Barcode screamed, blood pouring from her eyes and ears and nose 
and mouth, her mind writhing in pain she had no comprehension of, 
and pushed one last time against the Whale’s consciousness, 
driving it back upon itself for the briefest moment, letting it coalesce 
into a tiny, shriveled, pitiable shell of a mind and soul for a fleeting 
second. 


Right under the barrel of her gun. 


She pulled the trigger. A crackling stream of concentrated thaumic 
energy cut through the Whale’s flesh like a white-hot needle boring 
through a fingernail, cutting down into the water, into the sand, down 
to the bedrock. Molten meat splashed across the beach and water 
boiled off into clouds of steam as the Whale buckled and collapsed. 
The open sore in the sky wavered and collapsed upon itself, as the 
wailing of lost souls faded. 


The Whale steamed and smoked and was still. They had killed it 
before it had gotten out of the water. Barcode slowly made her way 
down the carcass. Her arms and legs trembled. 


Upon reaching the sand, she walked a short distance, and 
collapsed. She was dimly aware of Spleeny and Whalebone 
approaching her. 


With a grunt, with her last bit of energy, she rolled onto her back, lay 
there spread-eagle, and laughed. She laughed until her stomach 
hurt and her lungs ached and tears dripped down her cheeks. She 
laughed because she had to, because she would die if she didn’t. 


When the laughing died down, she could hear the faint scuttling of a 
thousand legs in the sand behind her head. 


“Cuddle?” 


“Fuck off, Vinnie.” 


This was the closest one to Baseline we've seen so far. 
They're becoming more active, and we're running out of 
time. For every successful execution like this, there is 
one that drags on for months. The Department of Extra- 
Universal Affairs has closed off the portal and banned 
any return trips, though will keep an eye out for any 
activity from that side. 


That said, pass on congratulations to the men and 
women of squads 4 and 5. They're earned their leave. 


- Colonel Manu Avninder, Esoteric Warfare Unit 


Thrice 


Note: This tale is based on SCP-1440, and it is better read after 
reading that article. 


The old man woke, and his failures flooded his mind once more. The 
destruction of the Foundation base was just another drop in an 
ocean of guilt. Sometimes, he didn't know what still kept him afloat, 
what stopped him from drowning in the depths of despair and 
madness, from simply ceasing to care about the race he could so 
easily destroy. Perhaps it was nothing more than simple spite, the 
dying memory of defiance against his tormentors. It did not matter 
much. 


The desert he found himself in was a lonely, empty place, and for 
that he was glad. Out here, he could do little harm. He started 
walking towards a distant chain of mountains, driven by a 
compulsion he learned long ago he could not resist. Once, he would 
throw himself into deep gorges, into rivers, into the sea, hoping the 
elements could keep him from causing any more damage, but the 
Brothers were stronger even than them. He would lie in depths of 
the earth, thinking he could finally rest in the dark, only to blink and 
find himself in the world above once more, making his way towards 
humanity like the bearer of a plague. The Brothers were nothing if 
not persistent. 


As the soft desert sand crunched beneath his feet, he remembered 
that thrice accursed game of cards that led to all of this, to the three 
follies that sealed his fate. 


First came the game: he should have never challenged them, he 
should have known better. But he was young, and full of pride, and 
had much to lose. He was a man in his prime when he lost his life in 
a meaningless war, and found himself in the Brothers’ dark halls. 
Around him, his fellow soldiers walked silently towards the distant 
light, not even glancing at the three gaunt figures that showed them 


the way. But not he. He could not accept his fate. He had a young, 
pretty wife, a prospering farm, he could not lose it all, would not. He 
thought the others were fools, weaklings, to accept their demise 
thus. In his vanity, he challenged his guides, and refused to go 
forward until he was given the chance to fight. He got his chance, 
and he won. He won too much. 


Second came his greed: the Brothers could not have known how 
good he was. He took every hand, broke every gambit, stole life 
from Death's grasp with guile and skill. The Brothers were 
displeased, but they accepted their defeat, and showed him the door 
back to the world of the living. As he stood at the exit, he suddenly 
thought, why stop now? He was the best card player to ever live, he 
could have it all! Why settle for life when he could have glory, power, 
immortality! He turned and sat back at the table. "Double or 
nothing", he said. And he won again. And again. And again. The 
Brothers were less gracious now, but still, they admitted their defeat. 
Three prizes he won from them: the cup, the cards, and the sack. 
They were the Brothers’ prized possessions, and they offered him 
much if he would only return them: wealth, and luck, and health, and 
glory, but he wanted to humiliate them, to make Death grovel before 
him. So he took the prizes and left the Brothers seething in rage. He 
would pay dearly for his vanity. 


Third came the waste: the prizes were items of immense power, for 
they could keep the Brothers at bay: the First's cup held the elixir of 
life, and a drop of it would banish him, saving even the sickest of 
men from his grasp. Every time he saw the Small Death lurking 
behind the shoulders of a man, he would sprinkle a drop towards 
him, and the First would flee, cursing and spitting. A drop seemed 
like such a small thing, and the cup held so much water, so he used 
it carelessly. He banished the First from those too old or frail to keep 
on living, from those the First rightfully owned. And eventually, the 
cup ran dry. When his wife began wasting away from the consuming 
illness, he had no water left for her. The First sneered as he took her 
away. 


The prize of the Second was greater, like the Second himself. With 
the cards, he could challenge the Second's authority, hold the power 
of the Great Death at bay. When war was brewing, when man 


turned against his brother, he was there, to challenge the Second, to 
turn the tides of fire and steel. But like the waters of life, the cards of 
fate were wasted- he used them for every border skirmish, every 
civil dispute, every growing revolution, and the cards became more 
worn with every passing use. Though they lasted for longer than the 
water, eventually the Second refused to heed their call. He watched 
the world plummet into wars greater than he could ever imagine, 
watched millions die for nothing in the mud, watched the innocent 
suffer and bleed and burn. The Second laughed when he took them 
away. 


The prize of the Third was the greatest. The sack of the All-Death 
could hold anything within it, contain even the greatest catastrophes, 
stop even the most dire forces from ever releasing their fury upon 
the earth. With the sack, he curbed the fury of storms, drowned fires 
that threatened to consume entire cities, held creatures most 
unnatural and fell, whose origin was not of this world. The sack held 
longest of all the treasures, but it too grew weak- its seams could not 
hold such mighty powers forever. He used the sack as foolishly as 
he used the lesser treasures- he stopped storms that would have 
passed, held fires that could have been contained. His sin was 
greater than mere wastefulness, though. The sack still held one last 
use, could hold one last being. In his search for the Third he saw the 
forces of darkness grow ever stronger, saw brave men and women 
like those of the Foundation risk their lives in order to contain them. 
Yet, he would not spare the last use of his sack. It was all he had 
left, his final hope. He knew the only way he could force the Third to 
release him from his endless torment was to capture him in the 
sack, and thus force him and his brothers to let him die. The All- 
Death never appeared, though, not even to mock him. When the 
forces of the unknown claimed a victim, only silence greeted them. 


Once the prizes ran out, the true horror of his fate became apparent. 
The Brothers feared him no longer, and did not forgive his vanity, his 
wastefulness, his lording over Death. They wanted him to suffer, and 
death was far too good for him. Instead, he brought death upon 
everyone else- forced to seek the Third forever, and to watch 
humanity crumble in his wake. His curse, like his follies, was triple- 
never to die, always to seek, always to destroy. 


The mountains grew closer and closer, and the old man allowed 
himself a moment of rest. His compulsion could be controlled, if but 
for a short while. He sat down in the sand and turned his gaze 
upwards, towards the stars. In the dark blue, early morning sky, only 
a few remained, but they shined brightly and cleanly. Looking at 
them, the old man remembered why he kept his head above the 
water. Perhaps this was the greatest of his follies, but it was one he 
was willing to allow himself. The world was too beautiful for him to 
allow its destruction without a fight, and humanity deserved better 
than to perish because of the mistakes of a foolish old man. He 
could not stop himself from hurting them, but he could give them one 
thing- his hope. He would stop himself, even at the price of oblivion. 


Thrive 


This was it. No more fucking around. The squad clanked behind 
him, battle suits shimmering in the desert heat. SCP-3396 hung 
overhead, a second moon trailing a net of glowing blue across the 
horizon. 


Ahead, 3731 poured out of the hotels lining the boulevard. 


"Prime ghosthrowers." Spectral emulsifier was too clunky for voice 
command. Gears ratcheted up and down the left arms of their suits. 
The ghosthrower's battery was powered by a human heart built into 
the exoskeleton somewhere; its pounding mixed with Garrett's own, 
drumming wildly at his temples. 


He swallowed, tasting sweat on his lips. The blues were closing in. 
The suit beeped as it shot him up with something that made sharp 
warmth ooze through his body. 


"Loudspeakers on. You still have a chance to cooperate. Go home 
and wait for agen-" 


A woman with bone spears jutting through the tiger fur over her skin 
leapt at him, snarling. He leapt back, boosters firing in the legs of his 
suit. A rifle popped to his left, and lightning struck her out of the air. 


All hell broke loose. Mang's rifle spat round after round, bolts 
cracking down from the sky wherever they hit. The rest of the squad 
opened up, beams and waves ripping through space alongside 
bullets and grenades. 


A person-shaped hole in space bulged and stretched toward their 
formation and Garrett twisted his hand in its gauntlet. The stream 
burst from the nozzle with a sound like a chainsaw cutting through 
desperate wails. Faint blue light swirling with pained faces washed 
over the attacking form, ripping away bits of the void surrounding it 
until blackened bones showed underneath and the figure crumbled. 


An alarm chirped in his ear as bullets pinged off of him. The suit held 
as he swept its arm to the right, arcing across half a dozen of them - 
a dense, shifting cloud of birds, a tall man in a suit with a knot of 
gears where his head should have been, a many-armed beast that 
seemed to be made of plush, and three that just looked like people 
with guns - the hungry spirits devoured them all, bulbs bursting in 
the streetlights as the remains collapsed. 


The squad had spread out to his left, falling in behind Guittierez with 
his belt-fed rig; the barrels churned, but the machine made no sound 
except the tinkling of shells hitting asphault. Wherever he pointed it, 
though, gnashing mouths bloomed and chewed themselves 
mercilessly. The crowd of 3731, now running, fell in swaths as 
countless teeth devoured them from inside. 


Tucson would be reclaimed, in the name of humanity. 


High up in the clouds, Armando sat on a floating spider web of arms. 
He looked out at the shimmering orange and purple of the sunrise 
as the morning broke over the desert sky. 


About two hundred helium-filled arms nestled against each other, 
locked in a complex, crossword-puzzle-shaped kinetoglyph keeping 
the whole structure stable. 


Armando had time to reflect, up here. Arms he left down below with 
his companions would alert him to danger, but they had been quiet 
recently. The Foundation's pestering had grown more and more 
infrequent, though no one was naive enough to think they had 
completely given up. 


Armando tried to remember a time when the Foundation wasn't at 
the forefront of his mind. He went further and further back, until - 


A scared fifteen-year-old boy sat alone in a derelict garage, shaking. 


Stupid! 


Stupid! 


The fossilized pile of toolboxes, car parts, bicycle chains, and 
assorted junk had collapsed on him. His arm was stuck, possibly 
broken. Elbows didn't extend like that, he was pretty sure. 


He struggled to free himself. If he could just get his arm out, he 
could start putting the pile back together, and then maybe no one 
would get mad. He wasn't bleeding anywhere, so at least he had 
that going for him. 


No blood. The rusty box shifted slightly. OK. One, two, three 
what 


He was free, sort of. The arm wasn't. Still no blood. Armando looked 
at the stump, growing and stretching into a new arm like toothpaste 
coming out of the tube. 


He vomited at the sight of the fresh new arm, its freckled red skin 
blending into his own brown skin at the shoulder. 


He threw food and toys and a picture of his family in a plastic 
grocery bag, and he ran. And he didn't stop. 


He wasn't really free, back then. He had tried pulling the new arm 
off, crushing it, hacking it off. All it ever got him was a new arm and 
a little more desperation. 


The new arms felt foreign, gross, invasive. They weren't him. He 
couldn't even control them, just 'suggest' what they should do. He 
barely felt anything through them, just vague sensations of heat and 
pressure. Every new one that appeared was a cruel surprise. 
Human arms of every color gave way to arms of metal, and popcorn, 
and wood. 


It took him a while to accustom himself. Every new day he could 
move the arms a little faster, a little more delicately. Even so, they 
would twitch and jerk on occasion, as if being moved by someone or 
something else. 


After hundreds of attempts he eventually lucked out and got two 


arms similar to his own skin, and buried the rest. He tried to live 
normally, or at least as normally as a runaway with no home or 
education could. 


He ended up falling in with the wrong crowd, as his mom would have 
said. They welcomed his arms, gave him a home, but he still wasn't 
free. Just another tool in a toolbox. Though he decided a roof over 
his head was worth letting go of any imagined destiny. 


The stereotypical "one last job" went south. 


Bullets flew through the air. A weird purple fog filled the air, probably 
from the "mystery candy" catching fire. The buyer had apparently 
gotten spooked and ratted them out, hoping either corrupt cops or 
Los Milagros would kill them over the anomalous guns and drugs. 


Armando hid behind the stack of crates, trying to find an escape. He 
was not going to die like this. 


The black vans pulled up. Agents in all black tactical gear appeared, 
and cleared the area. A stray grenade exploded near Armando, 
deafening him and shredding his right arm. 


He felt the cells regrowing. Not now, you damn arms... 


The agent shot the man who threw it, then approached Armando, 
whose new right arm was now made of tire rubber.