Raised voices from the valley below. One of the Lakota was doing 
016's dance, the Ghost Dance. The entity had started the rumor that 
once enough people began doing the Ghost Dance, their gods 
would wipe the white man from the continent and return the land to 
its previous pristine beauty. Enfield didn't know if he had also started 
the rumor that wearing special white shirts would make you 
bulletproof, but it wouldn't surprise him. If 016 were here now, his 
abilities would probably allow him to stop quite a few bullets. Parlor 
tricks like that were what gained him a following in the first place. 
Nobody knew what he was really capable of once enough people 
believed in him, but it wasn't likely to be pretty. 


The Lakota kept dancing, half from belief, half from protest. Enfield 
could tell the difference; he had spent enough time around Sioux 
and Comanches to know the particular veiled hate of occupied 
peoples. He had no idea who at headquarters had drawn up this 
plan, but whoever it was had that same insight that he did. Maybe 
less of a conscience, but that could be what it took to do this job. 
God knows Enfield couldn't have done it. God only knew how much 
longer he could keep doing jobs like this. 


Here it came. The disarming, the dance, then... 


The report from the rifle sounded so small from so high above. 
Enfield knew when he read the plan that disarming an angry group 
of Indians frequently led to some kind of violence. Somebody 
wouldn't want to give up their gun, a scuffle ensues, and then a gun 
goes off. Automatic weapons around the encampment, plus a 
regiment already on edge from chasing Indian tribes all around the 
plains, and what happened next was inevitable. The Hotchkiss guns 
started pouring bullets into the encampment. Those Lakota not yet 
disarmed tried to shoot back, even killed a few of the soldiers. 
Enfield felt no particular loyalty to one side or the other. He was 
sickened by the murder happening below, and moreover, by the fact 
that he was responsible for it. 


But there was no other way. He was sure of it. 1887-016 gained 
power from having people believe in him. The only way to capture 
him was to shatter the faith of his followers. The only way to keep 
him from becoming more powerful was to take away the only thing 
these people had to believe in. 


The shooting stopped. Over a hundred dead; Enfield could see that. 
Mostly women and children. Soldiers were walking around the 
encampment laughing and pointing at the bodies. Enfield knew 
many of them just thought of this as a game, and that most of them 
barely thought of the Indians as people in the first place. They could 
enjoy this. Plenty of "researchers" back at the Institute would 
probably enjoy hearing about this too. Enfield was sick thinking 
about it. 


But their faith was gone. However horrible this day was, 1887-016 
was exposed now, powerless. Enfield didn't know where he was, but 
he swore, there and then, that 016 wouldn't get the chance to gain a 
following again. Not that that was likely. Not after this. 


Enfield put his binoculars back into his coat pocket, turned his horse 
around, and rode away from Wounded Knee Creek. 


Giving Up 


Howard was dead. 


Pamela had known it would happen sooner or later - it was why her 
mother had disapproved of her getting involved with him, and it 
seemed she had been proven right. Even as the romantic vision 
they'd had of their future began to fade and blur, she always worried 
for his safety. The clothes and the shoes and the expensive perfume 
came with an invisible asterisk that seemed to hang over Howard 
every time she'd seen him. 


So this is the end, she thought to herself as she held his final 
missive, the silence in the empty house only broken by the faint hum 
of the air conditioner. / wish Howard hadn't been so...dramatic. This 
silly letter is what | have to remember him by? 


| remember the petty fights where we got mad about 
where to put the furniture, or what we would call our kids. 


Howard had always had a habit of romanticizing the past. She 
hadn't wanted kids, and their myriad arguments on the topic was 
one of the many, many reasons she'd been worried about what 
would happen when he decided to make their relationship 
permanent. Guess it doesn't matter now... 


I've worked hard for the ring within this envelope. Please, 
wear it. That way, we'll be together no matter how far 
apart we are. 


And he'd also never seemed to drag his mind out of the dime store 
romance novels he was so inexplicably fond of. A wedding ring may 
have meant something to an aging widow, but it felt meaningless to 
wear it without the weight of years attached to it. It was pretty and 
expensive, but so were her earrings. 


Will you marry a dead man? 


| can't, you silly romantic. But would |? 


She wasn't sure. 


It was finally done. 


When he'd first moved on from Pamela's plane of existence to the 
little pocket dimension that had come with the pair of rings, he'd 
worried about what would happen if she had come to see him before 
the house he'd spent years building had been completed. After all, 
waking up in an empty clearing surrounded by construction tools 
after jumping to his death took more than a little while to get used to 
and accept. The mystic he'd bought the ring from assured him that it 
wouldn't happen - Time will stand still until the abode for the ring 
wearers is complete, her words had been - but he couldn't keep the 
concern out of his mind regardless. 


Now, however, it was a moot point. The house was a simple thing, 
made of stone and thatching, but it would protect his beloved from 
the elements and keep them warmer than his own tent had in the 
dark days of winter. He placed the final stone on top of the wet 
cement, marveling at his own ability to complete the task by his 
lonesome. Taking a few steps backward, he recited the incantation 
the mysterious woman of magic had told him so long ago. 


"House of stone, built with labors of love, 
Hear my call among the heavens above. 

Give me that which makes a house a home, 
And things we may keep in our forever alone." 


He walked back to the house, took a deep breath, and opened the 
front door. 


It was beautiful. Mahogany bookshelves stood next to the fireplace 
he'd carved into the wall, flanking an exquisitely crafted set of living 
room chairs. The bed that had appeared on the opposite end was 
clearly made for two, and looked as inviting as anything he could 
ever remember seeing in his lifetime after living outdoors for so long. 
The kitchen was primitive, but had enough in it for Pam to make 
something delicious (and himself; he remembered the promise he'd 


made to her to try to learn how to cook). 


He grabbed a random book off of one of the shelves and sat down in 
a chair. The time for work had come, stayed for quite awhile, and 
finally gone. Now the place he'd labored so tirelessly over was ready 
for the love of his life. 


It was time to wait. 


"Five hundred bucks." 


The pawn shop owner stared at Pamela skeptically, hoping to make 
a slight profit off of the woman's presumed ignorance. He had no 
such luck as Pamela countered by raising the asking price to $600. 


"Six hundred? You're reachin’, lady. The ring is nice, but I've seen 
nicer. And something tells me you want to get rid of it fast." 


She shifted uncomfortably and quickly gave away her negotiating 
power in the hopes of finding sympathy. "It was my...partner's. He 
was going to propose to me before he passed." 


"Oh really? What would ya have said?" 
"Excuse me, | don't think that's any of your business." 


"So 'No'", then." He continued to fiddle with the ring, as if turning it 
over in his fingers would somehow make it appreciate in value. "Tell 
ya what. You're a nice gal, so I'll go for five hundred fifty. Not a dollar 
more." 


"Fine." She pulled her debit card out of her purse and tried to push it 
into the chip reader, realizing she was too quick after being met with 
a red X on the screen. 


"Calm down, it ain't a race. Gimme a minute to get it up and runnin’. 
As he did so, she stared at the ring for a final time. What would 
Howard have thought if he knew she was doing this? Why did the 
little thing make her so uncomfortable that she had to pawn it? 


"It reminds you of him, don't it?" The store owner again interrupted 


her stream of consciousness. "I understand. | had a friend of mine 
whose fiance died right after he popped the question. He wouldn't 
get rid of that damn ring for almost a decade." 


"It's more than that," she replied, putting her card in the reader once 
more as the man nodded in confirmation. "He wrote this silly letter 
before he passed, about how with the rings we would always be 
together. It feels like a piece of him, somehow." 


"It's all in yer head. Like they always say, you can't take it with you." 


She wasn't coming. 


He had finished the last book on the second shelf. The years had 
long ceased to have continuity in his mind; time blurred and twisted 
onto itself as he had waited for Pamela. He didn't want to admit the 
truth he was increasingly dreading, but the final volume he had 
digested - Homer's Odyssey - spelled it out for him. 


After an uncertain but painful amount of time, he had made a pact 
with himself. He would read every book on the shelves, but he would 
read the Odyssey last. Like Penelope waiting for Odysseus, he 
would wait for Pam amidst the silence of his cabin and the soft, 
soothing sounds of the pocket dimension in permanent springtime. 
The trees beyond his home became his Suitors, calling for him to 
lose himself in their embrace even as his heart demanded he stay 
still. 


But the final page had been shut. Ithaca was at peace, and 
Penelope and Odysseus were reunited once more. Yet here he sat. 


"I'm sorry, Pam," he said aloud to nobody in particular. "But | can't 
wait any longer." 


He walked out the front door, and closed it behind him. As he looked 
back upon his pointless creation one final time, he felt tears roll 
down his face. 


All she had to do was wear the ring. 


Going In [REDACTED] 


To: Site-38 General Alert <8 
contacts>, Capt. Reilly 
<mitfc.rno.36> 


From: Site-38 Security Dept. 
<monitoring.station> 
Subject: Containment Breach 


At 23:48 this evening Site-38's 
containment facilities were found 
to have been compromised. MTF 
Rho-36 ("Breacher's Pets") is 
being dispatched to ensure 
recontainment of SCP- _, which 
remains unaccounted for. On-site 
security forces have tracked 
direction of travel from site, and 
determined viable habitat in that 
area. See attached files for further 
details. 


View attached files 


Description of SCP- 


SCP- is a [REDACTED]. 


SCP- 's contains [REDACTED]. The is inert 


by itself; however, [REDACTED]. This results in 


[REDACTED] designated as SCP-  -1.SCP- -1 will be 


[REDACTED]. 


coming into contact with SCP- -1 become 
increasingly [REDACTED]. As time passes, the 
[REDACTED]. High concentrations of SCP- -1 will 


[REDACTED]. Experimentation suggests that it is 
effectively impossible to [REDACTED]. Once the is 

, all will [REDACTED]; this suggests that 
[REDACTED]. 


Bert Nash checked his watch, looked at the clock in the dashboard 
of the truck, then back to his watch. It felt like he'd been waiting 
forever but it was only 02:10, barely an hour since the MTF had 
arrived on scene. He usually didn't mind the waiting game. But 
tonight, for some reason, he just wanted things to get going. And 
last he'd seen the rest of the guys, they seemed even more restless. 


Someone on Site-38's security staff had made an error: adding the 
responding MTF to the recipients of the Site-wide general alert, 
rather than sending a seperate message with the uncensored files 
attached. The initial briefing was more blackbox than text; what little 
information that wasn't redacted was essentially useless. But 
protocol dictated their immediate response. Right now Captain 
Reilly, the MTF's commanding officer, would be tearing a strip off 
the Site staff and getting the declassified information needed to 
tackle the mission without fumbling blindly in the dark. In the 
meantime swift action was called for, and Bert's squad had been 
deployed first. 


A perimeter was established, and they were awaiting the arrival of 
Squads -2 and -3 before moving inward. Nash sat alone in the 
vehicle, parked near the beginning of the unpaved road that wound 
its way uphill into the forest. Sergeant Braun, the Squad Leader, had 
stayed with the fireteams at the staging area, while Nash drove back 
to "cover" the only viable access route. This is dumb, Nash thought 
to himself. The nearest civilian presence is just a small town miles 
down the highway, and the backup isn't going to need directions to 
find the guys at the first junction in. But there he was, alone on radio 
control duty. 


While Bert was beginning to feel a bit restless, Sgt. Braun was 
already well beyond that point. The radio in the truck crackled to life 
as the squad leader hailed him. Nash took the mic from the dash 
and answered. 


"Is the rest of the force on-scene?" the sergeant barked impatiently. 


"Negative, sir. No sign of them yet," Bert replied. And asking me 
every two minutes isn't going to hurry them up any. 


"We're forming up to move in. If they aren't here in ten, we're going 
without them." 


That doesn't sound good. "I'm sure they're en route, sir. | don't think 
we should act before they arrive..." Braun didn't respond to that, but 
Nash figured he couldn't have steered him off the idea anyway. 


For the next ten minutes Nash sat in hope of the remaining force's 
arrival, to no avail. At 02:21, each of the fireteams sounded off for 
final comms checks before embarking. Despite his aversion to this 
course of action, Bert dutifully confirmed that everyone was reading 
loud and clear. This was how things would go down, and he wasn't 
in a position to stop it. 


Feeling antsy had grown to feeling anxious for Nash. Instead of 
looking forward to headlights bouncing up the dirt road, he was 
nervous about their arrival. Like a kid with their hand in the cookie 
jar, and their parents surely about to enter the kitchen. /t wasn't my 
call to move in without backup. | didn't have a say in the matter. 
Damnit! This isn't my fault! 


Bert was suddenly aware of his tighty clenched fist atop the steering 
wheel in front of him. He relaxed it and flexed away the tension. 
There were a dozen other guys up there. Didn't any of them have 
objections to this plan? I'll bet all of us end up facing a review panel. 
And for what? Whatever this goddamned thing is that's made us 
come out here. The more he thought about it, the more he hated it 
all. 


He got out of the truck to stretch his legs. He paced back and forth, 
taking deep breaths to try and calm his nerves. This had to happen 
this way. We couldn't afford to keep sitting and waiting, Nash 
reasoned to himself. Maybe it was working, because he began to 
relate with the sense of urgency that Braun must have felt when he 
made the decision. Every passing minute this thing is out of 
containment, the more trouble it could cause. It's our job to put these 


saw hundreds of venomous spiders crawling out of SCP-859 and 
onto his hand. No spiders were observed in the area, and acute 
arachnophobia was observed in Subject. 

Result: Subject was found dead in his apartment on / /20 , having 
died from a bite from a common house spider. Subject had no 
history of being allergic to spider venom according to medical profile 
from Foundation records. 


Subject: D-47121 - male African-American, 31 years old, no known 
medical allergies 

Date: / /20