"No response," the Professor observed. "Interesting, though we'll be 
continuing to use the designation. D-8671, please withdraw the blue- 
banded dart. Throw 3—no strip of paper. D-8671, please hurl the 
dart at the dartboard, | repeat at the dartboard, with intent to kill or 
seriously injure D-7780." 


"What the fuck is this?" shouted Ronny from behind the screen. 
Keagan stopped. "What is this going to do?" 


"Please don't concern yourself with that, D-8671. | take full 
responsibility for anything that happens in this experiment. Please 
continue." 


Keagan lined up the dart, swearing to himself he wasn't going to 
take part in this morbid little game; there was no way the Professor 
could read his mind after all, but already he was picturing himself in 
the dormitory, on the bus, snapping the scrawny gunman's neck, 
pinning him down and breaking his ribs one at a time... the dart flew 
and lodged in the outer bull. 


"A very good shot, D-8671. But, as expected, no result. At least, 
nothing the cameras can detect. D-7780, do you feel OK? ... Very 
well. D-8671, please withdraw the green-banded dart. Piece of 
paper reads ‘Ronny of the family Feldspar'’, the most common 
formulation of his ‘flesh and blood name' according to his conspiracy 
theory beliefs, in mixed rather than upper case. D-8671, you need 
not envisage any particular harm coming to D-7780 as a result of 
this throw." 


Keagan stood just beyond the 3m line, the dart in his hand. He felt 
something in the room gathering, dense and heavy. 


"This is some kind of psychological test, isn't it," he said. "You set up 
this whole thing to see how we react, to see whether we actually 
believe it can do anything. This is bullshit. I'm stopping here." 


"| quit too," shouted Ronny, somewhat unnecessarily. "This is 


freaking me out." 


"D-8671, you have agreed to participate in this programme in return 
for your freedom. You do not have a choice as to whether you 
continue," said Professor Reeds, an icily focused tone entering his 
voice that had not been there before. "Further refusal to obey will 
lead to severe consequences." 


Blam, thought Keagan, remembering Dr Skinner's hand gesture. I've 
been driven half-way across the country, been locked up in some 
kind of weird crypto-military base and subjected to all this crap just 
so | can find out who killed the Judge, why it was being hung on me. 
I'm not going to get shot over a fucking game of darts. 


He squared up to the dartboard, aimed the dart, and let it fly. It 
wasn't as good a throw as his last one, landing in the section 
marked '16', between the triple ring and the bullseye." 


There was a bloodcurdling shriek from the other side of the divider 
wall. Keagan dropped the foam block with the remaining dart and 
made to run around to where Ronny was, but the Professor 
interrupted him over the tannoy. 


"D-8671, please remain where you are. There is no cause for 
alarm." 


"No fucking cause ... what the fuck has—I don't... my hand. My 
hand just..." Ronny was blubbering. Keagan caught a glimpse of a 
whitecoat with a medical pack trotting swiftly from the door to the 
covered area. 


"Please ensure the bleeding is arrested. Fuller medical treatment 
can be carried out at the close of the experiment. D-8671, please 
remove and throw the final dart, which is black-banded. For the 
record this contains the name 'RONNY FELDSPAR ' in uppercase." 


"That's a strawman, you fascist—aah, aah. Jesus Christ. It's a legal 
fiction, legal... Shows you're considered dead under maritime law. 
It's a gravestone, gravestone name. Aaagh." Ronny sounded 
delirious. 


Object Class: Keter 


Proposed Neutralization Method: OPERATION FAIL- 
SAFE-TANGA-34 would be enacted upon successful 
removal of approximately 90% of SCP-682's body mass, 
while incapacitated in a space shuttle that has been set 
to land on the Moon. OPERATION FAIL-SAFE- 
TANGA-34 consists of the following procedures: 


1): 20,200,500,000 RDS-220 hydrogen bombs and 750 
SCP-2195-1 instances will be transported to the Moon, 
spread out across the surface. It will be detonated with 
10 separate inputs at Site-19. Materials for bombs would 
be generated from SCP-2400 and collected stillbirths for 
SCP-2195-1 instances. 


2): 300 Tilda/Cimmerian Reality Vacuum Attachments 
have been attached in an hexagonal pattern on the 
Moon, with approximately 35 km of space between each 
one. TCRVAs will maintain the explosions occurring on 
the Moon to prevent any debris from hitting Earth. 


3): Area-0-TANGA has been constructed 4,000 km into 
the Earth and currently houses a large spheroid 
approximately the size of the Moon, constructed from 
SCP-2400 materials. SCP-1056 will be used to lower the 
size of the spheroid for easier transportation. 


4): Amnestics would be administered to approximately 
80% of the human population after detonation through 
use of amodified RED TALISMAN algorithm to produce 
non-lethal cognitive hazardous amnestics. Amnestics will 
be applied to every source of common media, such as 
newspapers, television, billboards and several popular 
internet sites. 


Result of Neutralization Attempt: Once the weakened 
SCP-682 arrived at the Moon's surface, all explosives 
were detonated. The TCRVAs successfully dampen 
most of the explosion, but 150 large meteorites still land 
on Earth. Spheroid was successfully transported to the 


"Indeed. We are very close to determining whether the object's 
definition of ‘name’ is linked to personal identification or whether it is 
able to somehow determine the legal name of the subject and 
acceptable variations. D-8671, please do not hesitate any further. 
Your colleague requires painkillers and stitches which will not be 
administered until you complete the experiment." 


"Just fucking do it!" yelled Ronny to Keagan. "You bastard, just 
throw it!" 


The sucking emptiness in Keagan's chest intensified as he took aim 
again. The dart seemed to waver in front of his eyes. He hurled it, 
and for a sickening moment he thought he had scored a bullseye. 
Then his vision cleared and he realised it had lodged just outside it 
again in the section marked '7'. There was another howl of pain from 
beyond the partition. 


"Looks like a fractured collarbone," said the muffled voice Keagan 
assumed was the medic. "Won't know for sure until | get an X-Ray." 


"Very well," concluded the Professor, and Keagan detected a note of 
disappointment in his voice. "Significant evidence in favour of 
hypothesis-B, albeit more testing is required to determine that the 
effect of the legal name in all-caps was not diminished compared to 
the non-standard name in lettercase which had personal 
identification. Concluding for now; for the record | reiterate my 
request to Sector-19 for a subject who has changed his name legally 
in a non-UK jurisdiction." 


Keagan was allowed to sit on the bench near the far wall for a few 
moments to regain his composure. Professor Reeds re-entered the 
room and collected the glittering darts. Ronny was bundled out past 
him, still sobbing, his hand a ragged bloom of gore with a tourniquet 
tied at the wrist and the other hand clapped over the bones near his 
neck. His eyes were tearstained but fixed Keagan with a look of 
hatred he recognised last seeing that day in the library, in another 
life. 


« Book | - "Cells" | HUB | Book Il - "Mr Brightside" » 


New Age - Book II: "Mr Brightside" 


FoldUnfold 
Table of Contents 
Chapter Six: "Breach" 
Chapter Seven: "The Necessary Illusion" 
Intermission 
Chapter Eight: "Mr Brightside" 
Chapter Nine: "Safe as Houses" 
Chapter Ten: "The Wedge" 


Chapter Six: "Breach" 


In the end, it was easy. Keagan had noticed in his first days at the 
facility that D-Class from the other shift on janitorial duty were 
unaccompanied by guards, and as he expected, shortly after 
sightings of that shift ceased, security on maintenance duties 
lightened dramatically, to the extent that he was able to roam the 
corridors quite freely as long he had his mop in hand. From then on 
it was a simple case of finding the passage between the blue-line 
corridors that led to the laboratories and the orange-line dormitories, 
and equidistant from the two nearest guard posts, and busying 
himself there for as many days as it took. 


Time in the facility was something stretching and elastic—the only 
clocks were watches on the wrists of the staff and the only reason 
he knew he had been there for two and a half weeks was because a 
couple of the other prisoners had begun a night watch that marked 
off sunrises, counting the days until freedom. Even then there was 
doubt over whether Travis Lemure had marked the same day twice 
after dozing off. But with some practice you could roughly ascertain 
the time of day by how many white-coats you saw around and the 
number of empty mugs of coffee at the guardpost windows. 


By Keagan's reckoning, it was evening when Patrick Goettsch 
returned to the dormitories, eyes dark and haunted. He had a 
charmed life, it seemed—Keagan had learned from Travis that he 


had returned from his experimentation with 1062 with nothing more 
serious than a tendency to use Roman numerals and the 
inexplicable conviction that Cornwall was an overseas territory of 
Spain. He turned the corner, and Keagan was waiting for him. He 
grabbed the man by his orange jumpsuit and battered him into the 
wall. Goettsch immediately started swinging his elbow into Keagan's 
belly, but Keagan ignored the pain and used his body weight to 
crush the other man down, an arm bar pressing against his chin. 


"| was worried the white-coats would get you before | could," 
Keagan said, his voice hoarse. "But look at you; you're a fucking 
cockroach. You know they ran out of space on the wall for you? 
They've had to start a second list." 


"Please, | don't know anything, you bastard, just leave me alone," 
begged Goettsch, but even as he spoke he swiped his foot out, 
hoping to unbalance Keagan enough to get free. 


Keagan had previously thought about it for a long time and decided 
brain blows, body shots and choking were the worst way to subdue 
someone when you had very little time to get information from them. 
Instead, he stamped on Goettsch's outstretched knee, drawing a 
piteous wail. He followed it by angling Goettsch's arm and smashing 
the elbow against the wall. Simple lever action. 


"Who told you to say | killed the Judge?" Keagan shouted. 


"| don't know, | don't know..." Goettsch said, trying to twist out of the 
armlock with a junior-school karate move. Keagan rested a knee on 
Goettsch's back and braced himself so Goettsch was effectively 
trying to pull his own arm out of joint, giving an extra tug for good 
measure. 


"You don't know? Someone talked to you, you stupid shit. Why don't 
you describe them?" 


"| don't—AAGH—please, no, just stop. Don't make me say it. 
AAAA." 


Keagan caught Goettsch's watering eyes straying up to the nearest 
security camera. No alarms yet, but somewhere blue-hats were 


putting down their sixteenth cup of coffee and picking up their 
tazers. They hadn't killed Cancer, but then he had neither been 
outside the dormitory nor started the fight. 


"That's right, they're coming to save you, Goettsch, but they'll be too 
late. For the next few seconds, I'm God. Who killed the Judge?!" He 
heard distant shouts and tore brutally at Goettsch's shoulder, feeling 
it pop out of joint. The scream emanating from the chubby inmate 
seemed barely human, then he suddenly went quiet. Worried the 
shock had killed him, Keagan leaned in and Goettsch grabbed his 
top with his remaining arm, whispering to him desperately as the 
sound of running began to drum up the corridor towards them. 


"It's them! The fucking SCP Foundation! They came to me, told me 
you and the Judge were in it together, said the Judge didn't have 
long to live and to say | heard you threatening him. | didn't kill the 
Judge. | don't know who did it, but they made it happen. Please, 
please... I'm sorry. I'm sorry." 


Blue blurs rounded the corner and hands seized Keagan, ploughing 
him to the ground. Something narrow and sharp hissed into his 
upper arm and the world began to retreat into the black. Before he 
lost consciousness, his last view was of Goettsch, lying against the 
wall like a broken doll, arms and legs at impossible angles, blood 
pouring from his mouth where he'd bitten his tongue. He looked 
down at Keagan and said, louder, in a bitter voice: 


"They said they would protect me." 


When he wakes up, he's standing in a red-lit metal corridor, 
somewhere that looks a hell of a lot like where he blacked out—or at 
least a similar facility. There's screaming and shouting, and the 
sound of klaxons, and he wonders whether they're coming to stop 
him, stop him—doing what? There's no-one else around. Wasn't he 
waiting for someone? 


A squad of black-helmeted men with MP7s run past, not even 
registering his presence. There's something more important 
happening here, he thinks, and turns and follows them, finding that 
he keeps pace easily with the men, even though he's walking—well, 


floating—and they are running flat out. 


"...repeat, 1447 is breaching containment. Ablative armour is being 
compromised," one of them shouts into their shoulder radio. 


The men take up positions at the entrance of a heavy metal door at 
the terminus of a single red line. Their leader taps in a code into the 
keypad, and the door opens. 


He follows the men into the room and realises he's been here before 
—something like a converted warehouse with a steel cube 
suspended at its centre. But something's wrong. Dents are 
appearing in the cube, the whole space ringing like a bell as 
whatever is inside strikes the interior of its prison with enough force 
to deform it. The edges are coming apart—swathes of steel, 
centimetres thick, peeling away as the whole cube changes shape. 
The cables absorb a lot of the force—the cube is oscillating wildly in 
its restraints—but it isn't enough. 


More black-helmets pour in, taking up fire positions around the cube. 
The leader of the original squad is calling for a ‘backup containment 
unit’, but there seems to be some problems and it's taking longer 
than expected. 


"Fuck." says the lead black-helmet. Then to the men around him: 
"Okay, we've got our orders. Hold the fucking thing in place for as 
long as possible. Once the auxiliary unit's ready, push it there." 


The blows from within the cube come with the frequency and force 
of a pneumatic drill, pulsing and strobing, and there's a sudden 
popping, rushing noise as one corner of the cube begins to sag. He 
can hear something behind the blows, now, a droning, keening 
sound which he is realises is a chant. 


"Hermetic failure," one of the black-helmets notes with some alarm, 
and they raise their weapons. 


"Hold," says the frontman. "Hold." 


Then all hell breaks loose. Something like a snake or ribbon squirms 
through the the crack, and the first man begins shooting. All at once, 


everything judders, as though the foundations of the world have 
come loose, and the walls of the warehouse are torn to shreds, tiny 
torn leaves of sheet metal floating through the air. The metal cables 
anchoring the cube to the walls are severed and it falls to the 
ground. At least three of the men go down at the same moment, 
their eyes and throats suddenly empty hollows welling up red. 
Streaks of blood splattering in lunatic lines, painting spirograph 
patterns on the floor around them. 


"Follow the blood!" screams the lead black-helmet. "Tag the fucking 
thing!" 


The ragged walls light up with ricochets and another man drops, 
clutching his knee, and a second later is gone—taken by the 
hurricane. The droning increases in volume, and he realises he is 
hearing a voice.