She stuffed the fear back down. Four years should have been 
enough time to move on from the breach at Site-64. She threw 
herself into other assignments, did her duty, earned recognition. But 
these things could not erase the wasted years of planning, the 
ruined careers around her, the humiliation and shame of being at the 
mercy of what she hunted. The lives ended. All of what she had, all 
of the successes in preserving the crumbling edifice of mankind's 
sanity, was tainted. The combined effort of the most sophisticated 


organization humanity had ever known, and she had been 
hopelessly outmatched. It was only a matter of time, really, before it 
happened again. Before something else shattered the thin veneer of 
control they lived with. 


Anderson still haunted her. Every day. 


She stepped into the abandoned concrete structure, as the 
encrypted e-mail had instructed. Unauthorized intervention in a 
matter deemed officially closed by Site Command could end her. 
The possibility that she would suddenly wake up in a new town, 
false memories of a plain, low-profile existence forcibly inserted 
through a tender spot in the back of her neck, was very real. The 
only communication she dared was one response to the initial e- 
mail, delivered from a public library while she wore a hooded 
sweatshirt and sunglasses, any devices that could possibly be used 
to track her location three hundred miles away, left on her bedside 
table. If she did not walk away from this meeting, no one would 
know what became of her. And no one would be able to finish her 
work. All possibilities awaited in the darkness of the ruined 
laboratory. 


| know how you get him. The words froze her as they appeared on 
her phone. They urged her forward. The words appeared in her 
mind periodically to drive off the thousand scenarios unfolding 
before her in which this went terribly wrong. She stepped completely 
into the darkness, the path before her lit with her small, head- 
mounted flashlight. 


"I'm here," she called into the now empty chamber. She waited. A 
low, empty howl as the wind gusted past the entrance to the 
laboratory. The damp chill and the smell of musty concrete were the 
only reply to her call. 


Suddenly an ear-splitting crack filled the room, the reverberating 
sound of metal hitting concrete as a vent grating fell from the ceiling. 
She looked up to see a mass of wires slowly trailing down from the 
ceiling vent, seeming to twist and move of their own accord as the 
larger mass lowered itself into the room. She drew her pistol in a 
quick motion, looking quickly for anything in the mass that looked 
like it might be vital. 


The wires touched the floor. They seemed to stiffen and tense, 
anchoring into two points in the ground. A larger, central mass now 
lowered from the ceiling vent. It was shaped like a person. She 
aimed at where she thought the heart would be. 


"Please put the gun down. There's no need for that." An older man's 
voice wafted down from the ceiling, as the mass of wires began to 
coalesce around where they had affixed on the floor. In seconds, 
they took the shape of legs as the rest of the man descended to 
stand in front of her. The pale skin, the white beard. Her pulse 
quickened. She raised the gun again. 


"Albert Frostman. Pol number 45543. Also known as Phineas." 
"Agent Merlo. Please put the gun down." 


There were more lines in the old man's face this time around. More 
veins and capillaries showing through where her light shone on his 
skin. His hardware, however, looked much the same. If not 
upgraded. The faint sound of clicking metal came from where he 
stood as whatever it was that was inside him reset and reconfigured 
after his descent from the air vent. Beads of sweat started to run 
down her spine. 


"You killed two Agents. Your group has killed a lot more." 


Phineas sighed. It sounded like air rushing through a heating duct. 
"Your people spent years flaying one of ours alive. These 
grievances are pointless. | didn't come here to kill you, and you're 
familiar enough to know that if | had, you wouldn't have stood a 
chance." 


Merlo knew this to be true. Of course it was true. None of that 
changed how dangerous this man was. She held the gun steady. 
"How can | be certain?" 


The old man slowly raised his hands, his palms facing outward 
towards Agent Merlo. The woven fabric that took the place of skin 
appeared to ripple with the subtle movement of his fingers. She 
noticed now that his eyes were red and puffy. Hers likely were too. 
She had not slept in two days. 


"You can't of course. But | think you'll want to hear what | have to 
say. Now please, put the gun down, it's making me nervous. Neither 
of us want to get hurt." 


Agent Merlo stood her ground as she thought it over. Theoretically, 
she could bury a slug in his brainpan. Even Anderson's tech was 
unlikely to work with a good chunk of the nervous system taken out 
by a hollow point. But it had been four years. A lifetime in the world 
of mainstream robotics technology. Who knew what the hell that was 
to Anderson. 


Her finger remained on the trigger. The adrenaline ebbed just a bit 
as Phineas remained where he was. What reason could he possibly 
have to meet with the Foundation? There had been rumors that 
things had changed within the structure of Anderson's outfit. The 
number of questions she had finally tipped the balance of her 
thinking. She slowly lowered her weapon. 


"Talk." 


Phineas exhaled, the ductwork inside him creaking again. "I'm going 
to reach in my coat pocket now to retrieve something. Please don't 
shoot me. Does Congressman Raymond Caldwell mean anything to 
you?" 


Agent Merlo considered the question. "He's been a giant pain in our 
ass since he got control of the House Subcommittee on Research 
and Technology. Funding from the US has been a lot harder to 
come by lately." 


She watched carefully as Phineas pulled a phone out of his jacket 
pocket. He held it out to her view. "That's not an accident, as you 
can imagine. Even the Foundation has budgets, it seems." 


A video feed of some sort was visible on the phone. A crowd, 
gathered in what looked like a hotel lobby. Lots of suits, lots of 
flunkies rushing around. Whoever was holding the camera was 
moving among the members of the crowd, heading for a dais of 
some kind. 


"This is a live video stream," said Phineas. "Taken from the 


viewpoint of one of my people. One of the few left." 


The camera continued to weave into the crowd. Eventually, the view 
was of a stage, political banners and flags festooning a podium. A 
fundraiser. At the podium was Congressman Caldwell. 


"What is this? Why are you showing me this?" Merlo's fear was 
beginning to creep back. 


"lam about to do something distasteful in the extreme. I'm about to 
help the Foundation." Phineas raised his wrist close to his lips. He 
grimaced, then spoke into his sleeve. 


"Do it." 


A hand holding a gun suddenly came into view of the camera. Out of 
the shot, a woman had time to scream briefly before a single shot 
was fired. Blood splattered on a campaign poster behind the 
Congressman as the left side of his head seemed to be pulverized. 
He fell to the ground, likely dead before he landed. The room 
scattered amid screams and commotion. The camera remained 
fixed in place. 


Merlo's stomach dropped as she watched the scene on Phineas' 
phone. She stammered. 


"What...the fuck? What are you doing? Just...why? Do you have 
any idea..." 


Phineas remained still. "Keep watching, Agent Merlo." 


The camera moved up onto the stage, focusing in on the 
Congressman's shattered head. Blood was everywhere. The first 
sirens were audible in the distant background. A woman's voice 
from behind the camera spoke. 


"Go on then. There's no purpose in pretending.” 


The Congressman's body shifted. A few quick spasms, and it began 
to push itself up. As the camera caught the gaping hole in the man's 
skull, Merlo saw not the bloody pulp of exposed brain tissue 
underneath the bits of scalp and flaps of loose skin, but instead a 


gleaming, white shell. Too smooth and too polished to be bone. 
"Holy shit. He's a Saker." 


Phineas nodded. He spoke once more into his sleeve. "Go ahead 
and get out of there. We'll meet up like we discussed. Good work." 


The camera feed cut out abruptly. Phineas put the phone back in his 
coat pocket. 


Merlo was reeling. The consequences of what she had just seen 
were only beginning to take shape. "That...that was a sitting 
member of the United States Congress. When this hits the news-" 


"It won't. By all accounts, that was an embarrassing lapse of 
security, and an exposure of a clandestine product. Anderson and 
his backers will see to it that the Congressman is said to have died 
of a heart attack, or in a car accident. They've likely already rounded 
up the witnesses. Watch the newspapers. You'll see." 


"But...why?" 


"Take it as a token of good faith. Congressman Caldwell was quite 
well-informed for a freshman member, wasn't he? Caused a lot of 
problems for your North American Command, I'm sure. The House 
Subcommittee will cease to be a problem for you for oh, about four 
years or so. Six if the latest polling holds up." 


Despite the facility being empty, Merlo instinctively lowered her 
voice. "Don't you think we've considered the same thing? The kind 
of shit that would start, even if we could cover up something like 
that?" 


"Had you known that a Saker unit was sitting in Congress, your 
hand would have been forced." 


She had to concede that point. "Still, | don't see how this leads to 
Anderson. He'll be looking out for us for sure now." 


Phineas frowned. "Yes, this is far from ideal. There is no element of 
surprise anymore, so you'll be running into a buzzsaw. Anderson 
also knows that I'm the only person who had the means and the 


knowledge to take out Saker-13. This was an open declaration of 
war." 


Merlo thought of herself as quick to read a situation, but this wasn't 
making any sense. "What do you gain from this?" 


"Now you know I'm acting in good faith. | also have insurance." 
Phineas cleared his throat. "There are others you know. If 
something happens to me, you'll never know where else Anderson 
has his hooks." 


"Jesus." Merlo put a hand to her forehead as she contemplated what 
that meant. "Then that meeting with MC&D. It's true. It's not a small 
business anymore." 


"Anderson's operation is something else now. Something that | can 
no longer abide. And it threatens us both." 


"Now wait a second." Merlo was beginning to feel things clicking into 
place. "If you think the Foundation is going to cooperate with you on 
something like this...we don't even have a full-time MTF assigned to 
Anderson anymore. | can't imagine how I'm going to take this up the 
chain." 


"You're going to have to find a way to convince them. Our continued 
survival depends on it." 


The sound of a shotgun racking behind Phineas punctuated the end 
of his sentence. 


"You'll have to start by convincing me." 


Stepping out from the shadows just behind Phineas, a lanky, 
unshaven man in a dark suit appeared. Agent Daniel Navarro 
trained his shotgun directly at his head. 


«Ties That Bind | Austringers | Consolidation» 


Consolidation 


As they stood alone in a parking lot near a trail head for Forest Park, 
Sasha Merlo simply watched the light November rain fall around 
them, and placed her cell phone back in her pocket. Her brunet hair 
was stuffed beneath a small beanie as she took in a deep breath. 
On the other side of the parking lot, Daniel Navarro was finishing up 
a cigarette. Once they were in Site—64 there would be no more 
smoking, so he was making sure to take advantage of this last 
opportunity. Eventually, the lanky man approached, taking a few 
moments to watch the rain fall with Merlo before he finally spoke. 


“So...” he began. “How about those SCPs?” 
Merlo immediately punched him in the arm. 


“Hey,” Navarro said through a chuckle as he hopped backwards, 
rubbing his arm with his free hand. “That’s a little extreme don’t you 
think?” 


Merlo shook her head. 


“Four years,” she said. “You could have at least sent me an email. 
‘Hey Sasha, just a heads up, |’m not dead or had my memory 
wiped.” 


“What can | say,” he shrugged. “The new task force has me 
swamped. This is the first time I’ve even been back to Oregon since 
2014.” 


“See, that also burns me,” Merlo snapped back, “I offered you a spot 
on Gamma-13 at least four times, and each time you said, ‘MTFs 
are for squares.’ And yet here you stand as a Bibliographer. 
Seriously, what the fuck?” 


“They put a bag over my head,” Navarro replied with a sly smile. 
“Clearly they wanted me more. Try kidnapping next time.” 


Merlo let out a frustrated sigh and turned back to the rain. She 
managed to maintain a frown for a few more moments before it 
cracked into a small grin. 


“They really put a bag over your head?” 
“Sure did.” 


The two agents let out a brief laugh before they turned towards the 
maintenance trail leading westward into the forest. Half a mile in 
they would find yet another trail that would lead to one of Site-64’s 
entry ways. 


“Think Holman will bite?” Navarro asked. Merlo’s thoughts then 
turned to the folder in her backpack, detailing the intricate plan 
Phineas had shared with them back at Fort Charles. 


“| doubt it,” Merlo sighed. “But right now he’s the only one who’d 
even agree to meeting with me, let alone another scheme to capture 
Anderson. Holman’s our only shot, as poor a shot as it is. I’m just 
hoping that the incident with Saker-13 is enough to show him that 
Phineas is willing to play ball.” 


“| mean, what else could he ask for? Two dead congressmen?” 


“With our luck, probably.” 


Site Director Edgar Holman looked over the folder in silence. 
Navarro and Merlo sat before him, each remaining motionless in the 
two chairs he kept in front of his desk. As he continued to read, 
Merlo looked Holman over. The years had not been kind, as the 
wear and tear of over two decades at the helm of a Foundation 
facility had finally begun to show. His slicked back hair, once black, 


was beginning to show streaks of gray. Merlo had enough difficulty 
handling the MTF she had been assigned. She could not begin to 
imagine how one managed to sleep when they were responsible for 
an entire site. 


Eventually Holman took off his reading glasses and closed the 
folder. He looked up at the two agents before giving a small chuckle. 


“| don’t know what I’m more impressed by, the fact that you brought 
me this little scheme or the fact that you did it with Dan Navarro in 
tow, as if it would help,” he said. He then shook his head. “We’d 
never get approval for something like this, Sasha.” 


“But what do you think?” Merlo inquired. 


“It doesn’t matter what | think,” Holman replied. “I could be 
convinced that this plan was God’s gift to the Foundation and we still 
wouldn't get approval, assistance from Phineas aside. They’re only 
calling Gamma-13 together to raid known Anderson locations. Not 
bait traps, especially ones dependent on known Pols.” 


“So that’s it then? Plug’s being pulled?” 
“I’m afraid so,” Holman said with a sigh. “Valiant effort, but no dice.” 
Merlo gave a defeated nod and stood. 


“Thank you for your time, sir,” she said, and made her way to the 
door. Navarro followed suit. It was not long before the two agents 
were in the halls of Site-64, slowly meandering back to Merlo’s 
office. 


“So what now...” Navarro asked, keeping himself in time with 
Merlo’s stride. 


“| have no clue...” 


“There is always my way...” Navarro said with a chuckle. Merlo 
laughed briefly then shook her head.