there in silence for a few minutes, contemplating. When it didn't feel disrespectful, Harry asked: "What's going to happen if the Breach comes back next year?"

"I shall need to appoint a replacement," said Allan, "to carry out his duties."

"I wonder if the Victim ghosts will accept that," said Udo.

Del looked up at the sky. "I wonder if I will."

Ordinarily they would have mused on the meaning of the things they had just witnessed. Tried to find the lesson in it all.

But they weren't in any mood.

Udo and Del lay on the fresh-fallen sand, which had the texture and softness of snow after the energies that had coursed through it. Harry and Lillian sat beside the tombstone they'd erected for humanity, and looked up at the impossible thing in the sky.

As it always had, perhaps always would, Acroamatic Abatement Facility AAF-D loomed over them. As though gravity were merely a suggestion.

Allan stood by his friend's grave, hands clasped behind his back, head bowed in thought. They figured he was composing a proper eulogy.

It was Wettle who finally found something to say, cross-legged in the ashes of everything.

"Did you guys ever meet his granddaughter?"

Lillian didn't react. Harry looked over, and shook his head. Del sat up, and Udo reached over to rub her friend's back. Allan turned to face them again, and said: "I never did."

"Me either." Wettle chewed something; from where Harry was lying, it sounded like he had sand in his mouth. He certainly had it all over his beard. Most of them were still covered in it, after their hair-raising adventure in extreme silicon platforming. "But he told me something once. Something he was really proud of." Wettle smiled. "I bet he thought I wasn't listening."

Lillian turned her head. "Imagine that."

"But you were listening," Del prompted. Her voice was still hoarse.

Wettle nodded. "He said his granddaughter… she told him…" Wettle looked up, and to Harry's surprise, there were tears in the big man's eyes.

"She told him he could fix anything."

None of them said a word in confirmation. They simply sat together in the silence of the ultimate proof.

This time the sands carried them gently to their destination.

They stepped into the AAF-D airlock, and watched the platform waterfall back down to cover the graves, both real and symbolic, with another fresh layer of soil.

They stood together at the threshold, tightly packed in the narrow space. It was hard to say who reached out first, but by the time the change finally came, they were all holding hands.

The first thing they saw, when it all came rushing back, was the mural of the Victims on the wall.

As one, they stepped out into the airlock approach.

They didn't need to discuss their destination.

2018

9 September

Baseline Temporality

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

They found him in Health and Pathology, in a private room. Forsythe looked like she wanted to protest when they insisted on going in together, given the state of their clothing and hygiene, but she didn't. Probably because it didn't matter. Billie made Wettle brush out his beard, and they all had to take off their boots and shoes and put on loafers with disposable covers before she allowed them to pass.

Noè Nascimbeni lay on a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and a heart rate monitor. He was breathing very low.

His son and his granddaughter were already there.

They had their hands on his shoulders.

Debriefing Log 5243-D/E (Cont'd)

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

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

Dr. Ngo: Dr. Sokolsky has the tape recorder, if any of you were wondering. He's made sure the contents are preserved.

Dir. McInnis: That's good.

Dr. Ngo: Do you have anything further to say, sir?

Dir. McInnis: I don't believe so. No.

<Silence on recording.>

<Dir. McInnis sighs.>

Dr. Ngo: They don't expect he'll come out of that coma.

Dir. McInnis: No.

Dr. Ngo: I don't know that he'd want to, really.

Dir. McInnis: I believe that he would.

<Silence on recording.>

Dr. Ngo: He's earned his rest.

Dir. McInnis: He might have earned it for all of us, if we're very, very lucky.

Neither Gallo nor Flora protested when Ibanez wanted to hold his hand. They sat the vigil together.

Flora was inconsolable. Gallo was visibly reserving his energies for comforting his daughter, but Ibanez knew what he was going through. She could see it in his eyes.

To a certain extent, she recognized the feeling because she was going through it herself.

"We're heading to the cafeteria." Gallo spoke like a man walking through a dream; Ibanez realized that he'd almost certainly never been in the depths of Site-43 before, and then an instant later, that she had probably been the one who'd brought him in. For this. "Flora needs to eat something."

"So do you," the young woman sniffled.

Her father pulled her close. He attempted a smile at Ibanez. "Will you stay with him?"

She nodded.

"Can we get you anything?"

She shook her head.

When they'd gone, she pulled her chair closer and placed the hand she was holding over his heart. She reached up to stroke his hair — she had no idea when it had gone fully grey, she realized, in her mind it had always been sleek and black — and it took her a moment to realize what felt so wrong.

She found his hat on a rack in the closet, and put it on him.

God dammit. She was crying again.

"Bet you never figured me for an old softie," she whispered.

She chose to interpret the little twitch of his mouth as the ghost of a smile.

This Forgotten Babylon

The Breach Goes On: Deadlined

Time Flat