"| think I'll pass, but thank you ma'am. If you'll excuse me, | must 
speak with that man over there about acquiring a new contortionist. 
My last seems to have broken herself, quite tragic." 


Samuels strode briskly away from the woman and towards Flanders, 
ignoring the parting suggestion that he make use of the local bone 
regrowth facility. 


Agents successfully infiltrated the masquerade, all 
wearing copies of a black full-face mask. Access was 
gained through a window in the east wing of the mansion 
after Agent Perkins drilled through the lock. 


Perkins was trying to catalog all the anomalous items in the room, 
and having a hard time of it. In the corner by the door a woman, 
apparently a nurse, was eating pomegranate seeds. She didn't 
seem to notice that she never ran out. In the opposite corner, a man 
entertaining a crowd by changing breadsticks to meat. To Perkins' 
left, a golden fountain ran out of the wall, a small plaque listing the 
health hazards associated with it. And across the room- 


Perkins cursed under his breath. 
"Flanders you fool, what were you thinking?" 


Mission integrity was apparently compromised by Agent 
Flanders twenty minutes after entering the room in which 
the main event was hosted. 


Flanders was in love with the cheese, savoring every bite. The 
aroma was rich and filling, the savory taste coating his tongue, the 
soft dairy parting between his teeth in an experience he had never 
felt anything like before. He would never leave this table again if it 
meant leaving his cheese, not for anything. The cheese was his 
world, and nothing else mattered. 


Agent Flanders came under the effect of a portion of 
human liver seemingly affected by scp-—643. Attempted 
intervention by his fellow agents led to a brief physical 
confrontation, followed by the loss of Flanders life when 
an instance of SCP-643 came in contact with his skin. 
Several other attendees were coated by SCP-643, but 
did not cease consumption of Agent Flanders to save 
themselves. 


Samuels stumbled out of the hall, his sleeve held up against his 
bloodstained mouth, his mask askew. Flanders’ tortured screams 
followed him, echoing through the doorway. Samuels nibbled on the 
finger he had managed to scavenge, and watched as a table was 
carried past him and into the hall by several huge men. A thick sheet 
covered whatever was within, golden fluid spilling out from beneath 
the sheet and turning the carpet to a cheesy yellow substance. He 
coughed as a piece of bone and fingernail caught in the back of his 
throat, but he couldn't bear to waste anything by spitting it out. 


abnormalities produced cause SCP-817 enormous pain, however it 
seems to suffer no actual damage to its body systems. Additionally, 
SCP-817 seems to be incapable of deliberately injuring itself. 


SCP-817 is mentally unstable, displaying severe psychotic 
symptoms. During psychotic episodes, which make up roughly 30% 
of its waking hours and are always triggered by its metamorphic 
shifts, SCP-817 is extremely hostile and will attempt to breach 
containment and attack personnel. 


In its current form SCP-817 is one and a half (1.5) meters tall, lacks 
primary or secondary sex organs, and in place of arms has limbs 
resembling the wings of a bat that fold around its torso and span 
three (3) meters when fully extended. Bones and muscle are 
composed of unknown polymers, unrelated to any naturally 
occurring skeletal or muscular material and % lighter than their 
baseline human counterparts. Because of this reduction in its mass- 
to-force exerted ratio, SCP-817 is fully capable of extended, 
unassisted flight using its wings, although doing so requires an 
enormous energy expenditure. Its extremely high metabolic rate 
keeps SCP-817’s body temperature ata constant degrees 
Celsius, and it appears to be suffering the appropriate degree of 
pain for a human heated to such a temperature despite a lack of 
actual harm to its physiology. Additionally, while SCP-817’s current 
neck and jaw structures appear humanoid, it has demonstrated the 
ability to suddenly jerk its neck forward and ‘unfold’ its jaw, 
presumably as a feeding mechanism in lieu of arms. 


Addendum: Notable past metamorphic forms of SCP-817. 


¢ Tall and thin with a reflective index of nearly zero. Required no 
sustenance beyond solar radiation. Efficiency of absorption 
estimated at %, vastly greater than any known biological or 
artificial method. Had no orifices whatsoever, sensory, 
excretory, digestive or reproductive. Attempts to create solar 
panels based on its skin proved fruitless. 

¢ Female in appearance, exuded [REDACTED] from its pores 
(see attached image). Tranquilizers, sleeping gas and oxygen 
removal proved ineffective. Successfully incapacitated by 
electric shock. Drainage added to containment chamber to 
counter the corrosive effects of [REDACTED]. Kept sedated 


Agent Samuels was unable to recall any events following 
his final encounter with Agent Flanders. 


Perkins moaned in ecstasy as he bit down on a muscle. Flanders 
wasn't wriggling too badly anymore, and he was much easier to hold 
down. He would twitch every now and again when Perkins made a 
grab for an organ, and he'd really start jerking whenever he tried 
scooping a bit of brain, but Perkins didn't care. 


The hot rush of blood over his tongue was beginning to slow, and he 
almost cried knowing that his dessert was nearly gone. But then 
Perkins was distracted by the wonderfully diverse taste of human 
spleen, and then the hot pulsing of the heart, and then the marrow, 
oh the bone marrow, the sweet crack of bone, the rush of hot 
delicious slurry, the wet flopping of juicy muscles struggling to 
contract with nothing to pull against. 


Agent Perkins was found dead the following morning. 
Autopsies suggest that his body was unable to process 
the amount of substance consumed the previous 
evening. This, combined with substantial damage 
received to his face by unknown means, led to Perkins’ 
death from both excessive bleeding and rupturing of the 
internal digestive tract. 


Samuels staggered back into the hall, his mask tilted diagonally 
against his face, red blood slashed across the mouth, and a piece of 
cotton shoved against his nostrils. He fought his way through the 
orgy of dead and dying cannibals, still trying to force as much of 
each other as possible down their mouths, and tumbled to the 
ground where Flanders lay with Perkins inert by his corpse. He 
shoveled a few more handfuls of Flanders flesh into his mouth, 
gagged as his stomach protested, grabbed the other agent's 
earpieces, and crawled out of the hall, a piece of somebody's kidney 
clutched in his other hand. 


And behind him a man smiled, hand pressed against his still- 
bleeding arm, cut by his own hand. Soon, all who were here would 
know Their light, would know the joy of giving to the unenlightened 
that which was most precious, their own flesh. He loved these sorts 
of functions, the kind he could pin on some outside group as 


hosting. This time of year was always the easiest time to spread, 
with its focus on food, and the sharing of it. He felt the worms 
wriggling through his veins, felt them in the people surrounding him 
who had been eating his meat throughout the dinner. 


He felt a great satisfaction at his missionary work for the evening. 


Christmas Propaganda 


‘Twas the night before Christmas, When all through the 
Site, 
Not a single man stirred, Not during that night. 
The chambers were locked and sealed with great care, 
In hopes that their contents would stay just right there. 


The crews sat at home and sung with great joy, 
Content with their work, though a little annoyed. 
And director at desk, and | with the T, 

Had just settled our brains into a dreamworld's sea. 


When throughout the whole site there arose a great 
clatter, 
And in my sleepy daze, | ran to see what was the matter. 
Away to the muster point | flew in a dash, 
Away from the sirens, | ran like the Flash. 


The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow 
Did nothing to illuminate the terror below. 
As | ran and | ran from impending disaster, 
| could do nought but think of moving much faster. 


But try as | might, | only made it so far, 
Before falling concrete gave me a lethal scar. 
Dying beneath stone, St Nick beyond my sight, 
| wondered what had unleashed this terrible blight. 


Little did | know, there were those who went home, 
When they were needed to stay here, in this zone. 
Without them to stop the escaping disaster, 

It easily broke free, its own sole master. 


As my soul left me, bleeding and hollow, 


| knew only fragments of what was to follow. 
Unkillables, warlords, concepts most vague, 
Upon the earth would wander these plagues. 


Destruction, terror, anarchy and pain, 
Suffering, loneliness, no hope to gain. 
One by one, all across the globe, 
Many unspeakable horrors took hold. 


‘Twas the night before Christmas, When all ‘cross the 
world, 

Every single man stirred, watching an end unfurl. 
There were no Christmas miracles to save them that 
night; 

The only miracle? It never reached my sight. 


CONTAINMENT 
DOESN'T STOP ON 
CHRISTMAS DAY 


Never abandon your assigned shifts. 
The world depends on it. 


Claire did not resent her brother when she died. If Jack had known 
this, they may have been closer; but he regarded himself as a poor 
protector and a worse provider, the kind of thing reflected in whisky 
and long, sleepless nights lining up bodies by floodlight and 
response team lantern in the dust of collapsed ceilings and broken 
linoleum tile. If only they had a way to tell that these things were 
about to happen before they did... 


But that isn't Jack's story to tell, either, and it matters little now. 


return 


Class Omega 


| saw the doctors again yesterday. They told me to write down 
anything interesting | remember, and anything weird that happens to 
me. Give it to them the next time they see me. Said it would help 
them know how my recovery is going. That's the problem, | can't 
remember much of anything. They told me | was in the Army for 22 
years, until my transport got blown up by an IED. Lucky to be alive, 
they say. Maybe so, but | hit my head so hard | don't remember a 
day of it, except in little bits every so often. It's funny, when | 
remember those little bits, | don't think it was the Army, even though 
| remember carrying a gun. | don't know what it was though. One 
day, | was in a comic book store, | like the comics, they're easy to 
read and the pictures help you figure out what's going on. There was 
a comic called "Weird Science Fantasy" and | was reading a little bit 
in the store. All of a sudden, | looked at the thing in the comic and 
said "SCP-1841! We contained that last year!" | got all excited, and 
the guy in the shop wanted to know what the hell | was talking 
about. | tried to explain, but must not have done a good job, 
because he thought | was a nut for thinking the things in comic 
books are real. He asked me what an "SCP" is supposed to be, and 
| didn't know, it just jumped in my head, that's how those bits of 
memory work. He just thinks I'm weird and stupid but didn't throw 
me out because | buy lots of comics. 


| don't catch things out of the comic book anymore. If | ever did, I'm 
not really sure. Now I'm a Security Guard at this big warehouse. 
They got me a job there when | got out of the hospital. Southwestern 
Cryptobiotic Products! | can spell that because it's on the flyers | 
give out. If someone comes in and they don't have a key card, I'm 
supposed to give them one of those, tell them "We're not open to the 
public yet" and get them to leave. It's a funny place, they don't even 
give me a key card and I've never been in the back to see what they 
do. Something to keep food from spoiling for a long time, that's what 
the flyers say. | don't know why it has to be such a big secret. 


| used to carry a gun, now | ride the bus. The bus is full of weird 
people these days. A person can bring any damn thing on a bus. 
Some guy got on at 15th street this morning with a thing in an old 
broken baby carriage. | don't know what it was, it had a big plastic 
trash bag on it covering it up. It didn't fit right, the thing was poking 
at it in all kinds of strange angles. He wheeled it right up next to me 
and | tensed up and thought "Jesus Christ, that thing might be 
Keter!" Keter? What does Keter even mean? Something you 
shouldn't be allowed to bring on the bus, | guess. A couple times | 
thought the thing moved, and | reached for the gun | don't have any 
more. Last year, | would have known what to do about that thing. 
Now | don't, and the guy and his thing got off at 36th St. | shouldn't 
have to know, they should train the bus driver to know what to do 
when something Keter gets on her bus. 


Dr. Meadows scanned the file summary: 


Subject K-1215-B 
Name: Andrew James Stark 


Age: 45 


History: Field Agent for 22 years (MTFs: [REDACTED)). 
Remanded for Class Omega amnestic therapy and 
supervised reassignment after [REDACTED] and failure 
to [REDACTED]. Subject is to have field knowledge 
removed, but remain functional for low-level assignment. 


Tested IQ upon hire: 139 
Tested IQ post-therapy: 82 


Current Assignment: Southwestern Cryptobiotic 
Products, cover organization for Site-87. Security 
Clearance 0. 


He added a new entry: 


5/11/2012: Subject continues to perform under 
acceptable parameters for Class Omega therapy. 
Although he experiences flashback memory of potentially 


classified information, his general demeanor and inability 
to articulate thoughts provide reasonable deniability of 
any sensitive material subject may reveal. 


Interlude 1: Patches 


March 18, 1997 


Dr. Connor Gerry was counting gears. As of three thirty-four in the 
afternoon, having started at eleven minutes past noon, he had 
counted one thousand seven hundred and nineteen of them. By his 
best estimation, he would finish counting in nine to twelve hours, 
with a total of eight to ten thousand gears. 


He continued counting. 


The machine kept time, though not in such a simple way as a clock. 
It was an orchestra: Tempo shifts, key changes, harmonies, all of 
which were marked and memorized by the man counting the gears. 


Were there anyone in that room to watch, they would have noticed 
that he was tapping his foot in time with the clockwork. 


June 1, 1997 


“Well that’s that. There’s nothin’ more | can do for this.” Pat leaned 
back in his chair. “Should be ready to go.” 


‘If you'll do the honors.” Crow gave an approving nod. Gerry stood 
there and watched from the background. 


Pat cracked his knuckles. 


“Now if things go Skynet, what you need to do is smash it repeatedly 
until it stops doing whatever is not supposed to be happening and 
find another computer support guy, probably one from ten to thirty 
years in the future.” 


A few keystrokes and clicks later, and everything came together. 
Many long nights of feeding components through the Clockwork on 


fine, figuring out how it worked, hooking it all up into an over-wired, 
room-filling monstrosity decades more advanced than the best 
computers available...Pat loved it. It made dealing with everyone’s 
problems tolerable, or it at least lessened the pain of hearing about 
how someone managed to get dolphin semen on their keyboards or 
make their monitors explode. 


Lines of text with meaning only to those versed in the arcane arts of 
the motherboard scrolled up the screen, almost distressingly fast. 
Pat’s eyes skimmed it. He didn’t know what half of it meant himself: 
this entire project was flailing about in the dark. 


The text disappeared from the screen, replaced with a single input 
line. Deceivingly primitive.