Another Servus turned the corner, reacting to the sound. Fire 
erupted from the barrel, shaking the dying human the gun was 
sticking through. Three bullets. Head, neck, and chest. The shooter 
propped a foot against the D-class, pushed, withdrew the gun, some 
entrails coming out along with the rifle. Turned, faced David. 


"David Eskobar," she said. 

"Olympia," David replied. 

"You have been briefed?" 

"Ssssssame as you," he stuttered. 

"You are not shocked?" 

"That...that thing showed me all of this already. I'll...I'll be okay." 


"Very good. Let us proceed." Olympia walked down the hallway, 
David behind her. 


"There's going to be a lot of this, isn't there?" David said, trying not 
to slip on the blood. 


"You know the answer to that." 


"Fair enough." 


David blocked out so much of what happened that day. Half from 
horror, half from a genuine sense of existential overload. How do 
you deal with a universe where the plan has not only been written, 
but laid out in front of you? David watched Olympia kill at least a 
dozen of his researchers, all infected. Not that that mattered. David 
knew each and every one of them, had selected or been involved in 
the selection of each one. Knew their families. 


Knew how hard it would be to explain this carnage. 


And Olympia didn't seem to care. David was walking in the shadow 
of someone who was, by all evidence, completely without 
conscience. She had a mission, and that was all there was to her. 


It had been several hours since the two of them had materialized in 
Site 38. He knew there were exactly thirteen infected individuals left 
in Site 38, not counting the...things in the surrounding countryside. 

But there was something to deal with first. 


Voices in front of them. Spoken audibly by individuals not capable of 
telepathic communication. Uninfected. David and Olympia stopped, 
took cover behind different doorways. 


"This is Bravo team," a voice said. "Hallway secure. Moving into 
hallway Alfa-3-Charlie." 


Two camouflaged individuals with assault rifles looked around the 
corner, saw no one, turned the corner and began walking towards 
the two concealed individuals. Olympia pointed her handgun over 
their heads and fired two rounds. The Task Force agents dropped to 
a prone position, returned fire, shouted some warning. David was 
only half listening. 


"Agent Rasee, Agent Hsu, hold your fire," Olympia shouted down 
the hallway. "I just needed your attention. We are not infected." 


More shouted warnings, several more bullets from both sides. One 
agent began to throw a smoke grenade; Olympia fired a round down 
the hall, hit the agent's hand. David noticed she didn't look when she 
fired. The standoff lasted six minutes. 


"Tell your commander that Isham Harris is between the trees," 
Olympia finally said. Some more shouting down the hall, some 
squeaking from a radio, and then silence. David glanced down the 
hall; the agents were shifting uncomfortably and looked pale. 
Footsteps were coming towards them. 


The man who came up from behind the Mobile Task Force agents 
walked with authority. Everything about him exuded it. He was the 
sort of man who inspired loyalty without words; a hand gesture as he 
walked past the two agents in the hallway, and they stood at 
attention. David had recommended this man for his current job well 
before he was the director of Site 38. William Lopez, commanding 
officer, MTF Rho-1. 


Lopez walked up to where Olympia was standing and stopped. He 
glanced at David, looked him up and down, and dismissed him. He 
did that a lot. He turned to Olympia. "How the fuck do you know who 
Isham Harris is?" 


"That's not relevant, Major," Olympia said, "but | was told that you 
would recognize that phrase." 


Lopez looked Olympia up and down as well. "Nobody calls me Major 
anymore. Who the hell are you?" 


Olympia holstered her gun. "My name is Olympia, and you're going 
to help me save the world." 


It was like baptism, or birth. Transcendence. Transfiguration. Like a 
first breath in a new world. The Minotaur's body didn't breathe, but 
there was no reason to break the metaphor. Until recently, the 
Minotaur was a metaphor. Until now. His Goddess had blessed him. 
His service was his honor. 


The Minotaur turned his head to his left; he heard the sound of 
scraping stone and paused, before realizing it was coming from him. 
To his left were several dozen sacks, all with the words 
"APOLLODORUS CONSTRUCTION COMBINE" printed on them. 
Behind him (his head turned fully around; it wasn't as though the 
Minotaur had an actual spinal column to deal with), several human 
Servus instances were stirring a vat of what looked like concrete 
mix. The Servus stepped away from the vat and stopped stirring. 
The movement of the concrete mixture slowed, slowed, slowed... 


...a ripple. Then another. A shape moving beneath the surface. 


A hand rose from the mixture, dripping, then setting. A metal 
scaffold sat beside the pit; the arm rose and grabbed one of the bars 
and pulled itself from the gray swamp. The Minotaur looked at the 
new creature. Humanoid in shape, though well taller than the 
hominid parasites. Two, almost two and a half meters tall. Arms, 
legs, torso, head. The arms had fractures where the elbows would 
be. The legs, likewise, had crevices where the rock limbs separated; 
they functioned as knees. The Minotaur did not understand fully how 


they worked. He looked at the cracks in his own arms where his rock 
fists were connected. He wanted the fist to rotate. It did so. The why 
was not important; his Goddess willed it to be, and it was. 


He looked at the doppelganger. His face could not smile, but he felt 
something akin to joy, looking at the other being. The horns rising 
from the other's head were black, the same as his own. This was a 
gift from his Goddess. Their Goddess. The Minotaurs looked at one 
another. Without a word, they began walking towards the nearby 
complex. 


The concrete mixture rippled again as they began to hunt. 


Commander Lopez looked at Olympia. "Can you prove a single 
thing you just told me?" 


"About our mission? Hardly." Olympia shrugged. "That you will have 
to take on faith. But you cannot deny the logic involved. You see an 
877 outbreak. You have been seeing increased activity from the 
microchips for months. Some of that could have happened on its 
own. This, however, is too much. The world next door to ours is 
staging a break-in, and this is the window they're coming in through. 
The only device capable of travelling between worlds is stationed in 
the physics department of Alexylva University. | invite you to draw 
your own conclusions." 


Lopez sat quietly. "Let's say you're telling the truth. How the hell are 
you involved? Aren't you supposed to be in a shed somewhere?" 


"Storage fffffacility," David sputtered. "But that's not rrrrrrrrrelevant. 
You need to give the order, Mmmmmajor." 


"If you need it done, Eskobar, that's the best reason | can think of 

why it's fucking stupid," Lopez said. "Remember that even in your 

version of events, it was your incompetence that let this all happen 
in the first pla—" 


"You think | don't fucking KNOW that, Lopez?" David replied. "You 
think | don't know | should never have had this job? That the 
Foundation made a sssssserious fucking error in hiring me in the 


first place? Believe me, nobody is mmmmmore aware of this than | 
am. So order this godforsaken place blown straight to hell already 
and put me out of a job. Give us all wwwwwwhat we want." 


Lopez sat and considered this. He turned to Olympia. "What kind of 
munitions do we need?" 


"Fuel-air bombs. Preferably multiple passes over the Site to be sure. 
They are going to become aware of the incoming bombs in a few 
minutes, so you'll want to hit the area surrounding the Site as well, 
possibly for a kilometer around or so." 


"That's a hell of a lot to cover up,” Lopez sighed. 


"Keter containment breaches typically are," Olympia replied, coming 
to her feet. "Not sure what else you expect." 


Lopez nodded as she and David walked towards the door. "I'll make 
the call. One more question, though. You said they're going to be 
aware the bombs are coming. How are they going to know? Have 
they infiltrated our communications?" 


"Possibly, but | doubt it," Olympia replied. "No, I'm going to go tell 
them about it right now." 


Lopez had no time to react as Olympia and David left. 
Act Il, Scene II: Negotiation>> 


Return to Parable of the Wayward Prince hub 


Negotiation 


<< Act Il, Scene |: Repel 
"Jesus Christ," Agent Usilov said. "Khalif, come take a look at this." 


Agent Aziz walked over to the other man. They were now standing 
in front of a two, two-and-a-half meter tall statue. And a damn ugly 
one, to boot. 


"Did you ever see Dark Knight Rises?" Aziz said. "If you look at it at 
the right angle, does it not—" 


"Holy shit, it's Bane," Usilov said. "A big-ass statue of Bane, with 
horns." 


"Why the fuck would somebody ha—" 


Aziz was interrupted by an enormous stone fist crashing into his 
side, breaking five ribs and knocking him to the ground. The 
Minotaur ground the concrete joints of its legs to move it towards 
Aziz's supine body, where the agent was coughing blood onto 
himself. Agent Usilov's safety was already off and his rifle was on 
full automatic. 


"Die, motherfucker!" he shouted, blasting five-fifty-six rounds into the 
statue-thing's upper torso at point-blank range. The rounds bounced 
off, taking a few stone chips with them. The statue rotated its upper 
body along the place where its waist should have been, spinning its 
upper half without moving its lower half. It reached out with its fist 
once Usilov's head was within range and knocked Usilov down like a 
ragdoll with one concrete right cross. 


Usilov's neck broken, he lost consciousness instantly, blood 
streaming from nose and ears. Aziz's breath ran ragged, trying to 
suck in air through a collapsed lung as he dragged himself across 
the ground away from the stone creature. The Minotaur stalked 


skeletal and muscular system of SCP-760 differ greatly in areas 
from those of humans, the most notable effects of these differences 
being legs that extrude perpendicular to the torso and an ape-like 
curvature of the spine that results in a preference to walk on all 
fours. Other notable differences include the addition of an extra joint 
on each finger of SCP-760, and an average of 150% of the joint 
degrees of freedom that are allowed for humans. This makes 
SCP-760 much more flexible than the average human, which aids 
specimens of SCP-760 during feeding. 


Where a face would be on a human, there is a mass of hair on 
SCP-760; this hair is shown to have some sort of sensory function 
that allows for sight in the dark. Underneath the hair, there are no 
eyes, nose, or mouth; however, the skin of the "face" is pulled taut 
as a part of a speaker-like vocal system. SCP-760 has muscle 
structures in the front of their head that they can use to vibrate the 
skin as if it were a drum head, producing a variable-pitched whine. 
Further observation led to the discovery that this vocal structure is 
also capable of opening and serving as a mouth. Within this mouth 
is a tongue, approximately 40 cm in length with a soft but coarse 
texture. 


The epidermis of SCP-760 is shown to react to light in a way that 
makes them invisible; this is done via a complex system of reflective 
[DATA EXPUNGED] roughly 78% of SCP-760's skin. The hair on 
SCP-760's head disappears as well; biological analysis shows the 
hair to be similar in composition to a polar bear's. As light dims, 
however, this effect fades, and in very dim light it is possible to see 
SCP-760 completely. Removal of the skin also hinders this effect; 
and it appears to do so on more areas of SCP-760 than where the 
skin was removed, suggesting that the function of SCP-760's 
invisibility on any part of the body requires that same function on all 
surrounding parts. It is also worth noting that SCP-760 appears 
agitated when subjected to light for longer than what would be 
normal sunlight hours near latitude Nor S. 


Instances of SCP-760 are very docile under normal circumstances. 
They exhibit behavior and tendencies similar to canines or primates, 
thus making understanding what they are thinking relatively easy. 
They are generally curious creatures; any object that is placed in the 


towards Aziz. 
"Wh...wha..." Aziz wheezed. 


A voice boomed from the stone...thing, from no place in particular. It 
seemed to exude from the creature's entire body at once. 


"He bled so much, Aziz," it said. "| wish it was you. | want it to be 
you. Suck air and scream, hominid. Die for me." 


Aziz obeyed. 


David heard a sound behind them as he and Olympia walked down 
the hallway. MTF Rho-1 agents had largely secured what was left of 
Site 38 proper; while the infected creatures were devastatingly 
intimidating against untrained researchers and scientists, they stood 
little chance against armed Foundation infantry units. The footsteps 
behind them came from Major Lopez, Rho-1's commanding officer. 


"Now just wait a goddamn minute," he began. 


"There's hardly time," Olympia said. "The infected in the building 
may be gone, but the thing controlling them isn't, and it'll keep 
spreading infected creatures around to propagate itself. We have to 
move quickly before it starts again or escapes." 


"I've already ordered the bombers to come level this place to the 
ground. We're securing all surviving personnel and evacuating,” 
Lopez said. "Whatever the thing is, it'll be another stain in the middle 
of a big-ass crater in about forty-five minutes. If you really want to 
help, help with that effort." 


"You want help evacuating civilians? Fine. There are two living, 
uninfected individuals in the basement; your men will overlook them 
if you don't search it specifically. A researcher named Storm and a 
prisoner named Nexer. It is...specifically vital that you rescue these 
two individuals. | am not at liberty to discuss why." 


Bullshit, Olympia, David thought; you have no idea why, any more 
than | do. But the Intruder was very specific that these two had to 
survive. Maybe more than we do. 


David pondered that last part. Well, especially more than some of us 
do... 


"Awftully quiet there, Eskobar," Lopez sneered. "You going along 
with this dumb shit?" 


"You dddddddon't have to understtttttand it, Commander," David 
stuttered, "but that's what's ggggoing to happen." 


"We are going to the woods outside the Site," Olympia said. "1 
suggest you keep evacuating. Additionally, | would suggest you 


equip—" 


"That's about goddamn enough from you," Lopez said. "| don't have 
the manpower to arrest you, but | sure as hell won't sit here and 
listen to you tell me how to do my job. Our equipment is more than 
fine for these little fuckers." 


"You might be surprised at what you're about to have to deal with, 
Major," Olympia said. "Consider getting rocket-propelled grenades 
and other explosive ordnance from the armory. You have bigger fish 
waiting." 


An aide ran up beside the commander. "Sir, Third Platoon is 
reporting losses from the courtyard," the aide said. "They're not 
making much sense, to be honest. Something about statues with 
horns? Radio communication has been lost with two fireteams. 
Should we send in reinforcements?" 


"Yes, of cour—" Lopez turned and looked at Olympia, then back at 
the aide. "Statues?" 


"That's what we heard over the radio before communications were 
lost," he said. 


Lopez looked back at Olympia. "RPGs?" 
"Explosives in general should be effective," Olympia replied.