Or something like that, since it was simply a prefabricated food 
distribution center, covered in brightly white gypsum and gifted with 
a large counter-like window used to serve the food, that was 
reserved for early risers and volunteers alone. It had a kitchen. It 
served the same food that Lila and Opal would serve to their 
patients later. It was, to all intents and purposes, not efficient 
enough. 


As she came into the short queue before Afwerki and her plates, 
Priss realized something: she had slept well. 


For the first time in weeks, no, in years, she had slept for entire 
hours without screams waking her up, be it real or dreamed. For the 
first time in years, she felt tired simply because her body was 
actually tired. Of physical work. 


Priscilla Locke was in front of Lila Afwerki when she stated to 
herself, with a loud enough voice as to be heard by her: "I'm 
sleeping..." 


"Well, you do not look all that drowsy, Locke! Here, just for today 
we've got a little something to wake us all up, since the kids were so 
distracted last evening." 


She looked at Afwerki. The woman, who had donned a different 
headscarf and tunic that morning, was offering her a cup and a bowl. 
The cup contained lukewarm coffee. The bowl had... 


"Is that honey?" 
Afwerki's expression froze. 


"Oh, no, no, dear," she stuttered, apparently terrified and perhaps a 
bit pleading; "in God's name, no. We-we stopped using that! 
Nonono, this is not that honey, | promise, miss Locke-" 


"Alright, alright! It was just a question!" 


Lila seemed to calmed down slightly, but she still had to sit down, 
seemingly out of breath. "I'm sorry, miss... it's-it's just, | was with the 


Work Group that used that, and-well!" The woman passed a hand 
over her front. She sounded very distressed. 


Her voice was probably the reason why two young men in MCF 
volunteer vests went to their older counterpart from behind on the 
queue. Several others came closer, trying to see how they could 
helped. Lila smiled at them, calmly speaking to them in French and 
in a language Priss couldn't recognize. Again. She'd better learn to 
speak some other language than English if she was to adapt to the 
place. 


"Sorry, Locke," Lila said, straight to her. In a way, her eyes were 
more than tired, they looked older than a moment before. Awkward, 
Priss tried to hold her gaze as the other volunteers started handling 
the queue themselves. The woman pointed at one of the pots they 
were taking the golden goo from. "That's just a sablepurée, 
something | learned to cook overseas. It's nutritious enough and 
almost entirely normal... and | swear on my hands, it is one hundred 
percent hypoallergenic," she assured, her voice breaking softly as 
her words died off. 


"Okay," Locke said, not certain on what to answer to that, still feeling 
quite awkward. Some of the volunteers were whispering in that way 
that only can be interpreted as that 'yes, we are talking about you, 
ginger, you don't belong here' style; she still found it annoying and 
rather disarming. Priscilla chose to focus on her bow/, filled with that 
golden paste, in which small bits of cereal floated, suspended on the 
transparent paste. The fuck did | do? 


Then she realized. 


"Wait, honey. Hypoallergenic honey, right, | was not thinking 
straight." Priss looked at Lila, suddenly awake. "You were talking 
about the mess with that sarcophagus, right? Sorry, | didn't realize. 
Not that I've read a lot about that." 


"Oh. You didn't know, then?" Lila openly smiled at her, rubbing her 
left eye with the back of her hand. "Well, now | feel silly.” 


Priss had seen a thousand faces like that one. Most were crying in 
agony at the beginning, many of those broken and empty later, all of 


them dead in the end. None of them smiled at her. Not sincere, 
beautiful smiles, not like that smile. 


Instead of coming back to haunt her, all those faces were a stark 
contrast over which that face was, at that moment, in that place, the 
world to her. Priss felt like she was made of honey, and that was a 
perfectly good reason why her legs were shaking. That smile is 
gorgeous. And she is smiling at me? 


"Thanks, Locke," Afwerki said as she stood up, her eyelids shut 
while she weakly smacked her cheeks. 


Oh, now she's thanking me. 
"Please, don't thank me, | was insensitive, and-" 


The woman opened her eyes again. "No, no, | didn't-oh, how do you 
say that. | feel guilty over that, you know. We all feel guilty over the 
times we were wrong, | suppose, even if we did save some people 
then, too...", she seemed to be lost in her own thoughts for a brief 
moment, but soon came back to her senses and dedicated another 
bright smile to Priss. "One does all one can, nothing more. Now, | 
may be getting old and clumsy, but | can always try and make some 
breakfast." 


"Ah. Sure." 


"Don't worry, we'll meet down there, in the clinic! | think it's today 
you came with us? | usually work with her. With Opal," she clarified. 


"Right. I'll go have breakfast, then,” Pris said, turning to get one of 
the plastic stools the other volunteers were already spreading 
between the cubes. 


Lila Afwerki serenely smiled at her as she sat, then went back to 
attend the queue. Her movements were kind of slower, perhaps 
even jerking. As she watched the robed woman filling bowl after 
bowl with the cold contents of her golden concoction and cup after 
cup with the brown stream from a large aluminium coffee pot, 
Priscilla Locke tried both things. 


The coffee was bitter, but woke her up completely. The sablepurée 


was sweet, rough with bits of cereals and bread crumbs, and 
reminded her of old breakfasts taken on the days when WestCiv 
didn't demand anything of her. 


Priscilla felt her sister — the inhuman mongrel — laughing. It's 
always easier having no one care about you, ain't that right, sis? 


She grabbed her backpack, tightly clutching to it when she noticed 
Desjeux coming to her. 


"And good ol' Skippy goes and tells me, with that twangy voice he 
makes when he tries to be serious, pfah! Listen, listen, he goes:" 
Sarah Desjeux raised a hand into the air. That hand was 
impregnated in the fresh blood of an amputee; "/ kKneed gyou tgo 
lisgten knarefully, Opgal. Gyou have a scorgpion on gyour ghair." 


The doctor broke into laughter yet again as her hands went back to 
sewing the pitiful flaps of bleeding skin and muscle into a stump. 
She had been doing that, and worse, all morning with those afflicted 
of the Sour. All three Satanists on guard and herself had been 
examining and treating them last night. After curing the disease 
proper, they had to clean the wounds and put skin drafts over them, 
since those injuries caused by the Sour never healed naturally. That 
usually implied major surgery. 


She moved her hands faster than Priscilla imagined would be safe 
or possible in a surgery. The fake auditor stood a good meter behind 
her alleged colleague in the medical profession to make certain that 
at least her green apron remained clean. Well, that, and the smell. 
Every person that was treated looked perfectly healthy to her, save 
for the horrible, gaping holes filled with surgical tissue and half- 
clotting blood. As soon as they left the room, they were asking for 
their families or their legs. 


And there was that woman, making jokes. 
Priss couldn't tell if the situation was sad or comical. 


"| don't find it funny, Desjeux," she finally conferred through her 
surgical mask, to what the surgeon responded by joyfully laughing 


SCP-678: Trauma Harvester 


Item #: SCP-678 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-678 is to be contained in a 
secure lockbox on-site in a container rated for security against at 
least Level 2 attempted containment breaches. Guards posted to 
guard SCP-678 should not be aware of what they are guarding, as 
recovery attempts are a risk. SCP-678 poses no recognized threat 
of escape at this time, but if the container is ruptured or SCP-678 
removed for any reason, no personnel are to make unshielded 
contact with SCP-678. 


Description: SCP-678 is a small statuette of a sleeping angel, that 
displays no unusual characteristics under visual inspection. Upon 
unshielded physical contact with SCP-678, however, SCP-678 
excises highly traumatic events from the subject's memory 
immediately, leaving a blank period in the subject's recollections of 
the past. This function is currently being evaluated for use as a new 
grade of amnestic, but the further effects of SCP-678 render it 
unsuitable for use at this time. The process of memory removal 
utilized by SCP-678 is damaging to the subject, however, and in the 
week following contact with SCP-678, the subject's mind continues 
to erode. This erosion does not stop, but reaches a critical point at 
any time from six to nine days after initial contact when the 
autonomous capabilities of the brain to regulate heartbeat, 
breathing, and other homeostatic effects is eradicated. At this point, 
the subject typically dies of asphyxiation. Autopsy reveals no 
physical damage to the brain, and the method utilized by SCP-678 is 
currently unknown. After an event such as this, SCP-678 alters 
shape, the statuette shifting to a standing position with its eyes open 
and teeth clenched. The next unshielded contact with SCP-678 will 
cause the transference of the memories initially erased to the 
subject currently touching SCP-678, and SCP-678 will revert to its 


again. 


"Funny you would say that, 'cause that's word by word the next thing 
he said!" 


Priscilla shook her head, annoyed. "How is the programme going, 
anyhow?" 


"Fine, fine," the surgeon said, smiling behind her own mask. "We'll 
have most of the people in the camp on prophylactics in less than 
two days. Logistics has already promised us a big shipment of both 
Aciclovir and Prometerine to counter the infestation in its latent 
state. As for people in the active stages of the disease, well..." 


Opal made a flowery move that made her hands look like she was 
doing a magic trick; and lo and behold, one of the flaps of flesh 
looked like it had always been part of a stump. 


"We'll take care of them," she sang. 


Two minutes later, Lila was taking measurements of the unfortunate 
man's legs to get him a provisional prosthesis. Apparently, the 
operation had gone smoothly. As he started to come around, 
Toribio, the Portuguese nurse, and the Satanist Mirra moved him 
into one of the wheeled chairs and took him away to have him wake 
up somewhere else. The ‘operating room’ they were using was one 
of the Vestan cubes that had been dropped by Olympe half-way 
between the camp and the rest of the prefabricated rooms. It felt — 
and was — cramped with packed and unpacked medical equipment, 
but the excellent aseptic conditions made possible by the Mason 
Mold warranted that, among other things, patients were very likely 
safe from infections. 


Or so Desjeux and the Rabbi thought. Priss made a face. We are 
trusting lives to the idiot and- 


Priss felt a chill, and she hated herself in silence for it. 
"Hey, Locke, you alright there, hun?" 


Desjeux had placed her hand on Priss' arm. She freed herself from 


the gentle grip. "I'm fine. Why?" 
"You looked... somewhere else." 


Priss raised her sight to tell her that she could go have a laugh 
about it with those people that /oved her so much. It was met by that 
pair of googly brown eyes that, were they half the size, would have 
been perfect for a newborn child. 


"| was-", Priss looked around, looking for the right words. They never 
came, so she went with a classic. "I'm fine." 


"You might be a fine gal, yes, but you are a lousy liar," the stout 
woman said in a lulling voice. There was concern in her eyes, but it 
was quickly traded with mania, as the many wrinkles born of the 
corner of her eyes betrayed that maddening smile behind the 
surgical mask. "Won't force you to say a thing, though. You think it's 
your business? Yours it is, then. Mirra!" 


As Desjeux left the room to talk to the robed witch-scientist about 
the next patient, Priscilla looked at her gloved hands. 


There were specks of blood on them. 


She discarded the gloves and watched them melt into the ground as 
the mold worked its magic. Checking on her backpack again to 
make certain it hadn't been taken by some sneaky thief or melted 
away over the floor, she felt her hands humid again with that all too 
memorable, sticky fluid that would soon dry up, crackle and redden 
everything... 


But it was just sweat. 


"That one, that one there! You, sir! Please, come over here-", and 
Desjeux lapsed again into Arab. Priss was beginning to wonder if it 
was a mandatory language course in school over this universe. 


The stream of refugees coming into the camp had not died down; it 
had become an unevenly timed trickle of large groups carried by 
overloaded trucks and smaller groups loaded with what was left of 
their properties in sacks, backpacks and clapped-out carts. It was all 


going ‘according to plan’, as long as you did not realize that Opal 
and her people didn't have anything resembling an actual plan, 
beyond "give them a look and the aciclo-prom cocktail." 


One of her volunteers, a young American man, raised a hand to get 
her superior's attention. 


"She's got it, Opal!" 


"Damn... okay, tell the family-no, | think they only speak Somali. Uh- 
Ziza, tell them we'll be taking her to the isolation area," the stout 
woman ordered another volunteer, who ran to them. Opal looked 
around, searching for another one of her triage workers. "Mirra! 
Mirra, how about those two?" 


"The mother has it. The son didn't have any symptoms, but-" 


"Right, prophylactics. We still have enough for the day. Was she 
hurt?" 


"A bad cut over her stomach. She was bleeding white." 


Priss looked away when she heard that. Several people already had 
the Sour when the Work Group arrived in Laascaanood, barely two 
days ago. They had been treated before the disease could spread 
any further, but many people in the camp — perhaps Priss herself, 
and every MCF worker — might had been infected already. True, 
she was not doing any actual medical work since her role as an 
auditor technically banned her from doing anything involving medical 
tasks. Which was fortunate, since her knowledge in the field was 
limited at best... but Priss had heard the sickness might spread just 
by touch. 


She tried to look as professional as possible while checking that her 
long, thick, white plastic gloves and her mask covered as much as 
possible of her skin. Meanwhile, a t-shirt wearing Desjeux placed 
her blatantly naked hands on her hips as she nodded at Mirra, 
whose black robe was splattered with sickeningly white drops. The 
satanist was explaining the situation of other patients already 
isolated in the tents. 


"-and a few have tried to eat the worms already. As usual, they don't 
respond to anything | try to do and keep chanting about the Maggot 
Mother," she sighed. Priss gagged, but managed to remain firm 
while the thought of the symptoms of the Sour formed in her mind. It 
was not your regular cough. "A few have even started to draw the 
symbols. And | don't think | can help them without resorting to 
thaumatologic surgery, there are just too many for me to take on all 
of them at the same time." 


"Alright, no worries," the Executive member told her workmate. "Go 
crazy, excising the stuff is your specialty, right? If you have to, try 
the Three Circles, the Eight if you feel up for it, but..." At that point, 
Opal succinctly glanced at Priss. "Hold that thought for a moment, 
please." 


The fake auditor tried to look calm and collected as Desjeux closed 
in, but she couldn't stop glancing at the hands she had been using 
to explore, and touch, and operate. "Can | help you?"