A man was walking into the room, carrying a watermelon in a neat 
little carrying bag made of braided nylon ropes. The dog was 
surprised. He didn't often get unannounced visitors. Maybe Dr. 
Mann and Agent Lament again, proposing to drag him along on yet 
another ill-conceived mission... no. It didn't smell like either of them. 


Then the dog saw that the visitor had a huge, Cheshire Cat grin, and 
his eyes hurt to look at, and his nose was too big for his ugly face. 


"Clef," Professor Kain Pathos Crow said. 


"Crow." Dr. Alto Clef put the melon down on a nearby table, 
ruthlessly clearing it of its clutter of wires and transistors with a 
sweep of his arm. "Do you still have that neat laser cutter thing?" he 
asked. "Would be easier to slice this with than a knife." 


"Put it on the work table over there," Professor Crow said. "I'll set up 
the cutter." 


Clef complied as Kain rummaged through a big pile of 
miscellaneous gadgets, before finally finding what he was looking 
for: a big grey box with a DANGER: LASER sticker haphazardly 
plastered onto the side. "Would you mind attaching it to the robot 
arm for me?" Kain asked. "I'd do it myself, but, you know. No 
thumbs." 


"No problem,” Clef said. "Power plugs in here?" 


"Yeah," Kain said. "You'll want to get some duct-tape to attach ita 
bit more firmly. The bayonet mount broke a while back, and | haven't 
had the time to repair it." 


"Haven't had the time, or haven't had the inclination?" Clef asked. 
He dug at the open end of the roll of duct tape a bit until it came 
loose, then began to wrap it tightly around where the laser cutter 
attached to the robot arm. "Doesn't really seem like the kind of thing 


that would have stopped you in the past." 


"| had an entire department in the past. These days | have to do 
everything myself," Kain said. He was also permitted the assistance 
of a few robotic devices, which he was grateful for — it got more and 
more awkward to deal with the few assistants he had sometimes, 
especially when the ones who'd become used to his unusual 
appearance got rotated out. 


He slid his paw along the oversized touchpad, maneuvering the 
crosshairs over the image of the watermelon, then began 
programming in the motion commands to the robot arm. "It could be 
worse," he admitted. "| could be in a kennel. Or in a shelter, waiting 
to be put down." 


"They'd never do that. Not to one of the Foundation's heroes." 


"Hah. Heroes," Kain said bitterly. "Not many of those left in the 
Foundation these days." 


"Not as many psychopaths either," Clef pointed out. "And you can 
read a containment report without slogging through pages of useless 
commentary from every single member of the peanut gallery who 
thought they had something to say." He stepped back from the table 
and picked up a pair of darkened goggles. One of the lenses was 
slightly cracked. 


"That's something, at least," Kain admitted. "Hand me that hood 
over there." 


Clef picked up the hood and draped it over Kain's head, carefully 
arranging the darkened glass lenses over the dog's eyes. The 
Professor tapped a couple more keys on the laser, watched the 
simulation play out, then hit the big red button. 


There was a whirring sound, and the smell of ozone, and a bright 
blue flash from the work bench. When their vision cleared, the 
watermelon had been sliced into six even pieces. 


"Heh. Looks like it still works just fine," Clef said. 


"Is that supposed to be a metaphor?" Kain asked. 


"If you choose to take it that way, yeah." Clef picked up one of the 
watermelon wedges and laid the other one down in the cracked 
ceramic dish by Kain's cushion bed. The grey-muzzled Golden 
Retriever lay down on the cushion and took a bite of the sweet, juicy 
red melon. The two old friends sat in silence for a while, enjoying 
their snack in companionable silence. 


"Still trying to get the old girl working?" Clef asked, gesturing to the 
hulking behemoth that lay in pieces all around the garage. 


"Primary servo in the right hip keeps failing under pressure,” Kain 
said. "If | had the budget I'd have the entire thing re-milled. If | had 
permission, I'd recreate the original recipe through 914. As it is, I'm 
trying different welds and patches. None of them seem to hold." He 
took a big bite of his watermelon, crunching away as he chewed the 
crisp red fruit. 


"Might want to double down on that," Clef said. "Some big, powerful 
people might come by asking you to get it working again." 


Kain stopped eating. He stared intently at Clef, who was spitting his 
watermelon seeds into a rusty coffee can. "All right, you conniving 
old fuck," the dog growled. "What do you know that you're not telling 
me?" 


Clef tossed his watermelon rind back onto the work table and 
brought two fresh wedges of melon over for him and the Professor. 
"There was an incident yesterday," Clef said. "A Code Tempest 
Twilight at Site-17. An unknown outside force assaulted the facility. 
There were casualties and several containment breaches. One of 
those breaches was SCP-105." 


"Iris, huh? So Dantensen finally got his wish, may he rest in peace,” 
Crow said sadly. "I don't think anyone will chase her, given that 
they've got her camera locked away inside a vault." 


"105 didn't run,” Clef said. "She picked up a sidearm off of a dead 
agent's corpse and helped Site Security to fend off the attackers." 


"Iris? Picked up a gun and fought back? That shy little girl?" 


"She's not a shy little girl any more, Crow," Clef said. "Nine years will 
change you. Nine years locked up in a cell will change you a lot 
more. But the important thing is that, even without her camera, 105 
was a useful and capable asset. She was loyal to her jailers, even 
when she had every chance to bug out. So now the higher-ups are 
starting to get ideas. And some of them are pointing out that we've 
been falling behind in our efforts, and we've got an entire stockpile 
of assets sitting around not being utilized. And then eventually one 
of them will remember a little experiment that we tried under General 
Bowe that we've kept shuttered for nine years as the worst idea the 
Foundation ever had..." 


"Pandora's Box," Kain said. 


"Bingo," Clef said. "And then they're going to come to the surviving 
old fucks who did it the first time and ask us to do it again. The 
question now becomes, what do we say to them?" 


"Taking a dump on their shoes would seem an appropriate 
response," Kain pointed out. "They tossed us out into the cold." 


"Did they?" Clef asked. "If they were going to toss us out into the 
cold, they would have given us the Kondraki or Dantensen 
treatment." He smiled viciously. "We were mothballed, Crow. Like 
old battleships. Turned into museum pieces, but kept intact in case 
they ever needed us to go to war again. But unlike old battleships, 
we can choose whether or not we want to be reactivated or not." 


The two old friends continued to munch their watermelon in 
thoughtful silence. 


"... fuck em," Kain said at last. 
"Yeah. Fuck them right up the ass," Clef agreed. 


"We did what they wanted to once. Followed orders like good 
soldiers. What did it get us?" 


"Nothing at all," Clef agreed. "They used us like snot rags and 
tossed us in the trash." 


"There's no way I'm getting involved with their politicking and 


scheming again,” Kain said. 


"I'm done killing," Clef said coldly. "There's enough blood on my 
hands without adding more." 


"So we're gonna say no," Kain said. 
"We're gonna say no," Clef agreed. 


Clef fiddled with his half-eaten watermelon slice for a moment. 
Professor Kain stared intently at the green-and-yellow patterns on its 
rind. 


".,. they're gonna use her against you," Kain said at last. 


"And they're going to offer you the one thing that you can't say no 
to," Clef pointed out. 


"In the end, it doesn't matter what we want," Kain said. "Those 
puppeteers have us on their strings, and we'll do as they wish." He 
nudged his empty watermelon rind away from himself with his grey- 
muzzled nose. 


Clef took one huge bite of his melon. His grin turned positively 
sharklike. "Then we'd better milk them for all we can get in the 
process," Clef said, spewing bits of melon and juice from his half-full 
mouth. 


When his vet came to see him days later, the dog was refitting a 
hydraulic servo back into a gigantic egg-shaped robot. 


"Hello, Professor," the man said. He was a balding white man in his 
fifties or sixties, wearing a lab coat and carrying a medical bag. 


"Hi, Cog," Kain said. 


"How are you feeling today?" Gears asked. He opened up his bag 
and began laying out his instruments and supplies on the table. His 
tone was flat, his voice expressionless. In others, his mannerisms 
would have seemed cold. 


Kain knew better. Gears was not a veterinarian by trade. But after 
Kain had been confined to this facility, Gears had one day 
announced that he had studied and achieved competency in the 
field of veterinary medicine, and asked to be assigned as Kain's 
personal physician. Administration had said yes. 


It wasn't often that someone like Gears did something touching. 


The golden retriever climbed carefully onto the low table. Gears 
began his examination: weight, measurements, a stethoscope to the 
heart and lungs. Taking pulse. Checking for swelling in lymph 
nodes. Palpitating the abdomen for tumors or abnormalities. Teeth 
and claws. Paws and limbs. "Slight deterioration in the hips," Gears 
murmured. "The glucosamine seems to be having an effect. Will try 
upping the dosage." He examined Kain's face closely. "A few more 
grey hairs around the muzzle." 


"In other words, not too bad for a fifteen year-old dog, but pretty 
shitty for a thirty-five year-old man," Kain said. 


"Indeed," Gears said calmly. He put down his stethoscope and 
picked up a scaling tool. "Some development of calculus around the 
gumline," he said. "Surprising." 


"My tooth-brushing robot broke down. I've been using denti-sticks," 
Kain said. 


"I'd suggest getting it repaired," Gears said. "In the meantime, I'll do 
a teeth cleaning." 


It was a long and boring process as Gears carefully scraped the 
plaque build up along Kain's teeth. He was just finishing up with the 
molars when another figure entered. Kain wasn't surprised. He'd 
been expecting this visitor for a long time. 


The intruder was a black woman of medium height in a pinstripe 
suit. Her hair was curly, and her mouth was smiling. "Professor 
Crow, | presume," she said. "Dr. Gears. | am O5-10." 


"Nome you're ghnot," Kain said, his words mumbled around Gears' 
dental equipment. 


The woman gave him an odd look. 


"Thorry." He waited for Gears to extract his cleaning tools from his 
mouth. "But no. You don't smell like an O5. They all have... well. 
You don't smell like one." 


"... good to know,” the woman said. "You are, of course, correct. | 
am not, in fact, O5-10. | am, in truth, her decoy. | am called 'Salt.' 
This is, of course, classified at the highest level. | do not need to tell 
you the consequences if you breathe a word of this to anyone, | 
trust?" 


"Affirm." 
"Yeah, sure," Kain said. 


"Excellent," Salt said. "In that case, | would like to direct you to begin 
research into the issue of the anomalous scent that surrounds 
members of the O5 Council. Provided, of course, that you can do so 
in between your other projects." She extended a large stack of 
papers to the golden retriever. 


"Cog?" Kain asked. 


"Of course." Dr. Gears picked up the stack of papers and helped 
Kain to arrange them into a machine that looked like a cross 
between a music stand and a microfiche reader. It hummed and 
crunched and whirred and then began to project images of the 
pages onto a screen big enough for his tired old dog's eyes to read 
them clearly. 


It was all there. The Egg Walker. The Power Suit. The Sonic Pulse 
Cannon. The Heat-Seeking Atomic Disruptor. The Harmonic 
Dispersion Wand. 


And one more. 


Project Olympia. Its shuttering had been the biggest heartbreak of 
all. 


Hot damn, Kain thought, his tail wagging unconsciously. We're back 
in business. 


The Wolves at the Door 


Iris was trying to solve a crossword puzzle when there was a knock 
on her door. It wasn't a scheduled knock, which was a bit worrying, 
but at least there weren't any explosions this time. 


Two women in suits came in, followed by guards. The women 
appeared to be twins, though there was a subtle difference that Iris 
couldn't quite pick up. They were darker-skinned, with curly hair, 
wearing matching grey suits with pink pinstripes. One carried a 
tablet like she was carrying a weapon. 


"Good morning, Miss Thompson," one of the women said. She 
wasn't used to being called "Miss Thompson." It was always either 
Iris or 105. 


"Good morning," Iris said. 


"This is Miss Salt," she said, indicating the woman who was almost, 
but not quite, identical to her. "You may refer to me as O5-10." 


"I—Hello,” Iris said, caught off-guard. Was this a trick? She'd heard 
of the O5 Council, but they weren't ever supposed to actually meet 
skips. 


"| wanted to thank you personally for the actions you undertook last 
week." The woman smiled broadly. 


"Oh, well, | just—" Iris began, but the woman waved her off. 


"You did what you had to do, | understand, but the fact that you 
were able to do it? That was remarkable, Miss Thompson. And it's 
caused no little amount of talk." 


"Talk?" Iris wondered where this was headed, and what this 
woman's game was. 


"You were a great help. And it occurs to us that you could be even 


Experiment Log 702 


Format: 


Name of Researcher: 
Interacting Personnel: 
Object Traded: 

Object Received: 


Notes: 


Experiment 702-001: 


Name of Researcher: Dr. 

Interacting Personnel: D-5567 
Object Traded: #2 Ticonderoga pencil 
Object Received: Eraser 


Notes: None 


Experiment 702-002: 


Name of Researcher: Dr. 
Interacting Personnel: D-1699 
Object Traded: Crystalline sculpture 


Object Received: None 


more help. You and others like you. We've been reviewing the files 
on MTF Omega-Seven, and we'd like to—" 


"No," Iris said, horrified and appalled. "You can't be serious." 


"I'm perfectly serious,” the O5 said. "You haven't seen how things 
have gone the last nine years. There are more anomalies every 
year, and we're stretched thin. We're guarding the doors as best we 
can, but the howls are growing louder. We can't ignore the 
resources we already have. We're making a new Task Force. As an 
anomalous person with field experience, we'd like you in charge of 
one of the field teams." 


"Didn't you people learn anything from last time?" Iris put one hand 
to her temple, trying to calm down. Just thinking about him made her 
heart race. 


"Yes. And we've learned a lot since, too. That's why we can make it 
work this time." She smiled. 


"You're crazy. He killed the entire team. His own people. And you 
want to try again?" 


The woman shook her head. "We have no intention of using 076-2 
again. That was obviously a mistake." 


"You don't?" Iris's eyes narrowed. She didn't trust the woman. She 
was too eager. Trying too hard to convince her. For a woman who 
claimed to be an O5, that suggested the situation wasn't quite how 
she presented it. Someone that high up should be dictating, not 
negotiating. 


"We want you and others like you. Agents with anomalous abilities 
who can be trusted. People who serve because they want to, not 
because they have an explosive collar or other coercion." The 
woman had the glow of sincerity on her face. 


Of course, she wasn't telling the full truth, either. She wasn't nearly 
as sure about not using Able as she wanted Iris to think. She was a 
terrible liar, and the guilt of that omission bubbled to the surface of 
her eyes, but she was still sincere. If she didn't believe in everything