"Please, please. You have to help me get out. You have 
no idea what they've made me do. That woman... what 
did they call her? Lady Catfish? She's dead. They made 
me... they made me kill her, dismember her... leave her 
body parts in this hero's bed... For character 
development... and... the things they had me do to her, 
before she died... they made me laugh and they made 
me like it..." 


Dr. Toxic forces back tears. "Their voices in my head, 
saying this is what audiences want... want the edgy 
villains... real-world violence so the power fantasy has 
extra spice..." 


The room is silent. Unmoving. Dr. Toxic glances around, 
panic setting in on his features. "You have to do 
something," he says. "I'm almost out of time! The things 
they have me do, every day of my life in here - please, 
please, I'm begging you— Please!" 


The double doors of the laboratory dungeon lair burst 
open. A figure stands silhouetted in the moonlight - a 
teenage boy, standing tall, cape billowing behind him. 


“Teen Wonder!" Dr. Toxic exclaims. "How can this be? 
My electric bear sharks should have taken care of you!" 


Super Marvolo leaps to his feet. "Quick, Boy Marvolo! 
Use your Marvel Gun!" 


Boy Marvolo whips the oversized gun from behind his 
back and fires at Super Marvolo. The dexanite-troinian 
chains vanish in a burst of sparks. 


"No!" screams Dr. Toxic. "Impossible! My plan was 
foolproof! This cannot be happening!" 


"Good work, Boy Marvolo!" Super Marvolo shouts. "Now, 
let's take care of this dastardly villain." 


A panel at the top of the laboratory dungeon lair opens, 
with the sound of an escape helicopter above. Dr. Toxic 
catches the line that drops through. 


"You may have bested me this time, Super Marvolo,” Dr. 
Toxic shouts as he lifts off. "But you haven't seen the last 
of... Doctor Toxic!" 


"| imagine not," Super Marvolo says. "But we'll be ready." 
Super Marvolo puts his arm around Boy Marvolo. "Now, 
let's go rescue Lady Catfish." 


Asche Zu Asche 


We finally made it to the safe zone. At least, it used to be 
the safe zone. All that was left when we arrived was a 
heap of rat-gnawed skeletons, and a notice from the 
military that the next outpost was 200 miles away. The 
snow was drifting, and the wind bit to the bone. Our 
masks were freezing over, and our lungs burning. We 
decided it was time to find somewhere to make camp for 
the night. 


There were four of us. We still barely know each other, 
even though we've been travelling together for close to 5 
years by my reckoning. It's hard to tell with what's 
happened. Winter never ends with all the shit in the air. 


We built a small fire and huddled close around it, eating 
the meager rations we'd dug out of the gray ice. Sergei 
was up on first watch. The rest of us slept uneventfully. 
My turn came up last. | woke up early, and told Alexi to 
go get some sleep. | locked a new magazine in my rifle, 
and took a seat in the tower, staring into the ashy sunrise 


It's been nearly 30 years since we fucked the world. 30 
long years since the bombs fell and mankind was wiped 
off the face of the planet. | don't know how many of us 
are still alive. For all we know, the last bastion of 
humanity might have been back in Petrograd, if that's still 
what they're calling it. Saint Petersburg before the war. 
God only knows how the name got changed. Not that it 
was much of a city anymore. The War levelled most of 
the city, leaving only the outskirts and the Metro intact. 
That's where we lived, maybe 1000 people trying to 
survive. Most of us never saw the sky, never stepped 
outside the tunnels. Too dangerous. Between the 
mutants and the weather, you could barely survive a day 
on the surface. The four of us decided to make a break 
for it. The military frequencies were still broadcasting, 
promising shelter and safety at an outpost 30 kilometers 
up the Neva. We made it there in a week, finding nothing 
but a notice to move to the next location. The past five 
years we've been chasing these signs and radio signals. 
From Lake Ladoga to Volgograd and north again. | don't 
know where we are anymore. We must be in Siberia by 
now. 


Travel is hard even in summer, or what passes for it. It 
never gets above freezing this far north. Winter stops 
everything. Six, eight months we have to find a village to 
hole up in. Try to find an intact house, keep from freezing 
to death. We hunt for food. Find a feral cow, wild pig if 
we're lucky. Usually it's mutants. Howlers, we call them. 
As far as anyone can tell, they were rats before the War. 
Now they're the size of dogs, and vicious. And talkative. 
They howl and scream, you can hear it for miles. Not the 
worst, though. Most of the truly dangerous ones stay in 


the cities. We don't go in the cities anymore, not after 
what happened to Vladimir. A pack of these...things 
came out of the sewers, dragged him off. We don't know 
what they were. Looked like the bastard offspring of men 
and apes. We never saw him again. 


| returned to the present with the sound of a scream. A 
howler, probably. Sounded close. | went to check it out, 
maybe put a bullet in it for breakfast. It seems like the 
storm had picked up overnight. | could barely see 
through the snow on my lenses, and even then it was 
difficult to see more than a few paces. | thought | saw 
something moving out there in the blizzard, but | could 
never get close enough to see it properly. | headed back 
to my post, cursing under my breath. Heading back into 
camp | noticed everybody else was awake as well. 
They'd all heard the beasts. | told them to go back to 
sleep. That's when Natasha screamed. | wheeled 
around, drawing my rusty old Makarov. There was 
something hanging from her arm. It looked like a howler. 
| put a round through its head and it dropped like a 
stone. 


Sergei stepped over and started dressing the wound. We 
were all confused. Howlers aren't usually hostile like this. 
| was on edge, gripping my rifle tightly. Suddenly, a 
rhythmic...chant, or something started up, coming from 
all around us. Something about it chilled me to the bone. 
It had a profound inhumanity to it, the worst sound I'd 
heard since the freight-train roar of the bombs when | 
was five. Dark silhouettes started appearing through the 
snow. Seven, eight feet tall, all of them. Arms reaching 
their knees. They were coming closer, chanting all the 
while. No...not chanting. Grunting. Deep, guttural 
sounds. 


| took aim at the nearest one and loosed a round. The 
thing went down, skull shattered. The grunting got 
louder, and the creatures broke away from each other, 
swarming us. A hail of gunfire tore them apart. Or that's 


what we thought. As | approached one, wondering what 
in God's name had attacked us, it rose again. Howling 
and spitting, it ran off into the storm. The rest followed. 
We sat down around the fire, thinking about what we'd 
just seen. At least a dozen creatures, aggressive and 
intelligent, and certainly not human. These beings were 
more advanced than anything we'd seen before, not just 
mindless animals. Myself and Alexi decided to go look 
around, see if anything particularly unusual stuck out. 


We saw the silhouette of an immense tower in the 
distance. A cooling tower, from before the war. My god... 
how far have we come? We started towards it, looking 
for any sign of where we were. The ruins of a village 
came into view. No...not ruins. It was inhabited! The 
cooling stacks were operating, sending pillars of steam 
into the sky. We rushed towards it, thinking we'd found 
the “safe zone” at last. 


The flap of leathery wings above drew our attention 
upwards. One of the...things we'd been attacked by 
earlier was flying overhead. It didn't notice us, and we left 
it alone. As we entered the village, we noticed it seemed 
somehow strange, as if it had been rebuilt, but not by 
humans. Our rifles were in our hands as we closed in on 
what appeared to be some kind of town square. What we 
saw there will stick with me for the rest of my life. The 
things that had attacked us earlier were there. A group of 
them. Alexi was as shocked as | was. We ran. Somehow 
they spotted us and gave chase. Alexi was killed almost 
instantly, one dropped a huge chunk of masonry on him. 
| fled, running back to the camp. The creatures lost track 
of me and returned to the village. 


The realization struck me as | regained my senses. The 
group that had attacked us, that we thought had attacked 
us. They weren't hostile. They were intelligent, looking to 
welcome us. My god, what have we done? We can't 
communicate with them, we have no way of changing 
things. So we ran. Back towards Petrograd, back to our 


homes. Every day we run. And every night, I'm haunted 
by the flap of leathery wings over the snowy wastes. | 
never see them, just hear them. See footprints outside 
our hiding places. They are hunting us, and there's 
nothing | can do. 


The remaining members of the group, Sergei, Natasha 
and | have decided we can't risk drawing them back to 
Petrograd. We make our stand here, at the Cathedral of 
the Epiphany in Irkutsk. Victory or death! 


Bilocation 


After the tumor removal, | started to notice | was always 
being watched. Not by, | don't know, anyone in particular, 
or friends or people from the hospital, just a hair-on-the- 
back-of-the-neck feeling- night, day, windows open or 
shut, just a prickle. Since it happened right after the brain 
surgery, | should have told someone, but by then I'd had 
enough of scans and doctors and soft serious tones, and 
diagnoses, and pity, and worst of all, constant company 
(full of warmth and support and never leaving your side, 
not once- any proper introvert would hate it. | did) So | 
didn't panic and didn't tell any of the doctors, not even 
Dr. Morton, who did the surgery himself. 


That didn't really take away the surprise of waking up 
one morning, and finding someone else in bed next to 
you. 


“The fuck?” | jerked awake and sat up in my Pu's. “Who 
the hell are you?” 


The figure was already sitting up, arms folded, sheets 
about his waist, and didn't answer. 


“| said- how did you get in my house?” 


It didn't do anything, even when | yelled at it some more, 
so eventually | just got dressed and left. Took a little 


minutes, results in the drone emerging into a windy 
section of mountain where it is directed to stay low. 
Camera panning of the area reveals what may have 
once been a village, long since abandoned. The precise 
location is unclear but it is assumed to be in the vicinity 
of Site B judging from estimates in travel by the drone. 
The buildings here are coated in deceased layers of 
SCP-610 and unlike other buildings in Site A and Site C 
which were coated in SCP-610, these buildings appear 
to be constructed directly from the tissue substance. 


After a cursory scan of Site B it is determined there is no 
life here either natural or SCP-610 related so the drone 
is directed back into the tunnel, as the winds around the 
area make aerial recovery impossible. Upon descent into 
the tunnel a deep, roaring sound fills the audio and video 
feed becomes choppy as something blocks the signal. 
During the periods in which connection to the drone is 
clearest its camera and weapon are angled downward 
and propellers slow in speed to allow a faster drop. 


Video feed becomes entirely clear for the final two 
minutes before feed is lost. Rushing up toward the drone 
from the area below is what appears to be a large human 
face stretched to twenty times its proportions with no 
features save those created by the SCP-610 material. 
There are eye sockets but no eyes, a mouth but no 
teeth. The drone fires upon this rushing mass of 

SCP-610 but the bullets do not deter it, impact points 
remaining visible for several seconds before closing over 
themselves. There is no room in the tunnel for the drone 
to take evasive action and it is swallowed by the mass. 


RSCP610 is considered lost until three hours later when feed 
inexplicably returns. 


Video feed from the drone appears to show a series of 
structures, illuminated by one of the two lights on the 
drone. The camera pans around without instructions 
from the remote relays or HQ, capturing a vast number 
of shambling entities within the area. SCP-610 material 


walk, played some Solitaire. The next day, it was still 
there, but up and moving a little, but still not talking, so | 
tried not to look at it. Called Rhonda and chatted for a 
while. Then, the next day, it was in my kitchen when | 
woke up, doing my dishes. 


| turned the coffee pot on and wandered past it towards 
the table. “Thanks.” 


“No problem,” the figure said. 


| processed this for a little while. “So, this means I'm 
crazy, now, right?” 


“What?” Said the person, attacking a soup pot with a 
sponge. “No, that's stupid.” 


“You weren't here before.” 
“lam now.” 
“Who are you?” 


“Look at me.” He stopped scrubbing and stared at me. 
He looked just like me. 


“...Are you, like, Tyler Durden or something?” 


“No. No. Of course not.” He went back to scrubbing, and 
| shifted a little, suddenly scared. He looked just like me. 


The phone rang, and the other-me glanced at it. | got up 
to answer it. Dr. Morton, in fact, had some results from 
post-surgery tests- | was, apparently, “right as rain,” and 
the recovery was going exactly as planned. He promised 
to call back with in a week. 


| hung up, staring at the phone. “Doesn't he bother you?” 
asked the man in the kitchen. 


“What? Why?” 


“| don't know. Just bothers me.” 


“No,” | said, with some certainty, unconsciously reaching 
towards the scar on the side of my head, that the hair 
was just beginning to grow over. “He's nice. Had me 
listen to his kid's flute recital when | was freaking out 
about surgery. Hell, he took a tumor out of my head. 
Cured me.” 


“Me too,” said the guy, and pulled his hair out of the way 
to show me a matching scar. “I just want to kill him.” He 

picked a knife out of the soapy water of the sink, flipped 

it around in his hand. “Want to help?” 


“What the hell?” | jumped up. “No way. Put that back. 
You're crazy.” 


He sighed and dropped it into the sink. | poured a cup of 
coffee, practically ran into the living room, and 
proceeded to watch TV for the next few hours. At one 
point, | heard the door open and closed. | breathed a 
sigh of relief. 


Still, later, | was feeling kind of weird about whatever had 
just happened, so | went down to the corner store and 
bought a six-pack, then later, don't ask me why (though | 
think it had something to do with the booze plus 
whatever pills | was on)- ended up calling Suicide 
Hotline. | wasn't, you know, thinking of anything, but the 
woman | got, Sarah, and |, ended up having this amazing 
heart-to-heart, where we talked about all the shit in my 
life, and what was happening, and what | should do 
about it. 


We actually went on for a few hours, and | learned some 
things about her too, but by the end, we agreed | was 
going to call Dr. Morton in the morning and explain 
everything that happened- since whatever was making 
me freak out now was probably related to it, and to Crazy 
Man, and brain surgery was by nature scary and tricky, 
and these things probably happened to other people. 


She wished me good luck, and we hung up. | was feeling 
a lot better when | went to sleep. 


When | woke up, Crazy Man wasn't there. 


That morning, the phone rang. When | answered it, it 
was a police officer, saying | was wanted for questioning, 
regarding the death of- you guessed it- Doctor Jeremy 
Alfonso Morton, sometime last evening. He had been 
stabbed seventeen times by his own kitchen knife, and 
my fingerprints were found on the blade. | told him 
everything he asked. 

| didn't do it. 

No, | don't have siblings or a twin.