“Morphine. He was trying to OD. Really should have killed him. 
Makes you wonder why he didn’t just try the whole bridge diving 
thing to start.” Sanders wipes her nose. “Anything else in there?” 


“Most of the words are like a made up language, and there’s a 
bunch of hand drawn pictures of creatures, bug people, lots of 
random shit. Guy was an artist, crazy from the looks of it. Last page 
is another nonsense word... ‘Phyxia ‘ in large print.” 


“Any word back from the others who went after the scip?” 


“Not our problem really. After you’re done with the samples it’s back 
to base for us.” 


“Right. Yeah I’m done here.” 

“Extraction point is on the roof. We should be looking for a police 
helicopter.” Breen says as he follows Sanders out of the room. 
The scip in the cell began screaming as the noises in the hallway 
grew louder. 


“Make it stop just fucking make it stop why the fuck FUCK.” He 
grasped the top of his head and curled tighter in the corner. 


“Any idea what we should be expecting here buddy?” One of the 
uniformed men barked to the scip. 


“They're pissed!” The scip shrieks. “You're not letting them to me, 
you’re pissing them off! Can't help it! All fucked!” 


Some members of the squad made quick glances to the leader. 


“Well that is unfortunate...” The leader remarked. “Are these your 


friends?” 


Everything goes silent again, with only the noise of the man in the 
cell crying. In a few moments the ants and spiders and witches 
would begin marching in. 


“Now I'm lost...” 
“Hmm?” 


“This guy... must of had a shitload of free time. These drawings are 
very detailed, lifelike.” 


“| don’t know, some people can do that with their eyes closed. 
Maybe he’s one of them.” 


“Either way, this one book would have taken years to fill. Had to be 
obsessed.” 


“Really? How many pages are there?” Sanders asks, reaching for 
the journal as they make their way up the final steps of the stairs. He 
continues flipping through the book as they open the door to the 
roof. 


Just then a voice buzzed into their ears. Hold for extraction. 
Transportation is being rerouted for assistance at Proxy-2. No ETA. 
Keep your heads low. Avoid civilian contact. Mount your wisdom 
teeth. You know the routine. 


“Well, looks like we'll be waiting here for a while.” Breen reached 
into his pocket and produced a small, white, shiny object and placed 
it into his mouth, wincing. 


“You can only have so many helicopters | guess.” Sanders says, 
eagerly flipping through the pages of the artifact. 


“All gods must die...” A haggish, many elbowed arthropod croaked 
in the general direction of the recovery team as it lurched toward 
them. 


“Stop or we will shoot!” 


The creature continued its hobbling, pained march, its two mouths 
dripping gray fluid. 


“The cycle is nearly at its end, the Tremulant will prevail.” 


The thing got too close for comfort. The squad opened fire, and its 
carapace was finally breached from the hail, the thing falling to the 
ground in a pool of chitin and pink blood. The mess quickly 
evaporated as if it had never been there. 


“The hell...” 


Soon other creatures flooded into the doorway. Each stood roughly 
the height of an adult man, with three sets of compound eyes set on 
a gray, ant-like face, three sets of legs, and three sets of arms. They 
each had a symbol of a black and white sphere merging into one 
another carved in their exoskeletons. Squeezing in through the back 
of the forward group were dumb looking eight legged things with 
long spears mounted on their flanks. 


“Phyxia!” The ant-like men screamed in clicks as they charged into 
the room single file, their hook-ended halberds pointed out in front of 
them. 


The squad opened fire, dropping the creatures almost as soon as 
they appeared. Thirty or more of the creatures must have fallen in 
noxious gray mist and nothingness before they stopped filing in. 


The squad was now running low on ammo, and more of the things 
could still be heard outside continuing their chant. 


“Hey, buddy, care to tell us what the fuck is going on here?” The 
squad leader asked the scip. 


“It’s pointless here...” he cried. “... they need me there, they kill me 
or send me to sleep. They’re trying to kill me for good, they can’t do 
it here, | need to go back to sleep...” 


“So these things pop up when you're ‘dead’ or sleeping?” 


The man sits up in the corner of his cell. “I can't satisfy them, it's 
impossible. Their world is like hell and they blame me for it. | told 
them | didn't know it would happen!” 


“Okay so if you die die, they die die, and they’re trying to pull this 
maneuver off when you’re in your magic little sleep world while 
you're there.” 


“They cut me up inside, do experiments, try to change me inside. 
Their nations fight wars over it. It is useless.” 


“So eventually the last of this batch will disappear if we keep 
shooting.” 


"Until | go to sleep again. They come sometimes when I’m awake 
but rarely are there even two or three.” 


“Right” the leader said, reloading his last clip into his gun. “So we 
just make this one count, and after...” 


With that the lights to the facility came back on, followed by the 
sounds of insect hissing, and gunfire. 
Object has been secured. Await extraction. 


Sanders was chewing on some gum and flipping through the pages 
of the book. 


"Don't you know it's dangerous to be chewing with that thing in your 
mouth?" said Breen, more annoyed than concerned. 


"| found some lines in English here." replied Sanders. 
In the distance the flutter of a helicopter could be heard. 
"Well damn that was quick." 


Sanders paused for a minute, watching the helicopter making its 
way toward them. "It's a paragraph or two. Guy seems distressed 
about whatever it is he does." 


"What is it that he does?" 


Okay they're not lucid dreams. I'm going fucking insane 
or... maybe they are just dreams? | know people that 
can feel dreams. | can feel them pulling my insides out, 
tasting them and storing them. Interrogating me all the 
while in a language | shouldn't understand but | do. 


It seems trite but did | imagine these things? | had to. | 
had to imagine them first. | drew them and then | saw 
them when | went to sleep. That's normal. How do | 
explain this to any of my friends? "Bro, I'm tortured by 
spider people in my sleep, | wake up on the other side of 
the house sleeping on my head with my body vertical 
against a wall, and then | hear a knock on the door from 
the landlord telling me to stop holding such massive 
parties." 


| can't keep this up. | just want them to leave me alone. | 
can't give them the answers they want. | imagine better 
things for them and they turn them into weapons and 
torture devices for me. 


| don't know what to do. I've tried imagining them away, 
thinking and drawing up doomsday devices for their 
world but, ha, they need to activate them. They intercept 
them in the ESP. They call me their god-terrorist. They 
want their world to end, | just make it progressively 
worse. They do the same to me. They all want to die and 
they can't kill me. 


| can hear them chanting in the back of my mind while 
I'm awake sometimes. They're waiting for me to go to 
sleep so they can commit to their experiments, so they 
can examine me and find out how to 'save' themselves. 


| have to stay awake. 


The Self Insert 


Life had always been without magic. That's why he wrote — 
because the real world, while it could be interesting, didn't have any 
magic. He wasn't quite a man of science, but instead a man of 
rationality. And so, he wrote: to add a little magic, a little horror, a 
little interest to a dull, humdrum world. 


It wasn't until he fell through a hole in his world — from the real 
world to a world filled with the things he'd written — that he started 
believing. It all began so simply. He had been walking through the 
stock room at Wal-Mart, headed for break; when he turned the 
corner, he didn't see what he expected to see: bleak grey shelving 
filled with boxes of product were replaced with sterile, white walls. 
He stopped walking, trying to take it in. Turning in place, he was 
shocked to discover nothing behind him but the same white walls. 


A psychotic break? Maybe. But you have to work within the laws of 
whatever universe you find yourself in, and so he began to walk, an 
eerie feeling shivering down his spine. The first door he came to was 
marked with a familiar symbol — and that feeling just got worse. He 
was here, in the Foundation. Not as a doctor, researcher, or agent, 
but as just...himself. 


He was screwed. 


He wouldn't blend in. He couldn't, not in blue jeans and a blue shirt. 
And despite being a writer, the man who would come to be known 
by the three-letter acronym of TDM was not as clever as those he 
wrote about. He had one chance, he thought. If he could get out, get 
away from this Site, he might be able to lose himself in the world. 
Might. 


A passing researcher gave him a curious look as he continued to 
stroll down the hall. An agent gave him the same look, but closer, as 
if scrutinizing his face. A glance, risked over his shoulder, saw them 
both pointing him out to a security guard. He cursed under his 


breath as the guard called out for him to stop. So much for chances. 
Time to see if his writing had ever been any good. 


He turned to the nearest locked door, addressing the panel beside it. 
"Open. Authorization 05-6. Alpha-Omega-13." And, amazingly, it 
worked. The door slid open, and he dashed through, closing and 
locking it behind him with the same authorization codes. It might not 
hold long, but would it be long enough? 


Down another hall. Left at a doorway. Push past the old man with 
the beard. Locking every cross portal he came across, sealing every 
blast door. When he came to a computer, he logged in, using 
passcodes he'd once typed out just for the heck of it. Now, it felt so 
much more dangerous. He was at... Site 19. Damn it. Used to 
contain humanoids...no easy exits like 23 had. No... wait. There, 
down low, an O5 meeting room. If he could get there, he could get 
out. The O5s always had special escapes built in. 


He wasn't a hacker — he wasn't even particularly computer savvy. 
Which was why he was glad he'd always written the Foundation as 
using touch screens. Level Five status allowed you to pull off a /ot of 
fun tricks. Including initiating a Keter level breach alert, on the 
opposite side of the site. Hopefully, that would distract the guards. 
Hopefully. 


It didn't matter. He'd locked the nearest stairway, and it was damn 
near a straight shot down to that room. 


Eleven floors later, he was cursing the fact he'd never had enough 
money to get a gym membership. Being an internet writer wasn't 
exactly the type of work that gave you fantastic muscles. Or, you 
know, any muscles whatsoever. 


Thirteen floors after that, he was gasping for breath, and wishing 
he'd quit smoking cigars when his girlfriend had asked him to. But, 
finally, he'd made it where he was going. Down another hall, and 
open this door... 


TDM slumped against the wall, defeated. Sitting in the room, almost 
as if they had been waiting for him, was an old man and his two 
bodyguards. Of course he'd have to show up on a day an O5 was 


Interview 616 Am 


Partial log of Interview A: Subject was only surviving passenger 
aboard the flight that brought SCP-616 to the Foundation's attention. 


Dr. Glass: Do you want some water before we continue? 
Or perhaps something to eat? | Know you've had a long 
day. | keep a few snacks here in my desk if you'd like 
something. 


[REDACTED]: N-no, nothing. 


Dr. Glass: Alright. Go on then. What happened during 
take-off? 


[REDACTED]: Nothing at first. Everyone was excited, 
y'know? promised us we'd be able to witness 
[DATA EXPUNGED] at last, and we believed him. 


[REDACTED]: Then stood up, and we all started 
singing, and everyone was cheering with excitement 
when the door flung open. And then it started. 


Dr. Glass: Go on. Be specific. 


[REDACTED]: The screaming. The screaming started. It 
was just sort of normal at first; the oxygen masks 
dropped down as the air started rushing out, and 
everything started swaying. The lights went out just then, 
but it wasn't dark .. there was light coming from outside, 
from the door... 


Dr. Glass: | see. But | understand the flight took place at 
midnight? 


[REDACTED]: No, no, it wasn't natural light ... it was this 
... haze of .. red mostly, colors, but they weren't colors. 


actually here. "Well, fuck." 


The old man stared at the intruder, then shook his head just slightly 
at the man in the gas mask beside him. He considered the look in 
the man's eyes, the tone of his voice, and came to a startling — to 
him — conclusion. "You know who | am." There should only have 
been a handful of people who could recognize him on sight. 
"Interesting. Sadly, | do not know who you are. Which is intriguing, 
considering you have been using my security codes to throw this 
site into an uproar. You appear to have not been expecting me, and 
so are unlikely to be an assassin." A slight pause. "And your 
condition certainly helps prove that. My people tell me you appeared 
in the middle of a hallway, which could make you a teleporter, but | 
think an out of shape teleporter would not have walked down all 
those stairs. Which means someone sent you here. Against your 
will, maybe? You were coming to this room... to escape, yes? That 
doesn't tell me how you know there IS an escape route here. Well, 
do you have anything to say?" 


Through labored breathing, TDM muttered something. "You'll have 
to speak up," the old man replied. "| am getting up there in years." 


TDM sat back, and spoke again, louder this time. "Jack. TJ. Sarah. 
Claire. Mich-" 


For an old man, the fellow known as Cowboy could still move 
amazingly quickly. In the twinkling of an eye, he had moved forward. 
TDM's pale throat stood in contrast to the glittering silver blade 
pressed against it, seemingly drawn from Cowboy's cane. "Those 
are words that guarantee you a swift death." 


"But | can save them!" the bearded man gasped out, eyes locked on 
the blade. He gulped reflexively, and the razor sharp tip nicked his 
throat, a single drop of blood welling up. 


"You're not helping your case. Many have claimed as much over the 
years. But, if you know anything about the Foundation, you should 
know, there are-" 


"-no happy endings," the bearded man finished in unison with the 
O5. His thoughts raced, looking for anything that might save him. 


His eyes fixed on the bodyguard with the gasmask, and a spark fired 
somewhere in his brain. It would ruin his favorite story, but save his 
life. He cleared his throat, hoping to get the accent right. "H'lyiah, 
Cho'tp'k?" 


The man known as Thompson's eyes widened behind the gas mask 
he always wore. His gaze shifted slightly, and his head tilted slightly 
before returning to its perfect orientation. O5-6 frowned. "What did 
you just say? Are you trying to work some memetic agent? I'll have 
you know, my men are well-shielded against such things. | do 
believe | shall simply kill you." 


Taking a deep breath, he tried his best to get it all out at the same 
time. 
"BlackhasbeenbrainwashedbyMannandhe'sgoingtokillyouifyoudon't- 


Not quite quick enough. Even as he spoke, the unmasked 
bodyguard's eyes glazed over, and he began to raise his gun. Not 
towards the unknown man, but towards the O5. Unfortunately for 
Agent Black, Thompson was prepared, having been prewarned. His 
brass knuckles struck twice in as many seconds, and the 
brainwashed minion was sent to the floor, unconscious. 


"Like that," TDM finished lamely. 


"Interesting." Six stared at his once-trusted protector, a deep frown 
creasing his lips. "And you knew this...how?" 


"| wrote it."