lt was around 1500 hours when Keagan heard the hissing, popping 
sound and thought it was one of the tureens in the kitchen boiling 
over. He was still careful around hot things larger than a ladle of 
stew—firstly because he didn't have enough feeling back to tell 
when something was burning him and secondly because his hands 
were still clumsy enough that he was likely to drop it—not good 
when 'it' is a pan of boiling water. Accordingly he called for his co- 
chef but found everything seemed to be in order. He thought little 
more of the sound until he heard the sound of the Unimogs and 
Land-Rovers returning from the drill sites. There seemed to be more 
activity than usual, shouts and screams, and then gunshots. The 
offshift men in the barracks responded immediately, arming up and 
rushing to the muster points. Kaali entered, out of breath and 
carrying a carbine—the first time Keagan had seen the man armed. 


"There's been another venom blow," Kaali explained to the barracks 
in general. "A whole boulder of impregnated ice exploded in Site C 
—four men dead, another dozen seriously injured. When the 
workers got back to the camp they started rioting and refused to get 
back in the secure area. Ragnar shot one of them and they jumped 
him; we don't know if he'll survive. We need absolutely everyone 
outside to get this under control. Keagan, that's you too." He opened 


a locker and grabbed another rifle, holding it by the barrel and 
thrusting the stock in Keagan's direction. 


"Erm, I'm not sure I'm going to be any good at firing this thing," he 
said carefully, waving his bandaged hands. 


"You don't need to be—just hold it up and look mean. Say 'Grrr’." 
"Grrr," Keagan said, nonplussed. 
"That's right. Make sure you wear gloves this time." 


Outside the camp was utter pandemonium, people running 
backwards and forwards, some with guns, some without. The gate 
to the fenced shanty-town where the workers ate and slept was 
unlocked and the area seemed deserted. Commodore Schaeffer 
was trying to reimpose order, a slowly growing group of people on 
the floor with their hands behind their backs at the centre of the 
camp, but Keagan could see it was proving a nightmare to separate 
friend and foe. If only they had given the workers some sort of 
distinguishing clothing, Keagan thought, like orange jumpsuits... 


After surveying the situation for a moment Keagan saw a pattern 
emerging; the workers would try to group together in an area, 4-5 
strong at a time, then one of Schaeffer's men would approach with 
gun raised and instead of surrendering they would scatter again 
when they saw the guards were unwilling to fire. Bones and another 
man had cornered one worker near a Land-Rover; when he found 
the key had been taken he started ripping at the interior of the 
vehicle, screaming and crying, until Bones stepped forward, grabbed 
him, and flung him to the ground before dragging him forcibly back 
to Schaeffer's group. 


Near the trucks, Keagan noticed a number of men lying out in the 
open on blankets—their clothing looked burned as though by acid, 
and what he could see of their faces was a fused lump of flesh. The 
medic tending to them stepped back and shook his head, and one of 
Schaeffer's men stepped forward with a rifle, drawing fresh howls of 
outrage from the other workers... 


Keagan felt the pressure in his head growing and walked behind the 


barracks, leaning against the insulated exterior and exhaling deeply, 
watching the crystals fall out of the air onto the ground. A flash of 
movement to his left and he turned, raising the rifle. Two workers, 
one of them with burned patches across the front of his coat but not 
completely incapacitated, being supported by the other. They were 
making their way towards the ring of breaker blocks. They stopped, 
stared at him, eyes too tired to be afraid. Keagan raised his weapon, 
the index finger of his right hand curled uselessly around the trigger 
guard. 


Is this what you are now?, the little voice asked, and he realised he 
hadn't heard it since London. A guard, you mean, he thought. 
Seeing things from the other side. You're an idiot, said the little 
voice. You honestly think you're a guard? Why not ask Schaeffer if 
you can leave? Ask him to drop you off at the nearest village. 
Prisoners guarding prisoners. Thus it is and ever shall be. 


Keagan looked down the barrel of the rifle for a second more, then 
lowered the weapon, abandoned even the pretence that he could 
stop them. The two workers hurried on and disappeared beyond the 
breakers. He wondered how far they would get, then decided it 
didn't matter. At least they would die where they chose to die. He 
loped back around the barracks and joined the other men training 
weapons on the group at the centre while the final few rioters were 
dragged out of vehicles or beaten down with stunsticks. The workers 
were herded back into the fenced area, a detail assigned to bury the 
shot and venom-melted bodies, and then it was time for dinner, 
which that night was a lamb stew with onions. 


Time passed, and Keagan regained enough mobility in at least his 
right hand to return to his mechanical duties, where he was kept 
busy repairing the damage done by the workers during the riot. 
Teitur once again seemed to be keeping to himself, though whether 
out of respect for Keagan's solution with the berm or not he couldn't 
tell. A new crane arrived at the camp after a few days, and Keagan 
was charged with getting it set up and masterminding the elevation 
of the fallen breaker block. 


About a week after the riot, all base staff were summoned to Site F, 
the furthest from the camp. Kaali wouldn't say anything more than 


that a critical stage in the Project had been reached and Schaeffer 
wanted everyone there to see it. Keagan along with Teitur, Blaer, 
the medic and cooks, and the radio operator all clambered onto a 
Unimog, leaving the base oddly deserted. The wind had died down 
considerably, but Keagan could still hear it buffeting at the sides of 
the truck, the driver battling the headwinds throughout the journey 
along the base of the glacier. 


Site F was the largest drill site he'd seen thus far. The crane 
towered over a small complex of field tents, sheltered from the wind 
by a network of compacted snow berms—nice to see I've made an 
impact, Keagan thought. A couple of the tractors were busily 
engaged transferring vast piles of ice from the entrance of the shaft 
onto the berms, building them up as the shaft sank deeper into the 
glacier. As they got closer Keagan saw some of Schaeffer's men 
mixed in with the workers, operating power tools and swinging 
pickaxes. Probably filling in for Greenlanders who died during the 
blow, or who still refused to work after the riots, Keagan reasoned. 
Schaeffer was there, face full of anticipation as he looked down at 
the rapidly receding iceface. The other base staff gathered around 
him expectantly. 


"There!" Schaeffer said suddenly. "Can you see it?" The onlookers 
craned their necks around the workers at the iceface. There didn't 
seem to be much to look at—a generally convex front of ice with 
what seemed a long horizontal crack along the bottom edge, the 
whole face about twice the height of a man. 


"We've almost reached the head," Schaeffer said confidently. Then 
Keagan saw it—dull glimpses of green behind the sharp splinters of 
remaining ice, and suddenly his mind made sense of the shape. 


"Its eye," he said in amazement. "That's its eye." 


"Its upper eyelid, to be exact." Schaeffer responded. "It gives you 
some sense of scale, doesn't it? How powerful, how primordial it is.” 


"How did it even get down there in the first place?" Keagan asked. 


"| would be lying if | said we had a workable theory. Something that 
big simply shouldn't be able to survive based on conventional 


materials science and thermodynamic theory. Its location suggests 
it's been there since the formation of the glacier two and a half 
million years ago. Some of the workers call it /6rmanganar, the 
World Serpent from the old Norse religion. | sometimes wonder 
whether the myth was based on this thing—seeing it in the caverns 
and making up stories about it." 


"It seems impossible that there would be just one," Keagan thought. 


"If you believe the legends, it was the child of a shapeshifting god. 
But maybe it was not the only one of its kind. There are legends of 
World Serpents throughout the old religions—not only did the Norse 
believe in /6rmanganar, they also thought a dragon, niddhogg, lay 
underneath the earth, gnawing the roots of the World Tree. The 
serpent and the tree. It forms a pattern. In the Bible, early man falls 
from favour with God because he eats the fruit of a forbidden tree, 
guarded by a great serpent. The serpent and the tree. The Maya, 
like the Norse, believed in a World Tree, in whose branches coils the 
Vision Serpent. Sir Malcolm thinks of it as Mucalinda, the serpent 
king who sheltered Buddha from a storm while he meditated 
underneath the Bodhi tree." 


With himself as Buddha, no doubt, Keagan thought. "So where's the 
tree?" he asked, half-jokingly. 


"Maybe it's beneath the ice too," Schaeffer responded. 


The assembly watched as workers switched from drills to hand- 
tools, chipping away at the remaining ice that covered the creature's 
eye. 


"Are the weapons here?" asked Bones. 


Schaeffer nodded. "Six uranium gun-type bombs, spirited out of 
South Africa at the end of apartheid. The powers that be couldn't 
stand the idea of a black-run country having nuclear weapons, so 
they turned a blind eye. Said they had dismantled them and 
voluntarily disarmed." 


How wonderful, Keagan thought sarcastically. But it's the other side 
that's supposed to work with repressive regimes, isn't it? 


"Each has a load of 150 kilotons, which on something this tough is 
like flicking it with your finger. But our best hopes are for this site— 
no matter how big you are, how far you are asleep, you wake up 
when someone flicks your eyeball." 


Keagan decided now was as good a time as any to ask the question 
that had occured to him the first time he had seen the scale of the 
creature. 


"And then what happens? After you wake it up, | mean. | know it's 
supposed to be an embarassment to the reactionaries, and be a 
wakeup call to governments that they can't rely on the Foundation 
keep all this quiet. But how are you going to stop it once it's awake? 
How can you cover up something this big?" 


Schaeffer chuckled. "Is that what you've been told? No, there will be 
no coverup. The world is going to change. Everyone will know what 
has happened here." 


"But—something this big, this powerful, if it wanted to attack, say, a 
city, there's nothing that could be done to stop it." 


"Yes. We're counting on that. There will be a state of emergency 
declared across the Nordic countries and in Britain. Sir Malcolm will 
assume control of a government of national unity..." 


"No, listen to me," said Keagan sharply, drawing a frown from the 
Commodore and askance looks from those around him, "even if a 
Minister without Portfolio who personally | had never heard of before 
all this is able to become PM somehow, how are you going to stop 
the giant fucking monster you're planning to wake up?" 


Schaeffer looked baffled for a moment, then a look of understanding 
came over his face. "You mean you don't know?" 


"Don't know what?" 


"Sir Malcolm will stop it. He possesses the power to re-organise 
reality, reshape it according to his will. No matter how large that 
thing is, it will cease to exist if he wills it to do so. That's his power. 
It's weak now, but growing stronger all the time. I'm surprised he 


didn't explain all this to you." 


Keagan remained silent for a minute or so. It was, of course, pure 
lunacy, but then, what hadn't been since he had signed Fredericka 
Mendelbrot's piece of paper? Let's assume this is all true, he 
thought. Sir Malcolm plans to wake up a monster than use some 
kind of reality-altering power to make it disappear, in front of an 
audience of billions of people. But why go to all the trouble of finding 
and awakening a real monster if you have all that power yourself? 
Unless—unless you intend for it to provide a demonstration first of 
what you're saving everyone from. A demonstration you're not 
willing to provide, because you really do think of yourself as the 
good guy. 


"How many people," he said falteringly. "How many people does Sir 
Malcolm intend for it to kill before he comes in and 'rescues' us?" 


Commodore Schaeffer shrugged. "Perhaps millions. But life and 
death won't mean very much once he has reached his full potential.” 


Keagan thought of Renton and the cell in London. Nothing they had 
done had given any indication they expected this to happen. The 
Foundation lies, he remembered Edward saying, to everyone. "Does 
the—” he tried to remember the term “—O5 Council know what Sir 
Malcolm intends? Aren't they supposed to be the highest authority?" 


Commodore Schaeffer didn't answer, instead moving away to 
another group of onlookers. 


Kaali had been present to hear the conversation and answered on 
his behalf: "At the present time Commodore Schaeffer answers only 
to Sir Malcolm." 


What a long and strange road, Keagan thought. One more question, 
then: "Kaali, this is probably going to sound strange, but do you 
know Sir Malcolm's wife's name? Is it Francesca?" 


"No," Kaali said. "Francesca Urquhart is his daughter. Sir Malcolm is 
estranged from his wife. | don't know her name. Why do you ask? 
Did someone say something about her?" 


Item: SCP-3042 


Tissue Test Record: N/A SCP-3042 introduced into SCP-682's 
containment chamber with current imprinted D-Class. Upon 
termination of D-Class, SCP-3042 will imprint on SCP-682. 


Termination Test Record: Denied. While highly amusing to watch 
the result, it is more than likely that SCP-682 would be in a perpetual 
rage state and keep breaching containment. If a more reliable way 
of containing SCP-682 is found, we can come back to this. 


Item: SCP-3922 
Tissue Test Record: N/A 


Termination Test Record: SCP-3922 was used with a ten-minute 
recording of security footage taken of SCP-682 during a 
containment breach, which, to add the semblance of a fictional 
narrative for the purposes of SCP-3922 jurisdiction, was labeled 
“Lizard: the Tale of the Unpleasant Lizard.” The objective was to 
witness a plausible termination of SCP-682 and replicate the results. 


The video was altered into a 72-hour military epic film titled 
"Sisyphus Among The Living,” displaying an unsuccessful full-scale 
military assault on SCP-682 by instances of SCP-3922-A. The cast 
included Alan Rickman as "Commandant Marius", the SCP-3922-A 
officer tasked with leading SCP-682's termination, and Michael 
Clarke Duncan as "Lieutenant Havisham", the apparent protagonist 
of the first third of the film. No lethal damage to SCP-682 is 
observed. At the end of the film, the last surviving SCP-3922-A 
stormtrooper (played by Patrick Swayze) activates an experimental 
device that teleports at least five instances of gigantic primates 
(analogous to the description of SCP-PC-003) onto the battlefield. 
The final shot is of SCP-682 laughing as the creatures approach and 
the 1968 song "Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight" by Tiny 
Tim plays in the background. The end title card reads "TO BE 
CONTINUED". 


Note: The fact that the cast is composed entirely of noteworthy 
deceased actors and actresses could possibly be due to 


Keagan looked down at the massive eyelid—it shuddered slightly, a 
slow ripple that passed from the top to the bottom. Keagan thought, 
what dreams do you dream?