"They're done," Keagan said. "All three 88s are ready to go, and | 
fixed the suspension on the GMC. Really, we should be using Zenith 
carburettors in these sorts of conditions, though." 


"That's good to hear," Kaali said, "it means the men won't have to 
ride in the trucks with the workers. Fortunately there have been no 
incidents, but I'm glad security can get back to normal." 


| bet, thought Keagan gloomily. Kaali left and Keagan eyed the other 
mechanic, but Teitur had retreated to a corner and was occupying 
himself with an old copy of DV. There seemed to be nothing else for 
Keagan to do but to get back to work. 


Later, he finds himself sitting in the shade of a pagoda in a fragrant 
garden, surrounded by spiralling plots of yellow flowers. The air is 
warm and a honeybee buzzes into the shade of the pagoda and out 
the other side. He tries to remember how he got here—the last thing 
he remembers is being somewhere cold, freezing in fact, clawing at 
something with his hands. Did he hit someone? Everything since 
then—which feels like a very long time—has been an odd blur. 
There is a jug of cool water on the table and he pours some out into 
the glass he finds by his hands. 


He realises there is someone sitting on the other side of the table— 
he's sure they weren't there before, though that's been happening to 
him recently. They're wearing orange, but he can't make out their 
face; it's out of focus, the eyes just two pinpricks of white. 


"You escaped too?" he hears himself say, and wonders what that 
even means. He looks down and sees he's wearing a t-shirt with a 
bulldog on it. It snuffles at him and he remembers he's not supposed 
to make eye contact with it. 


No-one escapes. 


He looks up at the garden and takes a sip of the water. "This doesn't 
look like a cell to me." 


Everyone is in a cell. You are in trillions of them, right now. 
"| know you," he says. "You're the man in the box." 


| am. |am also here. The person shrugs, and he notices its fingers 
are sharp. 


"You saved me," he says, though he isn't sure why, or even, come 
to think of it, who is speaking. "Why me?" 


| told you, | recognised a fellow prisoner. | need your help. 
"My help." 
You've seen him. The madman. Can't you feel what he's doing? 


He realises the buzzing isn't coming from the bees; it's emanating 
from everything around him. He closes his eyes for a moment before 
answering and catches the edge of the chant: gate gate paragate 
parasamgate bodhi svaha... 


"The man with the spiral eyes." 


He's changing everything. It took a long time for me to sense him 
and exclude myself from his changes. He's killed me dozens, 
hundreds of times without me ever knowing it. And everyone else. 


A sudden sense of vertigo passes through him. "Me too?" 


In your case ‘killed’ is the wrong word, but, yes. | need you to be my 
eyes and ears. An assassin for reality. 


"You want me to kill him?" 


No. | just need you to get me close enough. | can't follow the others 
because they aren't thoughtforms. But you're carrying one around 
with you. 


"| don't know if | can even remember this once | wake up," he says. 
He's already sinking back, melting into the icy marble floor of the 
pagoda, but he's done this enough times now not to worry about it. 


That's what ZhuangzZi said. 


Keagan was awoken by shouting and motion. He squinted against 
the electric lights at the digital clock on the pod's central table. 
02:30. 


"Keagan," Bones said urgently from somewhere behind his head. 


"What is it? What's happening?" He became aware of a howling, 
rushing sound, the small rectangular window panes rattling in their 
frames. 


"One of the breakers came down during the night. There's a gale 
building. | gather Schaeffer has a dozen or so workers out there 
trying to get it upright again but they're not having much success. If 
you've got any ideas this is probably a good time." 


Keagan dragged himself out of bed and threw on what thermal 
clothing he could find—Schaeffer's men had grabbed whatever was 
to hand without particularly worrying about whose it was. 


"Is this a major problem?" he asked wearily. 


"Last time it happened Schaeffer had to rebuild from scratch, so 
yeah, I'd say so. Right now the wind's being channelled straight into 
the camp through the breach." 


Outside a number of mobile search lights had been trained on the 
fallen section of windbreaker—the wind was howling over it and had 
already half-buried it in snow. The lights turned the figures swarming 
around the wall into phantasms, shimmering in and out of existence 
as the light caught them. The wind plucked at Keagan and Bones as 
they staggered over the base towards the breach, making them 
sway from side to side like stop-motion puppets. Keagan slid and 
almost lost his footing on the path, where the snow was becoming 
hard and slippery, but the stumble proved to his advantage—with a 
clatter a tile slid off the roof of the other barracks and shattered on 
the spot where he had been standing. 


As they got closer he recognised Commodore Schaeffer, striding 
between the various small groups trying to raise the wall, bellowing 
commands over the gale. A small tunnel had already been dug 
underneath the breaker block to facilitate ropes being tied around it 
—two of these had been tied to the back bumpers of a pair of 88s 
while a further two were being pulled taught by groups of workers. 
But the Land-Rovers' wheels were spinning ineffectually on the 
snow-blasted earth and the ropes were simply being pulled down 
over the block, biting into the ice at the side of the tunnel and getting 
stuck there. 


This is all wrong, Keagan thought. There's no lever action, no actual 
force being applied to the block. 


"Keagan," Colonel Schaeffer hailed him, "we can't get the traction to 
pull it upright. We considered using a Unimog but Teitur thinks a 
single rope would risk it overbalancing in the other direction." 


"It's not going to work anyway," Keagan shouted, "the angle's all 
wrong. Do you have a crane, or something with the height to actually 
haul one end of the block up rather than just dragging it?" 


Schaeffer shook his head. "The teams had to leave it at Site B when 
the wind got up—which means it's probably been smashed to pieces 
by now." 


"Let me think," Keagan said. Use a snowplough's scoop as a pivot? 
It probably wouldn't fare that much better than the 88s—it would 
slide on the ice before the block actually pivoted around it. Besides, 


reaction, resulting in massive loss of life. SCP-106 has also shown 
signs of sapience and the two SCP's could form communication with 
each other which could end up hindering the Foundations efforts in 
the future. The foundation can barely re contain either of them let 
alone both of them simultaneously. -Dr. Winfred 


Item: SCP-3930 


Tissue Test Record: 
SCP-682's tissue was brought into the void, and ceased existing. 


Termination Test Record: 

SCP-682 is introduced to SCP-3930, and successfully ceases 
existing. However, despite SCP-682 no longer existing, Foundation 
personnel still perceive SCP-682. When the entity is looked at, a 
vivid image or memory is recalled in the brain of personnel that is 
described as resembling the appearance of SCP-682. This entity 
has been observed "attacking" personnel, killing them, despite the 
fact that SCP-682 does not exist during these attacks. It should be 
noted that personnel killed in this manner died when their brains 
ceased to function, despite the appearance of "physical damage" 
occurring on their bodies. All destruction caused by this entity 
becomes "real", even if the entity that caused it didn't. 15 hours later, 
SCP-682 was found within its containment chamber. It is unknown 
how SCP-682 managed to gain existence after this incident. 


Item: SCP-3207 


Tissue Test Record: SCP-682's tissue was shot by SCP-3207, 
resulting in its complete destruction. No intact organic residue left by 
SCP-682's tissue was found after the interaction. 


Termination Test Record: SCP-682 was shot by SCP-3207 
several times. SCP-682 was destroyed for a period of 6 hours, 
before five smaller organisms, theorized to have been composed of 
SCP-682's tissue, grew within SCP-682's containment chamber. 
These organisms successfully breached containment and merged 
with each other, re-creating SCP-682. 


just getting it upright won't work—these things are sunk into the 
ground so if it's come loose there's nothing to hold it firm against the 
wind. You would need to compact the snow again, pack it in and— 
wait. 


"Forget the block," Keagan said. "There's no way you're getting it up 
again in this weather. We need to make a berm out of compacted 
snow to divert the wind up and over the base—braced against the 
breakers that are still standing." 


Schaeffer frowned. "What do you mean?" he bellowed. 


Keagan tried to draw as best he could in the air with his mitten-like 
gloves. "Right-angled triangle," he said. "Slope facing the wind; back 
to the base." 


"Okay," Schaeffer said, "For want of anything better, let's do it. 
Keagan, it's your idea—you tell them what to do." 


This proved more difficult thanks to the deafening wind and the 
language barrier than might have otherwise been expected but 
eventually with Kaali as translator Keagan was able to get the 
workers to understand what he needed them to do. The maniac 
Teitur volunteered, seemingly without pause, to drive the 
snowplough out into the gale and shunt a vast quantity of snow into 
the space between the remaining windbreakers, and the workers 
were quickly equipped with shovels, with which they began to press 
it into a solid mass. The wind was intensifying, but the berm already 
seemed to be having an effect, the only issue now being whether 
they could reinforce it faster than it was being blown away. 


Keagan surveyed the berm as it took shape and saw a problem— 
although the sloped face of the berm was channelling the gale 
adequately over the top, the sides were being rapidly eroded by 
wind rushing around the sides of the adjoining breakers. He ran as 
fast as he dared over to the team nearest to the growing breach. 


"We need to curve the berm in at the edges," he shouted to Blaer, 
the nearest person he was sure spoke English. Not that it helped, as 
Blaer immediately started making alarming hand gestures to the 
workers to indicate that the edges should be curved out in front of 


the other blocks, which would only accelerate the erosion. 


"No, no, that's wrong," Keagan said, trying and failing to make a 
lasting diagram in the shifting snow with his boot. "look, does 
anyone have anything to write on, a pen and paper?" 


Blaer did—an aviator's pad and a biro—but when at length he was 
able to extricate it from his garments, Keagan found it impossible to 
write on, several times dropping the pen between the fingers of the 
thick gloves and having to quickly retrieve it before it blew away. In 
desperation he shrugged off his gloves into the show and with the 
temperature of his digits dropping rapidly sketched out the remaining 
breaker blocks and the curving shape the berm needed to take 
between them to avoid taking the wind head-on. 


"The way the blocks are currently set up, the wind can escape on 
both sides. The berm needs to work the same way. See?" He held it 
out to Blaer but he seemed to be looking at something behind them. 
There was a slow, shifting sound, and Keagan turned around to see 
a large chunk of material, probably more than half a ton, begin to 
slide from the top of the berm under the force of the gale. 


"Get of the way!" Keagan screamed at the man working beneath it, 
but he either didn't hear or understand the command. Keagan 
rushed forward to pull him out of the way, but was too late—the area 
of berm sagged and collapsed in a sudden tidal wave, burying the 
area in chunks of compacted snow, each the size of a man's head. 
Keagan fell onto his knees from the force of the collapse and when 
the initial burst of snow subsided he could see no trace of the man 
who had been working there. 


"Someone's been buried," Keagan called out, "get over here!" No- 
one responded. "Blaer!" he shouted. "Bring a shovel, or something. 
Don't just—” Blaer just looked at him blankly. Keagan staggered 
forward into the path of the blizzard, clawing at the snow and ice 
with his bare hands, throwing aside boulders in search of the 
engulfed worker. His hands almost immediately burst into such 
extreme pain that he thought the skin was about to split open, but he 
continued to dig into the snow, and soon the pain was replaced by a 
numbness, the hands no longer opening and closing but simply 
flippers of unfeeling flesh, shovelling at the snow. He felt a hand on 


his collar, someone pulling him away. 
"Stop it, Keagan. Let him be," Schaeffer said roughly. 


"He's under there," Keagan said, breathlessly. "He could still be 
alive." 


"No, he couldn't. The impact would have killed him instantly. They're 
here to take the risks—all the workers' lives aren't worth one of our 
own," Schaeffer said through cracked lips and snow-rimed beard. "It 
worked, Keagan. Your plan worked. The embankment is going to 
hold.” 


Keagan looked up. It was true. The rest of the berm was holding 
steady despite the collapse, and the breach seemed to have 
provided enough of an outlet that the erosion at the edges of the 
barrier had slowed to the point where the snow the blizzard brought 
in was building the berm up faster than the wind scoured it away. 


Schaeffer looked down at Keagan's bare hands, which were swollen 
and criss-crossed with red scratches where the edges of the 
compacted ice had sliced into them. "You bloody idiot. What use are 
you to us as a mechanic if you cripple yourself? Blaer, get Keagan 
into the barracks and warm him s/owly." 


Over the next few days the men in the barracks didn't seem to know 
whether to treat Keagan like the gifted engineer who had saved the 
camp and probably the Project, or the moron who had managed to 
give himself second-degree frostbite taking off his gloves in a minus 
sixty gale and subsequently plunging his hands into snow and ice. 
Teitur came by with a smirk on his face but Blaer told him that the 
other mechanic had offered his congratulations on the success of 
the berm. The numbness in Keagan's hands had given way to pain 
once more—a deep-seated, persistent pain that he took to be his 
body's way of saying ‘actually, you've really screwed up this time’. 
They were covered in large blisters which Keagan could feel 
bursting every so often underneath the dressing that the camp 
medic had applied, and they had regained only the vaguest degree 
of mobility. There was not, he realised, an awful lot you could do 
around the base with hands that didn't work—he suggested several 


times he could continue to service the Project's vehicles if someone 
else acted as his hands, but only Teitur was available and Keagan 
didn't think it was likely to work, given neither spoke the other's 
language and they had come close to bludgeoning and stabbing 
each other before. 


Eventually his right hand improved to the point where he was able to 
hold a ladle and he immediately became Stirrer-in-Chief of A- 
Barracks. Kaali would stop by every so often to update him on the 
technical situation—a Unimog with a broken axle, what sounded like 
a clogged air filter on the snow plough—and Keagan would pass on 
his suggestions for Teitur to ignore as he saw fit. It was simple, 
untaxing work, and Keagan realised that he was coming to think of 
the camp as his home. They've given you a place, he thought, 
somewhere to belong. Will you become like Edward Gradley, 
overlooking what's going on out there, in the fenced area, because 
you're grateful?