"Shit. Driver, pull over for a minute." The driver initially didn't 
respond and Keagan had to rap his shoulder with his knuckles and 
repeat the order. The driver eventually complied, rolling his eyes. 
They sat at the side of the road for a couple of minutes, the driver 


complaining that he was liable to be ticketed for stopping on double 
yellow lines, until Renton had satisfied himself that none of the 
vehicles behind them had pulled over or circled around. 


"Like | said," Keagan continued wearily, "I'm pretty sure | lost them 
when | got on the ferry, four days ago. You think they were with the 
Foun...—with the reactionaries?" 


"Maybe," Renton said. He was quiet for the rest of the ride. 


The car purred into a reserved parking bay at the front of one of the 
many neoclassical stone piles on Horse Guards Avenue; from the 
armed police on the elegantly stepped entrance Keagan guessed it 
was something to do with the Ministry of Defence, if not actually part 
of Main Building. If anyone thought it odd that a teenager dressed 
like a Daily Mail reader's fever dream of a leftist student and a 
slightly disheveled man in his early thirties and a shirt with a cartoon 
bulldog on the front were ushered quickly and respectfully inside, 
no-one commented on it. Renton glanced in Keagan's direction, 
critically. "| should have had you neaten yourself up," he said. They 
were given visitor badges—Keagan noticed with some chagrin they 
had spelt his name 'Cagan'—and escorted up several levels of 
modern, open-plan workspaces before they reached a number of 
more private personal offices near the top of the building, wood- 
panelled with rich carpet underfoot. 


The name on the panel of the door at the end of the corridor read 
‘Sir Malcolm Urquhart MP—Minister Without Portfolio". The guard 
rapped briskly on the door with his knuckles then stood by, hands 
clasped behind his back. 


"Okay," Renton said to Keagan, exhaling. "Let me do the talking. If 
he asks you something, try to be polite, OK? Don't make him angry." 


Keagan found himself suppressing a chuckle. "What is this, a job 
interview?" 


Renton scowled. 


"Enter," said the man inside. The guard pushed the door open and 


permitted Renton and Keagan to enter. 


The man at the desk set aside a stack of papers he had been 
working on and looked up, gesturing widely that they should take a 
seat. The first thing that struck Keagan about the man were the eyes 
—piercingly blue and vaguely uncomfortable to look at. He had a full 
head of dark hair, little twists of grey insinuating themselves in the 
forelock, and a sort of blandly handsome politician's face with a 
pencil moustache of the sort worn by British pilots in old war movies. 
He was smiling, and the teeth were brilliantly white and even, but the 
effect was rather spoilt by an unfortunate case of diastema, splitting 
the smile in two. 


Keagan sat down in the plush, dark green chair, a relic of Victoriana, 
as was much of the rest of the room. Sir Malcolm had outfitted his 
office with two dark oak bookshelves, densely lined with faded cloth 
back tomes. Keagan caught glimpses of On the Origin of Species 
nestling alongside The Pilgrim's Progress and other volumes he 
didn't recognise, the Bhagavad Gita and Tripitaka. A man of eclectic 
tastes, then. Sir Malcolm rose from his chair and walked around the 
desk, clasping his hands together. 


"Such a pleasure to see you again, my dear boy—Benton, was it? 
Or was it Brent?" He seemed not to notice the visitor badges. 


"Renton, sir," Renton said. "Mark Renton." 


"Of course, of course. You must excuse me, it's been a hellish few 
days." He put his hand gently on Renton's shoulders and the kid 
suddenly went stiff, jaw clenched involuntarily. Keagan thought Sir 
Malcolm's hands remained there just a little longer than seemed 
justifiable. Sir Malcolm suddenly clucked his tongue and turned to 
Keagan. 


"And this is the man you've been telling me about! So you've seen 
what's happening on the other side of the curtain and lived to tell 
about it. I'd like to shake your hand." 


Keagan extended a hand almost by reflex and Sir Malcolm grabbed 
it firmly, eyes searching, measuring, evaluating. 


"I-I thought he could be of some use up North," Renton said 
hesitantly. "Commodore Schaeffer keeps sending messages saying 
he's short of skilled engineers. Keagan seems pretty handy at that 
sort of thing." 


"Hmm," Sir Malcolm said. "A good thought that. Try to hold it a little 
longer." He took his seat again, picked up the phone on his desk. 
"Samantha, please tell Matthew we're ready for tea." 


"Oh, we really couldn't..." Renton began. 


"| wouldn't dream of letting you go until you'd had something 
warming. | imagine it can get pretty miserable in those unheated 
safe houses." 


A few seconds later there was a knock on the door and Sir Malcolm 
clapped. A young man in a suit and tie entered with a silver tray 
bearing a number of rough-hewn dark vessels and two packets of 
green powder. 


"It's maccha," Sir Malcolm explained in response to Keagan's 
dubious gaze. "Milled green tea. First taken thick, then a thinner tea 
in the second cup." 


He thanked the aide, who bowed and left quietly. Sir Malcolm 
exhaled audibly as he snipped the first packet open with a slim pair 
of scissors and stirred the mixture into the cups. The vivid green 
spiral pattern it made as the silver spoon whisked at it reminded 
Keagan of something, but then it dissolved, melting into the water 
until it became a uniform opaque green. The tea was warm and 
vaguely sweet, but seemed to Keagan oddly insubstantial, the 
flavour constantly verging on perceptible then disappearing like 
smoke. The second cup, produced from the finer-milled powder in 
the other packet, was even fainter, seeming to him to be little more 
than hot water. Renton made attempts to appear enthralled by the 
drink but evidently found the texture disagreeable, as he kept 
making little coughing-retching spasms as he choked it down. After 
they had finished they sat quietly, Sir Malcolm smiling beatifically. 


"If you'll excuse me saying," Keagan said, and Renton looked over 
at him with an alarmed expression, "isn't there normally more toa 


carefully crafted stories, SCP-204-2 was informed of the existence 
of SCP-682. Hints were given to SCP-204-2 that SCP-682 was 
impossible to kill by conventional means, and only a warrior with 
special talents could defeat it. SCP-682 was released, heavily 
sedated, into the testing chamber. SCP-204-2 was then sent in 
through the airlock. 


<Begin Log> 


<5 minutes> SCP-682 regains consciousness and 
begins to move about test chamber. 


<5 minutes, 47 seconds> SCP-204-2 begins shouting 
expletives at SCP-682 to provoke it. SCP-204-1 
materializes at this time into an oversized armored knight 
bearing a massive battle axe and kite shield. 


<5 minutes, 59 seconds> SCP-682 produces a near- 
deafening roar and charges at SCP-204-1. 


<6 minutes, 9 seconds> SCP-204-1 clashes with 
SCP-682 in a fair simile of an ancient gladiatorial battle. 
SCP-204-2 seems to be watching the battle with rapt 
attention. 


<16 minutes, 51 seconds> Combat between the two 
SCPs is extremely violent due to their size and strength. 
SCP-204-1 has succeeded into chopping off or tearing 
loose all of SCP-682's limbs, along with much of its flesh 
and part of its head. SCP-204-1 has suffered 
tremendous damage from the combat. SCP-204-1's 
‘shield arm’ is broken off at the elbow, and the axe is 
missing half of the blade. The 'armor' SCP-204-1 wears 
is severely scraped, dented, and torn in places. It 
appears unable to walk, though it still stands in place 
between SCP-204-2 and SCP-682. 


<18 minutes> SCP-682, while not dead, is sufficiently 
incapacitated. Researchers direct SCP-204-2 to have 
SCP-204-1 feed on the remains of SCP-682 in order to 
regenerate itself. 


tea ceremony? | don't know, I'm just going off the TV here." 


Sir Malcolm's smile wavered for a moment before returning in full 
force. "Oh yes, there's a lot of nonsense about time and place, and 
taking your shoes off and ritual washing. To be honest, I've never 
seen the point. Who has time for it? No, I've boiled it down to its 
essence, if you'll excuse the pun—green tea taken hot, twice a day, 
to sharpen the mind. Now," he continued, "to business. How much 
has the young man here told you about the Project?" 


Keagan thought for a moment before he spoke, neither wishing to 
imply that Renton had given too much away nor that he had failed to 
brief Keagan for the meeting adequately. 


"That it's a plan to embarass the Foundation—| mean, the faction 
currently recognised as the Foundation—and get the UK 
Government to flip its recognition to your side." 


Sir Malcolm chuckled. "A little simplistic, but that's the general 
notion. Now, | imagine having been inside a Foundation facility 
you've seen that the world we're operating in doesn't exactly 
conform to the notions of Western materialism." He paused for a 
moment, and Keagan nodded to prompt him to continue. "Well, our 
fundamental problem is that at its root, the government doesn't want 
to believe the supernatural exists. Most of my fellow 
parliamentarians would rather exist in the world of their constituents, 
where the main problems in life are pot holes and the credit crunch. 
The Foundation, you see, just does too good a job—any 
preternatural outbreaks get stamped out in quick order, 
forgetfulness-pills get passed out and everyone goes home. Until a 
few years ago the Government didn't even require the Foundation to 
notify it after an incident." 


"What happened a few years ago?" 


"Let's just say Her Majesty got an up-close-and-personal experience 
with a rather extreme outbreak—some sort of self-help book gone 
literally viral—and refused to take the pills from anyone but her 
personal medical staff. She summoned the PM—that was Major— 
and he threw a hissy fit when he discovered that his security 
clearance was five levels too low to be briefed on the existence of 


the Foundation. He went to Maggie, who of course had been 
involved with the Ronald Reagan thing and knew a fair bit, and that 
was that; these days GCHQ liaises between the Home Secretary 
and the Foundation and produces a report for Cabinet meetings. 
That's the crack. And now we have the wedge." 


Keagan blinked. "I think you've lost me." 


"Then I'll be quite plain. There a number of things out there that the 
Foundation knows about but doesn't really contain or control in any 
significant way. Dormant things, not quite sleeping, not quite dead. 
Things that would strain even the copious ability of the Foundation 
to cover over. We're going to wake one up!" 


"Erm, are we talking Godzilla here? This all seems pretty far- 
fetched..." 


"Keagan," Renton began coldly, but Sir Malcolm cut him off. 


"Actually, my dear fellow, you're not far off the mark. Up in 
Greenland, there's something that really has to be seen to be 
believed—a monster that's been sleeping since the start of the last 
Ice Age. Commodore Schaeffer is up there now, working on rousing 
it from its slumber. A lot of politicians in this country and in the 
Nordics are going to be brought very rudely face-to-face with the 
supernatural, and they won't be able to rely on the Foundation to 
keep it from becoming common knowledge. | will be able to make 
the case that the Foundation has simply failed in its duties to the 
common good—that Britain needs to take a good, long look at whom 
it trusts to keep it safe. Can we continue to rely on unproved spinoffs 
who since taking the reins have recklessly endangered our nation 
and its friends and allies?" His voice rose and Keagan realised he 
had seamlessly shifted into a rehearsed speech. Sir Malcolm 
slapped the table with his palm. "No! We must act to take the 
unquantifiably dangerous and unpredictable supernatural arsenal 
being stockpiled in this country out of the hands of these renegades 
and return it to the Foundation that was first established to secure 
our freedom and prosperity. Furthermore, Mister Soeaker—” he's 
mad, Keagan realised. Completely mad. “—I call for a full and frank 
public inquiry into when and how the transfer of this country's 
support to the unlawful clique who now engage in paramilitary action 


on British soil was approved and abetted!" 
Keagan clapped, weakly, unsure how to respond. 


"Anyway—’ Sir Malcolm swayed slightly, slightly taken aback it 
seemed by his own fit of impromptu rhetoric. "Anyway. This young 
man seems to have volunteered you for the general effort. Are you 
any good with vehicles?" 


"| was a mechanic," Keagan ventured. "A good one. I'd supply 
references but | don't think my clients would remember me." 


"He's been through 882," Renton explained, quickly. "The history- 
erasing machine." What Keagan had felt hadn't been a machine, but 
he kept silent. 


Sir Malcolm began explaining the details of what Keagan would be 
required to do—maintaining equipment under punishing conditions 
and helping out in any way besides—but Keagan felt his gaze and 
attention slipping away. Sir Malcolm's head seemed to balloon in 
size relative to his body, his facial features shrinking until they 
occupied an area the size of a postage stamp on his face. Visual 
distortion, a part of him thought distantly. That's a new one. He 
realised he couldn't move—the chair was the size of a continent and 
he sat precariously at the edge, feet dangling over an infinite 
precipice. The room retreated and it roared out of the darkness: 


OM 

Please, | don't know what you want. 

MANI 

You're 1447, aren't you? The thing in the box. 
PEME 

Is that him? 

HUNG 


Is that... what? What do you want with me? 


OM 
Help me stop him. 
Please, | can't, | can't, there's too many of us in here 


"actually below the freezing point of petrol, if you can imagine it, so | 
understand they have a system of windbreaks." 


Sir Malcolm snapped into focus and proportion, and incredibly he 
was still talking. Some part of Keagan had remained focused 
enough to nod knowledgeably, and he heard himself say: 


"You know, | think it would do me a lot of good. It definitely sounds 
bracing; I'm not much of a summer person anyway." 


"Well then, it's settled!" Sir Malcolm said. "Benton, send one of your 
chaps to escort him on the way north; he'll stay with Schaeffer's lot. 
You, | want back with the Bath group. The rest of your South West 
London lot should report to the general South East operations 
corps." 


"You're breaking up the cell?" Renton looked heartbroken. "I—I 
would need to get permission from the chain of command..." 


"No need, no need," Sir Malcolm brushed aside the suggestion. 
"There are two types of people in this world, my boy, those who act, 
and those who fear to act. After this, the whole world is going to be 
different. You should align yourself with those who have the power 
to shape it." 


Something in what Sir Malcolm had said made the hairs on the back 
of Keagan's neck stand on end. Carefully, quietly, he said: 


"Sir Malcolm, may | ask you a question?" 


Sir Malcolm turned back to Keagan, and smiled his broken smile. 
"Of course. Fire away." 


"You said most MPs and Lords and whatever don't want to believe 
that the Foundation is real—that all this supernatural stuff is going 
on. What makes you different?"