something dark. Closer still and she discerns that the dark 
substance is blood. A dead body, not a concrete one, real; battered 
beyond recognition, crusted in black congealed blood. And on its 
forehead, carved, a sigil: twin circles, interlocking, encompassing 
each other. 

"Oh my god," she mutters, hand clasped over her mouth. 

Far off, the sound of sirens. 


Isa's face is grim. "Hannah. We have to go." 


Previous / Next 


Not To Disappear - 3 


Previous / Next 


3. 


Darkness falls over the island of Penang as the strange cars 
surround Number 32. On both ends of the street, dark sedans with 
tinted windows pull up to a halt. In front of the house, a police car 
with the lights turned down. Behind, watching the exits, a 
nondescript white van. Emblazoned on its side is a logo, with a 
name: Sun Ching Plumbing. 


Two men in suits step out of the police car, low and quick, pistols 
drawn - 


- but the two of them are already gone. "Left," says Isa, as streetlight 
shadows wash across her face. "Right here, go ahead." The Nissan 
trudges over uneven gravel, leaving the old house behind. It's back 
on the highway now, and on this side of the island, on this side of 
the road, there's no one with them. Cars rush past, headlights 
blaring. But no sirens have followed yet: that must be a good thing. 


"Where are we going?" asks Hannah. 
"Away from here," says Isa. 


"Give me a break. Those were cops. We're running away from 
cops." 


"Not cops, no." 
"Then who?" 


Isa hesitates. "Relevant authorities." 


"What relevant authorities? What kind of trouble is this?" 


They pull into a side road. Branches scrape glass, and the engine 
grinds to a stop. "If you don't tell me, we're not going." The air 
quivers with a liminal tension. 


Isa stares ahead. Slowly, she rolls up the sleeve of her blouse. Up 
the length of her forearm is the trail of a centipede, a jagged, 
crooked scar. 


"It's nothing," she mutters. "Just the relevant authorities." 


Hannah turns down the engine and winds down the windows, letting 
the warm air sweep in. Softly, she asks. "Was Mother a part of this?" 


"Did they take her, you mean?" 
Hannah nods. 


"Maybe. But | do not think so. If they did, we would not have known. 
They are thorough. They make no mistakes and leave no trace." 


And they're not leaving any trace untraced at Number 32, turning 
stones and scraping floors for prints. A technician unscrews the 
cameras, checks the lights, scratches his head at fried wires and 
degaussed tapes. Scraps of conversation, hushed and low: "... a 
clean cut, insides, like, welded together ... couldn't shut off the 
transmitter, so there's that ... maybe escaped by a known Way, the 
readings check out... yes, yes. Might be her. Yeah." Surreptitious 
flashes of cameras around the concrete body on the floor. Dust is 
scraped off and sealed in little bags. Another one holds out a device 
like a searchlight, peering at the digital readout; she follows the 
beeps as they lead her up the stairs, into a room where a mirror is 
there and not there. "Found one," she announces. "Boss'll wanna 
see this." 


Director Rahman is an easy, light-stepping man who stoops his 
head to enter the room. He points at the body and a subordinate 
nods, hurrying over with a trolley. Turning, he examines the 
impossible mirror surface with bemused eyes. "Somebody give me a 
light." 


A short while later, past the brick-lined tunnel, he stands in the skylit 
room with its hidden gallery spinning around him on its axes. He 
gapes, smiles, and - for the first time in a long time - he laughs. 


The men and women in suits and blues fan out into the room. The 
subordinate delegates further orders: "Hold. Watch your step. Don't 
touch what we don't have to." They nod, and get to work: More 
cameras flash. More little bags are brought out. Bit by bit, the room 
is covered, documented, filed away in a dozen flashes and little 
bags. The men and women are professionals, and they are nothing 
if not meticulous, as professionals are wont to be. 


It doesn't take long for them to find the other body. Rahman purses 
his lips and whistles. "Liyin, get forensics. Tell them it's not pretty." 


"What about the body?" asks Hannah. 


"Occam's razor, conservation of detail. Missing woman, break-in, 
dead body. It's either her, or the person who did it." 


"Or an accomplice, or someone else entirely. Or you were right, and 
your ‘authorities’ took her. How are you so sure?" 


Isa thinks. "Gut feeling.” 


"Really, gut feeling? It didn't even look like her, anyway. The size 
was all... wrong, it just - look, it just wasn't, okay. | Know that." Isa 
smirks. "Okay, okay. But my guess isn't any better than yours." 


"The symbol. On her forehead. Do you remember that?" 


"The double rings, interlocking - what about it?” Of all the facts 
present, it's the twisted sigil carved into the bloodied forehead of the 
corpse that Hannah finds the least disconcerting. That goes to show 
something, she supposes. But there was something about it, 
something that might have been a detail lost, a missing part - 


Isa shakes her head. "Not double rings." She traces on the 
windshield, looping an 'S' clockwise, then counterclockwise, in two 
unbroken motions. "Snakes, two of them, at each other's tails." 


"That's... some kind of magic thing. Right? An ourobouros." 


Total items: 1x fragment of wood of the same mass, cut 
flat on 3 sides. This may be a fragment of a larger cross. 


Input: 1x cross 

Setting: Fine 

Total items: 1x wooden crucifix with intricately detailed 
carving of Jesus Christ. 


Notes from Dr. Cenh: This may imply that SCP-914 has 
an understanding of religion. More experiments with 
religious items are indicated. 


This test may indicate that SCP-914 understands the use 
of input objects and not simply their function. 
Recommend testing with medicines reliant on the 
placebo effect to ascertain if outputs provide actual 
medicinal solutions to problems. -Dr. Pyrrhus 


+ Show Test Logs, Part 2 


Name: Dr. Gibbons 

Date: / / 

Total number of objects: Three hundred U.S. dollars. 
One hundred U.S dollars will be used for each setting. 


Input: One hundred U.S. dollars 

Setting: Coarse 

Output: A puddle of ink and a small pile of cotton and 
plastic weighing roughly as much as the original 
currency. 


Input: One hundred U.S. dollars 
Setting: 1:1 
Output: Seventy-five euros. 


Input: One hundred U.S. dollars 

Setting: Fine 

Output: A shareholder's note for "Soap from Corpses 
Products", worth one hundred U.S. dollars. It is unknown 
whether 914 selected a Foundation's front out of pure 
whimsy, or because of some other criteria. 


"You know the word?" 
"One of Mother's works, maybe... one of them, | don't know." 
"It was their symbol. The Pengembalian." 


"Restoration? Her Malay is spotty, but the name trickles into the 
crevices of memory, bringing to mind events, edges indistinct. Of 
what, exactly... ? 


"It's what they called their group, back in the day. Beatrice never told 
you, | can tell." 


Hannah breathes sharply. "Tell me about it," she says. "No more 
secrets." 


"Of course, all this was secret," continues the subordinate. Around 
her are the shadowed faces of colleagues, illuminated by the glare 
of the projector. "It was a sensitive time." Slides flash on the screen, 
sepia'd shots of jungles stormed by heliborne men. A crowd in a 
kampung, fists raised; a bombed-out coffeeshop. "This," he says, "is 
what the rest of Malaysia saw." 


The men and women peer at the projection. Rahman stands in a 
corner, leaning against a wall, deferring to the subordinate's archival 
expertise. There isn't space for enough seats, as most of the briefing 
room has been occupied over the years with stacks of yellowed files 
and ancient papers, shelved away in rusty lockers. In them are the 
records of days long past, with secrets, mysteries, and 
inexplicabilities, and many of them remain unfamiliar to most of 
Rahman's colleagues. Their business runs through people like fuel, 
and the relatively benign posting of Site-111 has found a niche in 
recent years as a convenient staging area for new blood. As a side 
effect, budgets are tight, and the room is warm and stuffy, buzzing 
with the uneasy whir of a ventilation fan. 


Click. A series of designations, code words, a cluttered timeline. 
"What we saw - what those before us fought, was a different war. 
According to the archives, there were several groups of interest 
formed during this time period, many of which were hostile: one- 
forty-five, one-fifty-nine, one-sixty, et cetera. There are a few more if 


you want to look them up, but our focus today is on this one group, 
in particular." Click. Four women, in various attires, seated around a 
potter's wheel. "One-sixty-five. Euclid's Daughters, consisting of four 
documented persons of interest. Whether they were aware of our 
classification system, or whether they were just big fans of 
geometry, is not a matter that's been documented in the records." 


Click. A scene of a marketplace in Kedah. Its centrepiece is a 
sculpted stone globe, about the size of a small car, frozen tendrils 
wreathed across each other around an unseen core. Around the 
object, whirling lines of stone furrow the ground, spreading out in the 
shape of a small galaxy. Fractal-like branches mimic the original 
schema, spreading further still; squinting, one catches the wreckage 
of stalls, carts, and questionably dark-coloured detritus. The area 
has been cordoned off, and men in full-body suits are inspecting the 
wreck with bulkier-looking versions of the searchlight-shaped probe. 


Someone raises his hand. "Previous slide, ma'am?" Click. "Thanks. 
Yeah. If there were four of them, why's there a gap on the left?" 


She recites the names clearly and deliberately, with great 
concentration. "Amira Tarudin. Ari Aberlin. Makcik Tan. And, of 
course, your mother, Beatrice." 


Hannah is still confused. "You said there was a conflict, some kind 
of split. " 


"Something bad happened." Isa stops, chooses her words. "Things - 
did not go to plan, and words were exchanged. People went their 
own ways." 


So grudges were born. If anyone had a reason to do something to 
her, it would have to be one of them. 


"Makcik... Makcik Tan died in 1994, in a home in Singapore. Liver 
failure. She used to drink a lot." She furrows her brows, and taps her 
finger on the sideboard. "Amira never made it out. | remember, | 
remember someone saying the suits got her, in eighty-something, 
and she fought, tried to fight back... " 


"And then? And then what?" Then she notices the wetness in Isa's 


eyes, the trembling in her throat. "Hey. Are you okay?" 


Isa turns to face her with an expression of lost serenity. The yellow 
passenger light floods her face in oblique relief, and the shadows 
carve out the cracks of her face. Slowly, she speaks. "What 
happened to me did not happen to her." 


In that brief instant, something clicks inside Hannah, and she forces 
herself to react. "Hey, hey. It's okay. Here." She reaches into the 
glove compartment, and passes her a tissue. "What about Ari 
Aberlin? The last name you mentioned. What about her?" 


Her voice catches on something, but she manages to whisper: 
"She's - she's alive." 


A possible lead. "Can we find her?" 
"... yes. But is it really a good idea... " 
"Where is she? Where does she live?" 


"|... |do not know." Isa composes herself, wiping the last of the 
wetness off her cheeks. "My place. We will think of something." 


The car turns out of the cul-de-sac and twilight gives way to night as 
the path loops back into familiar directions known to the Penang 
highway system, and the two of them head back from the unseen 
road into charted reality. 


"Do we know where they are?" asks a man in the group to no one in 
particular. "Ama? What's surveillance say?" 


Ama raises her hand. "Yeah, | gotcha. We haven't heard anything of 
this group ever since we got the new system set up. If they show up 
on anything digital, we'd have known. But none of these gals ring a 
bell." 


The young man next to her pitches in with a voice like a harmonica. 
"Half the island's covered in jungle. | keep saying we should step up 
our measures, but no... " 


The subordinate speaks up. "A number of them are dead or senile. 


This was confirmed during a routine sweep a few years back. But it's 
best we make sure. We have a list of last known locations and 
addresses of associates. I've prepared the files. " 


"Right, we know more-or-less what we're dealing with and with 
whom," says Rahman, squeezing to the front of the room. "We don't 
know what's gone on with the House, if it's an isolated breach, or if 
it's the beginning of something bigger. I'm not taking any chances. 
Just because thirty years have passed, doesn't make these persons 
of interest any less dangerous. These are not baselines we're 
dealing with. Any questions?" 


"Yeah." Ama again, grin plastered on her face. "When do we start?" 


Hannah's been waiting outside with the engine running for the better 
part of fifteen minutes. No lights are on in the dingy semi-detached; 
she supposes Isa can see in the dark. It wouldn't be surprising, 
anyhow. 


Her watch ticks on. Eight fifty-nine fifty-eight, eight fifty-nine fifty- 
nine, nine o'clock. Still no response. Isa said the suits would be 
looking for them. Were they in the house already? If so, should she 
leave? Already she finds herself peeking at the rear view every few 
seconds, hoping the lights at the rear are just another pair of 
headlights, belonging to someone returning home, or that of an 
errant motorbike out late... Besides, leaving the engine running isn't 
doing any favours for the Nissan's engine - at least, that's what she 
thinks the mechanic last said. 


The swing of a rusty gate. The turn of a key, and what sounds like a 
full arsenal of latches snapping tight. The passenger door opens, 
and Isa places something small and dense on the dashboard, cigar- 
shaped and wrapped in colourful patterned cloth. It makes a sound 
like something hollow. "Done," she says, easing herself into the 
seat. 


"What's this?" 


Isa holds up the bundle to the light and mouths a phrase, which is 
more like a sound. Immediately, the bundle begins to vibrate, and 
she lets it swing to and fro like the head of a snake, sensing the air, 


turning with purpose, left and right. It orients itself when she places it 
back on the dashboard. A compass. 


"What part of the art is not in the artist? How much of the artist in the 
art?" she recites. "Sympathetic magic, Hannah. We will find her." 


Hannah turns off the light, and brings the Nissan into gear. "We 
must be careful when we meet her," continues Isa. 


"Mm? Why?" 
"Personal reasons." 


Nine-thirty. Rahman sticks his head into the armoury. "Jon, 
command just cleared us," he says. "We mount in five, m'kay?" The 
agent nods, and unclips the pistols from the rack. Tonight was going 
to be a hell of a night. 


The old artist takes the kettle off the fire for the night, and wraps it 
with layers of coloured cloth. It would be warm when she woke, 
likely warm enough for tea. Light comes from a lone bulb; while she 
has electricity tapped from a power line, any more than that could 
start a fire, and she doesn't want that - for her house is wood and 
filled with cloth. 


In the meager light, her skin is fair as snow, and her eyes reflect a 
crystal clear blue. Though her hair is fading, one can tell that it used 
to be the colour of bronze, a strong colour, firey and brazen. She is 
a lost soul from another land, but lives here, nonetheless, in the tiny 
hut at the edge of the Penang jungle. There are villagers nearby 
who speak of old witches in the woods; thankfully, they live some 
distance away, and do not bother her.