Metzger began to restructure his business 
enterprise in early 1896, resulting in the 
creation of what would later be classified as 
SCP-748. Approximate to this time, based on 
Metzger's private journal, aligned himself with 
an entity known as "The Investor".9 


Metzger committed suicide on November 13, 
1915, his body discovered by constables after 
a mail carrier reported hearing gunshots in the 
vicinity of his manor. Autopsy revealed the 
cause of death to be a self-inflected gunshot 
wound to the head. No brain matter was 
recovered, presumed by the coroner as having 
been eaten by a pet hound. His family and 
household servants were discovered missing 
and their fates remain unknown. 


"The Pandora's Box thing? If | recall, the box contained Hope, didn't 
it?" Bullfrog opened up his own weapon case and pulled out an M-4, 
checking the chamber for a live round before continuing his 
inspection of his weapon. 


"Hope, yeah. Also a whole bunch of pain, misery, and suffering.” 
Fartboy frowned as he wiped a speck of dust off the lens of his rifle 
scope with a soft cloth. "| dunno. Maybe it's just because | think he's 
an asshole." 


"No, you're right. General Bowe is deluding himself, and he's 
detached from reality. Did you catch the last thing that he said 
before he walked out? He called us ‘boys.’ Even Kitten." 


"In his defense, that's an easy mistake to make." 


"Maybe. Or maybe it's a sign of rigid thinking. Making assumptions 
without fact-checking," Bullfrog said. 


"We're fucked, aren't we?" 


"That's a distinct possibility, yeah." 


"Some day,” Fartboy sighed, "someone will invent body armor that 
lets me scratch where it itches and | will fucking marry him. Or her. 
Or it." He glanced over at Kitten, who was in the middle of doing a 
ridiculous number of pull-ups at a frankly disquieting pace. "Is that 
smart? | mean, what if you wear yourself out?" 


"Keyed up. Nervous. Need to burn off energy or I'll get the shakes." 
Kitten dropped down from the pull-up bar and switched to doing 
push-ups. "I can rest on the way in." 


"Suit yourself. ‘Sup, Bull." 


"Sup, Fartboy. Kitten. Got our orders. They want us to stay in the 
helicopter and provide airborne sniper support. Since they're 
expecting little to no civilian resistance, we should just be sitting 
there and watching it all go down." Bullfrog scoffed. "Also, the check 
is in the mail, air support is on the way, and I'm only going to put in 
the tip." 


"God Bless America Hoorah Tally-Ho and Molon Fucking Labe," 
Fartboy muttered. 


"You got that right. Fartboy, you all set? How about you, Kitten? You 
ready to go, or do you want to run a marathon first?" 


"I'm set, boss. Let's go." Kitten finished one last push-up, dusted off 
her hands, then picked up her backpack and a large equipment 
case. 


"Yeah. Let's get this over with," Fartboy said, picking up his own 
backpack and rifle. 


They were walking across the tarmac towards their helicopter when 
Kitten paused and turned towards a small group of men gathered 
around a Black Hawk. "Tall, Dark, and Lethal at three o'clock." 


It wasn't unusual for men to walk around without their shirts on in the 
desert heat. What was unusual were the jagged-edged red tattoos 
that covered every inch of the tall, olive-skinned man's body. There 
was a massive steel collar around his neck, and steel manacles 
bound his hands. A dozen men in full body armor, carrying assault 
rifles, kept their weapons trained on him at all times. 


The tall man paused and turned to face them. Fartboy felt a cold 
chill in his gut as their eyes met. Shark's eyes, he thought. Killer's 
eyes. Nothing behind them but death and war. 


Then someone prodded the stranger with the muzzle of his rifle, and 
the strange tableau continued across the tarmac and into the 
helicopter. 


"That him?" Kitten asked. 


"Yeah," Bullfrog said. "Subject Able, a.k.a. Rascal One. You've seen 
the video?" 


"Yes," Kitten said. "Impressive." 


"Impressive, hell, try fucking terrifying. We should be blowing that 
guy away, not weaponizing him." 


"We did. Nine times. He just keeps coming back," Bullfrog pointed 
out. 


"Fan-fucking tastic. And he's one of the good guys." 


"So are we. Game faces, people." 


"ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, IT'S NOT GOING SO BADLY" 
Bullfrog shouted over the sound of the helicopter rotors. 


Fartboy nodded back. He was lying on the floor of the helicopter on 
a padded foam mattress, scanning the surrounding city through his 
scope. Aside from a few looky-loo types cautiously watching the 
men in helicopters descending upon the building, things were quiet. 
No one was waving a gun around or inciting the crowds to violence. 
He honestly wasn't surprised. This wasn't Baghdad or Kabul: people 
around here didn't often see men with guns walking around. They 
hadn't yet learned to associate soldiers with violence and chaos. 


"COLLIC is up," Kitten said into her headset mic. She tapped a 
button on her tablet computer and watched a progress bar fill up for 
a couple of seconds. When the screen cleared, an image of the 
target building and the surrounding city block appeared. The 
buildings themselves were ghostly white and translucent, as were 
the inanimate objects within. People appeared as black silhouettes 
surrounded by an aura of multicolored flame. 


Except one: a particularly tall and lanky silhouette in the lead assault 
helicopter, who leaped twenty feet down onto the roof of the target 
building, disdaining the use of the fast-rope. That one's aura was a 
deep, dark violet, so dark it was nearly black. It flicked its wrists, and 
a pair of cruel, hooked blades appeared in its hands, laced with 
black fire. 


"Huh," Kitten said. "Interesting." 
"What is?" 


"The swords. We'd always suspected they were alive somehow. 
This confirms that." 


Down on the roof, the rest of the assault team had disembarked and 
were racing across the rooftop. Two of them, carrying big, plate-like 
breaching charges, were waved off by Rascal One, who simply cut 
the door off its hinges with his swords and kicked it in. 


The next few minutes were like a symphony of slaughter. Panicked 
men, roused from sleep by the sound of helicopters and gunfire, 
emerged from their beds shooting, and were ruthlessly cut down. 
Life-auras flared brightly in pain and terror, and were just as quickly 
snuffed out. One particularly brave enemy tried to jump the assault 
team with a knife. He ended up hurled out a third-story window in 
three pieces. 


"What was the target suspected of again, Bull?" Fartboy asked. 


"Suspected "Type White" immortal. He's supposed to be five 
hundred years old. No other paranormal traits. If it weren't for his 
politics | don't think anyone would give a shit." 


"Oh. In that case, all this seems rather excessive," Fartboy mused. 
Down below, a terrified teenage boy with an assault rifle was cut in 
half with a giant curved scimitar. 


"Rather," Kitten said, mildly. 


"Pandora One to all units. Package is secure. | say again, package 
is secure." On Kitten's screen, six men were grouped around a 
seventh, who was lying on the ground face-down with his hands on 
his head. 


If anything is going to go wrong, Bullfrog thought, now's when it's 
going to happen. 


A black-aura'd figure walked into the room, slashed the man on the 
ground into pieces, then cut down the six others swiftly and 
methodically. 


| hate being right. 


"HOLY SHIT! RASCAL ONE IS AMOK! RASCAL ONE IS—" the 
voice of the terrified soldier on the ground was cut off in a scream of 


pain and a gurgle of blood. 
"HIT THE SWITCH! HIT THE SWITCH!" 


The figure in black clawed at its throat. A moment later, all the 
windows on the bottom two floors of the building blew outward in a 
shower of glass and dust. 


A moment after that, Rascal One emerged from the building. His left 
arm was a mangled mess below the shoulder. The left side of his 
body was bloody and torn to pieces. Parts of it still smouldered. But 
his right hand still held a sword of pitch blackness. 


Things got a bit crazy after that. 

"SLIPPED CHAIN! | SAY AGAIN, SLIPPED CHAIN! 
"He's out of the building! He's out of the building!" 
"We need a medevac, now!" 


"Do not take this helicopter down!" Bullfrog shouted in response to 
that last panicked cry. 


"Fuck you! Those are my guys down there!" the pilot shouted back. 


Down below, the first helicopter attempting to evacuate the 
casualties was sliced in half by a thrown sword. The pilot stopped 
arguing and took the helicopter back up. 


"Give me your radio," Bullfrog said grimly. He plugged in his headset 
and switched to a frequency that didn't appear on the comms order. 


The smiling man was not surprised when Bullfrog called in on the 
secure frequency. Disappointed, maybe. Surprised, no. 


"You seeing this, boss?" 


"Yes," the smiling man said. "General Bowe is rather upset, to say 
the least. They're getting ready to send in an airstrike. Your 
assessment?" 


A short pause, probably so that Bullfrog could shout some profanity 
without it appearing on the official record. "Boss, by the time they 
get aircraft overhead, Able's going to be in the city proper. It'll take 
saturation bombing to flush him out. If the Americans bomb this city, 
it's going to be bad. We're talking international destabilization bad, 
not to mention Ban-Ki's gonna be pissed." 


"Can you do it, then?" 


Another, somewhat longer pause. "Yeah, Boss. Give the word and 
we'll pull it off.” 


"The word is given. Out." 


The smiling man stood up and cleared his throat. "Gentlemen!" he 
shouted, over the confused din. "I'm taking over. Under Article 45 of 
the United Nations Charter, the Special Agreement between the 
U.N. Security Council and the government of the United States of 
America, and Article 9 of the Global Occult Coalition Charter, this is 
now a GOC operation..." 


The first thing that Kitten did was take off her body armor. From 
what she'd seen, it didn't seem to do any good against Rascal One's 
black sword, and she couldn't afford the extra weight. She left most 
of her ammo behind too: if her plan worked, one magazine was all 
she'd need. If it didn't, an extra mag wouldn't help. 


She did bring the knife, though. 


When the helicopter descended to ten feet, she jumped off and hit 
the ground rolling. Bullfrog tossed her rifle to her, and she turned 
and ran into the target building's courtyard. 


Her blood sang. This was a part of the job she didn't get to do very 
often, but when she did, it was an absolute joy. 


She started firing her rifle from the hip the moment she saw Rascal 
One: she didn't care about hits, only getting his attention. She 
transitioned to her pistol on the run and emptied that too. Then she 
threw the empty pistol at him - which he caught and threw back at 


her - so she dodged that and took the last ten meters at a sprint. 


All her energy, all her tension that she kept bottled up and hidden 
behind her cold reserve and iron self-control, exploded like a 
grenade. 


"Kitten," Bullfrog had often thought, was a singularly inappropriate 
nickname for a six foot tall, musclebound amazon. "Cheetah," 
maybe. "Tiger," perhaps. But "Kitten?" It smacked of sexism and a 
deeply entrenched patriarchal attitude that reduced women to 
childish cuteness. Or maybe it was meant ironically. He'd have to 
ask her about that sometime. 


He also hated how it was always in the moments of deepest tension 
that he worried about the dumbest things. 


The pilot put them down on the roof of a nearby building. Bullfrog 
jumped out first, carrying the foam mat and Kitten's tablet computer. 
Fartboy followed, cradling his rifle to his chest like an infant. He ran 
to the edge of the roof and quickly set up his shooting position, then 
looked through his scope. 


And immediately frowned. "Jesus, they're moving fast." 
"Can you take the shot?" 
"Uhhhh... no. | can't even keep them in my sights. Sorry, Bull." 


Was it worth telling Kitten to slow down? No. From what he could 
see, she had her hands full just keeping him from eviscerating her. 
No energy to spare a breath replying, and distracting her now could 
be fatal. She was getting tired, too. No matter how fast or tough she 
was, she was still human, and Rascal One was practically a god: 
even half-blown to hell, he was more than a match for her. 


Which meant he'd probably have to go down there and help. Damn 
it. 


"All right, I'm going in," Bullfrog sighed. "No matter what happens, if 
you see the shot, take it." 


"Don't have to tell me twice. Good luck, Bull." 


"Fuckin' A." Bull kicked down the door and started running down the 
stairs, muttering a brief apology to the terrified civilians huddled 
inside. If he was going to go out there, he reflected, he was going to 
need a bigger gun. 


Kitten was going to die. 


Not her fault. Rascal One was just faster, stronger, and better than 
she was. He didn't get tired. She did. He didn't feel pain. She did. 


She took some solace in the fact that she'd lasted about two 
minutes longer than anyone else she'd seen fight him. That was 
something, at least. 


It was going to happen soon. She was going to make a mistake, and 
then she would die. It sucked but there was nothing she could do 
about it. 


She stepped back a bit too far and lost her balance. 
He came to kill her. 


But he stopped as a long burst from a Squad Automatic Weapon 
stitched through the air between them. 


"Hey asshole!" Bullfrog shouted. "Your mother sucks goat cocks!" 


He fired a second burst from the light machine gun, only to see 
Rascal One swat the bullets out of the air with his sword. Something 
about that triggered a memory in Kitten's mind, and she threw her 
knife at him. 


Which Rascal One immediately grabbed out of the air. 
Which occupied his one good hand so he couldn't manifest a sword. 


Which let Bullfrog's next SAW burst take his legs out from under 
him. 


Which was followed by Fartboy's rifle firing ten times in rapid 
succession, pulping Able's head like a cantaloupe. 


Just to be sure, Kitten took the time to smash his spine into pulp with 
a cinder block. 


Only then did she let herself relax. 


It was a very nice cabin, and a very nice lake, the smiling man had 
to admit. A perfect place to spend a week getting away from the 
world... or in self-imposed exile, hiding from public disgrace. 


Civilian clothing didn't suit General Bowe. His big, broad chest 
looked sad and empty without its ribbons and medals. The tumbler 
of ice and vodka by his side completed the tragic picture. 


"| just got word from the Secretary of Defense,” he said. "Project 
Pandora is over. They're canceling our budget and liquidating our 
assets." He raised his glass in ironic salute. "Motherfuckers." 


Liquidating assets. Such a nice, clean term for mass executions. 
Palmdale Base was going to become an abbatoir. The smiling man 
shuddered inwardly at that mental image. "That's going to be difficult 
for some of your assets," he pointed out. "Able comes to mind." 


"They're going to dig a giant mine shaft and put the box at the 
bottom of ten thousand tons of solid concrete. Fucking waste," 
General Bowe muttered. 


"Maybe it's for the best," the smiling man said. "Some things we 
simply can't control or destroy... and we're not in the business of 
storing these things, either." 


"Huh." General Bowe took a big gulp of his vodka and stared hard 
into the sunset. "Speaking of which, | was reviewing the tapes of the 
operation the other day." 


"Oh?" the smiling man asked. 


"Yeah. That big scary bitch? We clocked her at about 80 kph on her 
last sprint. Only for a couple of seconds, but that's almost twice as 


fast as Usain Fucking Bolt." 
"Ah," the smiling man said.