There was no reveille, but Keagan was woken early with the 
slightest pangs of a headache by the purposeful activity around him 
of the other men, who rose, dressed, made their beds to the most 
exacting standards, ate breakfast and filed out with barely a word 
exchanged. The other newcomers were not quite as regimented but 
still seemed to have a relatively good idea where they were 
expected and had similarly exchanged farewells and left before 
Keagan had entirely regained his wits. Keagan remembered he was 
supposed to be working in the garage and, swaddling himself up as 
best as he could, helped himself to some rapidly cooling but still 
appetising salted porridge from the tureen left at the kitchen end of 
the barracks and braved the elements again. 


The sun was bright—dazzlingly so, reflecting from the pure white 
glacier that Keagan now saw dominated the landscape, hills and 
crests of snow-covered ice, like a great inland sea—but gave off 
very little warmth, and though the wind had died down Keagan still 
found himself rushing for the shelter of the garage. He caught a few 
glimpses of the inhabitants of the huts, filing into the back of trucks 
presumably being driven by Schaeffer's men. 


Teitur turned out to be a grizzled-looking older man with one eye— 
the other was just a poorly healed fused hollow—and wild greying 


SCP-682 began to grow larger, and gained the ability to explode 
whenever threatened, and then reconstitute itself. SCP-682 
eventually breached containment in this state, causing causalities. 
SCP-682 was successfully subdued by gunfire after it returned to its 
normal state, and was recontained. 


Notes: | have a theory on what just occurred: SCP-3108 causes 
things to be "inferior" to the subject, right? Well, SCP-3108 
transformed SCP-682 into something that would be seen as worse 
and inferior by the Foundation: larger, and stronger, strong enough 
to break containment. SCP-682 actually decreasing in power 
wouldn't actually be seen as inferior to us. — Dr. Westrin 


Item: SCP-2719 


Tissue SCP-682 Test Record: 
SCP-682 went inside. 


Termination Test Record: 
Outside. 


Item: SCP-106 


Tissue Test Record: 
N/A 


Termination Test Record: 
Denied by O5-Command 


Notes: NO NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! That is a disaster waiting to 
happen! For one thing the herculean effort required to move either 
SCP individually is huge! Not to mention creating a containment cell 
capable of containing both of them is almost impossible. Also there 
is the risk that SCP-106 would enter a lulling phase and we would 
have to wait for months for anything to happen, presuming SCP-106 
would even try preying on SCP-682 to begin with. 


However worst of all is the risk of them both breaching containment 
simultaneously. If this were to happen it could cause a chain 


blond hair in a corona around his head, thinning on top. He grunted 
something in Danish when Keagan arrived then turned back to what 
he was doing. Keagan coughed to attract his attention and 
pantomimed putting the parts back in the Land-Rovers. Teitur 
shrugged, which Keagan took to mean go ahead, no-one else is 
going to do it. Teitur ignored a couple of attempts at conversation— 
the possibility didn't escape Keagan that he might not understand 
English—but seemed happy to give Keagan the task of reversing his 
aggressive disassembly of the faulty engines while he focused on 
less demanding tasks such as replacing the chains on the wheels of 
the huge trucks Keagan guessed were the Unimogs Kaali had 
mentioned. 


Around 1030 Blaer dropped by to tell Keagan that Commodore 
Schaeffer was ready for him to take a trip up to the iceface. Keagan 
left immediately, but when they arrived back at the radio tower were 
met by a rather confused Kaali, who asked where the truck was. It 
emerged they had expected Keagan to bring around the necessary 
transport, requiring a second trip before all was in order to depart. 
Commodore Schaeffer, sealed against the elements in his vast 
parka, swung himself up into the passenger seat with two more of 
his men climbing up behind them, and indicated that Keagan should 
drive out of the base on the north road—one might call it a dirt track 
except the dirt was covered by a good inch of ice and snow—uphill 
to the glacier. Keagan had driven trucks on a semi-regular basis to 
deliver them back to clients but on icy roads only sparingly, and 
found the Unimog devastatingly difficult to control, slipping from side 
to side of the track. He glanced at Schaeffer, wondering what a fool 
he was making of himself. 


"You're doing fine," he said. "How are you doing on the 88s?" 


"Um," Keagan struggled to correct the course of the truck to guide it 
through the gate being held open by another of Schaeffer's men, 
"from what | can see the carburettor on one of them is busted. The 
cam's broken." He wasn't sure whether that was due to weakening 
from repeated exposure to freezing conditions or Teitur's violent 
maintenance. "It's a Weber, so it's not really designed for these 
conditions anyway. | can try and improvise something but it would 
be best if | were able to get spares in; | only saw a few bulbs and 


spark plugs in the garage." 


Schaeffer waved a hand. "| can have Blaer pick some up when he 
flies to Kulusuk for supplies. Just tell him what you need." 


The wind outside the cinderblock breakers was as ferocious as Kaali 
had claimed—buffeting the vehicle so badly that at times he could 
hear the suspension creaking as two wheels on one side came 
close to leaving the surface of the road. Commodore Schaeffer took 
to these conditions with practiced ease, leaning towards the side 
being lifted up by the wind to help keep the truck level. 


"Up ahead," he said, pointing to a number of distant pinpricks on the 
side of the mountainous glacier. "Those are the boreholes. In the 
summer we spray black paint and let the sun do the work—in winter 
we have to rely on pneumatic drills and pickaxes." 


As they got closer, the nearest site resolved itself into a number of 
trucks and a field tent, surrounded by a number of smaller 
windbreakers—sheet metal over wooden frames driven into the 
ground at an angle to slow the wind without taking the full brunt 
themselves. Schaeffer got out and bid Keagan to follow, ducking 
between the breakers. Even inside Keagan's hood the sound of the 
drills was deafening, and a sharp smell of burning plastic filled the 
air. The glacier loomed in front of them—a frozen tidal wave, pouring 
over the land in smooth undulations twenty feet high. A tunnel— 
perhaps six feet high, four or five feet wide, and angled sharply 
downwards had been cut into the ice and it was from here that the 
drills sounded. 


Heavy cables had been laid from the tent into the borehole and as 
they ducked inside Keagan saw they powered a string of mining 
lights, receding down into the glacier. Keagan was shocked at the 
scale of the enterprise—upwards of twenty men were working in the 
tunnel, passing up buckets of ice from deeper down and reinforcing 
the roof of the tunnel with a wooden crib. 


"Watch where you put your feet," Schaeffer shouted over the drills 
as he navigated the steep slope down into the glacier. Keagan 

followed, his soles losing their grip in places with the result that his 
descent was not so much a climb as a controlled slither. What was 


at the bottom—a patch a couple of feet square now but rapidly being 
expanded by workers chipping away at the ice—was a dull greyish- 
green substance, composed of several layers of large, roughly leaf- 
shaped chunks of material, each about the size of a fist. 


"That's what we're here for," Schaeffer said. Keagan reached out to 
touch the material, noting the way it seemed to exude a dull heat of 
its own, but Schaeffer reached out and grabbed his hand. 


"It's scales," Keagan said. "Gigantic scales. This is the monster Sir 
Malcolm was talking about. You're digging it up." 


"Yes, or part of it. It's not actually a snake—it's a species of glass 
lizard, a limbless reptile with a lot in common with the Komodo 
dragon, and it's the largest terrestrial organism on the planet. The 
reactionaries have known about it since Greenpeace tried to do a 
documentary on the glacier in 2010, around the same time they sent 
the Esperanza to protest the oil platforms. The filmmakers found 
part of it coiled through a number of caverns deep in the glacier. The 
reactionaries covered it up and secured the crevasse that leads 
down into the caverns, but most of it is still buried in the glacier." 


"How big is it?” Keagan wondered at the notion of a creature so big 
the Foundation could only secure part of it. 


"Our best guess is somewhere between 8 and 12km long. We're 
near the head here, which is where we want to be." 


"And Sir Malcolm says you plan to wake it up. What are you 
planning to use, napalm?" He had meant it to be a joke. 


"Actually, napalm would be far too weak. Have you heard of the 
square-cube law?" 


Keagan shook his head. 


"It's the principle that the larger a structure is, the stronger the 
materials you need to make it out of." To Keagan it just seemed like 
common sense. "It's why you don't see insects the size of cars— 
their exoskeletons couldn't support a body that size. Whales can be 
much larger than elephants because gravity doesn't affect them the 


same way in water. To put it another way, think of the size of the 
steel girders needed to support a skyscraper." Keagan had seen the 
construction of The Shard in London and nodded. "Well, the tallest 
building in Europe is 340m high. Imagine how strong the bones and 
flesh of this thing has to be. Even the blood vessels must be harder 
than steel to withstand the pressures needed." 


"So how will you even get it to feel anything you do to it?" Keagan 
yelled. He noticed the way the pneumatic drills pulverised the ice 
around the minehead but jarred away in a shower of sparks when 
they hit the edge of a scale. 


"When all the boreholes have been completed," Commodore 
Schaeffer said, eyes shining, "we will lower a nuclear device into 
each one and detonate them simultaneously." 


"You're kidding," Keagan said. "It can take a nuclear explosion?" 


"Quite easily," responded Commodore Schaeffer. "Just the pressure 
of the glacier shifting on top of it is immense. We think given the 
current rate the glacier is melting that it would start to be exposed 
from 2050 anyway. But the Foundation can't wait that long. This is 
our chance to reverse the decline." 


Suddenly, there was a distant explosion—a thudding, hissing sound 
like a gas tank going up in flames—and Commodore Schaeffer 
looked back up the small rectangle of daylight at the top of the 
tunnel. 


"Damn it," he said. "There's been another blow. | need to handle this 
at the command tent. You should be safe down here—just don't 
touch the scales." With that he began to clamber up the rough-hewn 
steps leading back to the surface. 


Keagan took a look around the semicircular chamber adjoining the 
great scaled wall of the beast's flank. One of Schaeffer's men stood 
on duty with what looked like a shock baton, face grim. The three 
workers wielding the drills were slumped over their tools, the judder 
when the drill tips struck the scales passing right their bodies with no 
resistance. Keagan looked at what he could see of the face of the 
nearest man under his hood—it looked terribly thin and tired-looking, 


lines of overwork scored into it. 


"Hey," he said gently, not wishing to alarm the man with the 
stunstick. "Are you OK? You look like you need a rest." 


The man turned to him, jaw slack. "Engleender,” he concluded after 
a moment's reflection, then turned back to his work. 


"Don't talk to them," advised the man with the stunstick in a thick 
accent. "They don't know English." 


Keagan sat down on a rough chunk of ice and waited until the 
Commodore returned and gestured from the surface for Keagan to 
climb back out. 


"Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. "This thing exhales and 
perspires a potent neurotoxin, which is why | didn't want you 
touching it, even with gloves. Over time the venom has become 
impregnated into the ice around the creature—when it's heated the 
impregnated ice sublimates explosively. Three men are dead in the 
next borehole." 


"I'm sorry," Keagan said. Nothing about this makes sense, he 
thought. Not only is this thing far too tough to kill by any reasonable 
means, it breathes fucking sarin or VX or whatever? What the hell 
are they trying to do waking it up? But there was a more pressing 
question on his mind, and he asked it: "Commodore, are these men 
here voluntarily?" 


Schaeffer breathed out heavily, his breath a sharp plume of white. 
"The reactionaries would probably lie to you and tell you, yes, these 
are volunteers who believe in our cause. But | am an honourable 
man. No, they are not here voluntarily. They were taken from the 
village of Kangertitivatsiaq some 5km south of here and compelled 
to serve. | promise you, it is a just cause and the greater good is 
being served." 


Keagan felt something black move within him. "They're D-Class 
then," he said bitterly. 


What he could see of Schaeffer's expression behind his goggles and 


beard looked disappointed, frustrated. "The real Foundation doesn't 
use D-Class. Only the reactionaries still do that sort of thing.” 


They were out in the sun again now, and Keagan could see a distant 
plume of smoke from a far ridge. 


"So when the Project's over," he said quietly, "what will you do with 
them?" 


Schaeffer remained silent for a moment, then turned away. "Drive 
me back to the camp." 


"What are you going to do?" Keagan repeated, louder. 


Schaeffer looked back at him. "Drive me back to the camp," he said, 
"or | will drive myself and leave you here. It's my fault, | should have 
trusted you to do your duties without knowing the final end. | thought 
it would inspire you. It was my mistake." 


The parts for the 88s arrived two days later and Keagan was finally 
able to get to work on the Land-Rovers. As expected, the 
replacement carburettors were also Webers—notoriously prone to 
freezing—and not very well-machined ones either. Keagan spent a 
good half-hour filing away the flash in the drillings and enlarging the 
choke. One of the Land-Rovers turned over straight away, but the 
second resisted all attempts to diagnose the problem, which seemed 
to give Teitur endless amusement. In desperation, Keagan stripped 
down and cleaned the head gasket with petrol, and after putting it 
back together again he was finally able to tickle it into operation. 
Keagan sat back and took a celebratory swig from his water bottle, 
grinning widely with the simple pleasure of a problem solved. He 
looked around and saw Teitur leaning over the bonnet of one of the 
Unimogs, watching him. 


"Du tror du er noget godt, hva' neger?" 


Keagan didn't understand the words, though he had a pretty good 
idea what the last was supposed to be, and the sour tone was ample 
confirmation of the sentiment behind it. 


"What did you say?" Keagan got up. "Come on, you one-eyed piece 
of shit, what was that?" 


"Intet, men skide neger," Teitur continued bitterly. "du kommer her, 
uden at vide noget..." 


"You know what, I'm sick of this. Shut up and let me do my job or 
else—” he pantomimed knocking Teitur's brains out with the carjack 
in his hand. Teitur seemed to take this as a serious threat and 
grabbed a long-handled screwdriver, leaving Keagan unsure how to 
proceed without escalating matters further. Fortunately, at that 
moment Kaali entered the garage and Teitur spat and turned away. 


"Hum," he said, observing the obvious tension between the men, "! 
was really hoping to report that some progress had been made on 
the immobilised vehicles."