"No need. It's out of bullets." Nechayeva smiled, briefly, a glint of 
reflected moonlight. She took a pull from the flask. She offered it to 
Stillwell. He took it. 


"To new friends," Stillwell said as he raised the flask. "May we live 
long enough to be enemies again." 


DIRECTOR WALTERS: How would you characterize a 
mission in which four men and a provisional SCP object 
are sent out, and only the mission leader returns? 


AGENT STILLWELL: Given this mission? I'd call that a 
success. 


DIRECTOR WALTERS: If this were a normal time, we 
would hang you out to fucking dry, Stillwell. This was a 
goddamn disaster. What do you have to say for yourself? 


AGENT STILLWELL: These aren't normal times, sir. 


Lafourche laughed uproariously, jabbing his thick finger at the 
transcript in his hand. "Holy shit, you really said that to him?" 


Stillwell smiled. "Yes indeed, sir." 


The Subdirector continued laughing as he read, pausing 
occasionally to spit a stream of tobacco juice into a disposable 
paper cup in his other hand. When he finished, he tossed the 
document into a wastebasket in the corner of his office. He leaned 
back in his chair to recover from his hilarity. 


"Make an Agent of you yet, kid. Hot damn." Lafourche spat again. 
"You know Dean, I'll be straight with you. | didn't expect to see you 
back here again. | mean, I'm glad. But that mission was a goddamn 
suicide run. | told chain of command that." 


Stillwell nodded. "Yeah. Guess that made it easy to face being 
drummed out in Walters' office.” 


Lafourche spat derisively. "Ahhh, Walters is an asshole, but he's not 
a dummy. You ain't gonna get canned, even if we weren't hiding out 
in a rented office in Mexico City. You did good out there. | ain't 
gonna forget it, and even ol' Walters won't either." 


The young Agent sat. A great feeling of desolation came over him at 
the prompting of Lafourche's praise. An emptiness that sat in his 
chest, making him feel lighter, insubstantial. The distant sound of 
twisting metal and gibbering voices rang in his ears. For an instant, 
he closed his eyes. A single light in the darkness went out. He willed 
the feeling away, breathing deeply. After three breaths, it left. He 
was getting better at this. 


Lafourche had the professional courtesy to not notice. "So kid, I've 
gotten a buzz in my ear from the higher-ups. What've you got 
cooked up for Coogan and that skip that he's bodyguarding?" 


Stillwell, calm and steady. "| have some thoughts on that." 


Colonel Ruslan Zherdev, Hero of the Soviet Union and commander 
of Fourth Department Abnormal Occurrences Commission, also 
known as GRU-P, took his seat in the balcony of the People's 
Auditorium, as his organization had arranged, and looked down at 
the stage and all of the other functionaries attending this planning 
committee tonight. Rumor had it (rumors that he had started) that 
Stalin himself was to congratulate the committee on the successful 
preparations for the 19th Congress. As it happened, he knew those 
rumors to be correct. He had arranged Stalin's presence here 
personally. 


The General Secretary emerged onto the stage, to thunderous 
applause, exactly as he had anticipated. As Stalin spoke, it was 
difficult to hear his words from as high up as Colonel Zherdev was, 
but it didn't matter. He had read a copy of the speech weeks ago, as 
his adjutant was drafting it. It was committed to memory. 


The Colonel looked at his watch. Two minutes into Stalin's speech. 


He would have given the signal to his men right about now. 


Zherdev watched the second hand on his gold Blancpain watch 
sweep by. Twenty-five seconds after his signal, all essential 
personnel would have cleared out of the building. Ten seconds after 
that, the doors to all of the balcony seats would have been locked 
and armed guards posted. He still had the personnel in place to do 
just that. Such a waste. 


Stalin's speech was full of party approved rhetoric and empty 
congratulations to men and women who had lived in mortal terror of 
him just several years before. Zherdev had some reservations about 
his plan, initially. It took him several hours, in fact, to convince 
himself to go through with it. He did not entertain any regrets since 
then. At the first mention of the new five year plan, the front section 
of the audience would have stood up, simultaneously. 


Five minutes into Comrade Stalin's speech, it would have been too 
late to turn back. The first five rows of the party attendees would 
have been on the stage. Zherdev had relished the idea of watching 
the look on Stalin's face, as the tide approached. In the next minute, 
possibly minute and a half, the crowd down below, possessed of 
murderous, white-hot hatred not of their own making, would have 
torn Stalin limb from limb as the rising stars of the Communist Party 
looked on. Zherdev had specified to his scientists that those not 
complicit in the act must be made to feel approving of it. They had 
been close. 


Colonel Zherdev watched the entire speech, superimposing what 
could have been onto the banal, unproductive events down below. 
When Comrade Stalin had finished, the crowd rose to its feet, a lusty 
ovation for their triumphant leader, all Party members showing the 
proper enthusiasm for the General Secretary. 


Zherdev rose to his feet as well, clapping for the expected minutes 
of praise that were due to Stalin. He looked down at the scene 
before him. Anyone looking back up would have seen a reflection of 
the scene that Zherdev had tried and failed to orchestrate, thwarted 
by what his men told him was a combined Foundation-KGB 
operation. Anyone looking up would have seen Zherdev in a rare 
moment of dropping his impassive mask, his true face radiating the 


hatred and fury that he had sought to transplant into his would-be 
accomplices through otherworldly means. 


Zherdev had expected to proclaim a national tragedy this evening, 
along with a message to the nation to find the courage to forge a 
new course in the face of American provocation. Instead he was one 
of a thousand obedient lapdogs, clapping for favor, capering for 
Koba's good graces. 


The Colonel continued clapping as Stalin basked in the adulation 
from the audience below. Someone was going to pay dearly for this. 


« | Part Nine | Matryoshka | The Coldest War | » 


Voices Unassailable 


Here's what you have to keep in mind about the Cold War. 


August 19, 1949: The first Soviet atomic bomb test. 


Faced with the loss of the nuclear monopoly, and seeking to 
maintain the American technological advantage, President Truman 
orders a massive rearmament program which includes greatly 
increased investment in the nascent field of parascientific weapons 
research. The Foundation, determined to remain free of US and 
Soviet control, relocates their most sensitive and powerful objects to 
the non-aligned nations of Egypt, Yugoslavia, and Indonesia. Much 
of the parascientific material left behind falls into government hands. 


“No other value system is so wholly irreconcilable with 
ours, So implacable in its purpose to destroy ours, so 
capable of turning to its own uses the most dangerous 
and divisive trends in our own society — and no other 
has the support of a great and growing center of 
military power.” 

-Dean Acheson, 1950 


4/25/1950: North Korean troops cross the 38th parallel, igniting the 
Korean War. The war sees the commitment of the vast majority of 

America's standing army as well as the field deployment of Euclid- 

level assets for the first time in US history. 


“Our military organization today bears little relation to that 
known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by 
the fighting men of World War Il or Korea.” -lke Eisenhower, 
1961 


10/19/1956: Seeking to end Egyptian president Gamal Nasser's 


sheltering of the Foundation, the militaries of France, Israel, and 
England launch joint attacks on the Suez Canal zone. 


“The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we as 
a people decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted 
concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to 
justify it.” -John F. Kennedy, 1961 


August, 1962. Soviet authorities deploy multiple strategic nuclear 
missiles to Cuba, throwing the United States into panic. 


“| would like to address for a moment the Cuban 

people directly. These new weapons are not in your 
interest. They contribute nothing to your peace and 
well-being. They can only undermine it.” -JFK, 1962 


The resulting thirteen-day diplomatic stand-off is interrupted when 
the commanders of the Cuban garrison detonate their warheads on 
their launch pads. Havana’s last broadcasts prior to its destruction 
consist of largely unintelligible distress signals. Soviet authorities 
strenuously deny the presence of parascientific weaponry on the 
island. 


August 4, 1964: US destroyer Maddox reports an engagement with 
North Vietnamese torpedo boats. This incident serves as justification 
for the uninhibited commitment of US forces into the twenty-year old 
Indochina Wars. 


“It is my considered conviction, shared throughout 
the Government, that firmness in the right is 
indispensable today for peace; that firmness will 
always be measured. Its mission is peace.” - 
Lyndon Johnson, 1964 


1961-1971: Over the course of a decade, the United States Air 
Force deploys over Vietnam some 20,000,000 gallons of 
nanodigesters and folomites engineered by the Global Occult 
Coalition. More than eight million Vietnamese are killed or injured 


and hundreds of thousands continue to be born with severe birth 
defects as the colonies of robodefoliants adapt to and disrupt the 
local fauna and flora. 


“Any attempt to direct these 
wonders and nightmares is as 
fruitless as efforts to 
understand them — and far 
more dangerous.” -John Foster 
Dulles, 1972 


November 4, 1979: 52 American citizens are taken hostage when 
an angry mob storms the US embassy in Tehran. After five months 
of failed negotiations, President Carter orders Operation Eagle 
Claw, the strategic deployment of over eighteen distinct anomalous 
entities and organisms intended to cripple Iran's infrastructure prior 
to an Iraqi invasion. 


Unforeseen consequences of such extensive cross-contamination 
render much of Iran uninhabitable in a matter of months. 


“The utter supremacy of our ideology 
justifies every endeavor undertaken to 


preserve our way Of life.” -lke Eisenhower, 
1949 


Harry Truman only did what he thought was right, which turned out to be the problem. After 
Carter came Reagan, and that's when things started to happen. 


« | The Woodvale Incident | Hub | Matryoshka » 


Cleon 


Rome, 1955 

Giraldo Moretti ran as the fanged walls of the alleyway closed in 
behind him. The droning sound that followed him grew into a roar. 
Crumpled paper drifted through the air, despite the lack of any 
breeze. In front of him, miles ahead, he could see a dim glow that 
promised salvation. 


How had he come here? He tried to remember. 


There had been a dinner on the train. A night outside no light could 
penetrate. A party. A knowledge of creatures and blackness on the 
other side of the wall. A surreptitious nod from one of the men. He 
could see the sequence playing out on the trash that filled the air. 
Moretti ran faster. 


As he neared the light, all electric blue and red, he could feel the 
alleyway hungrily snapping at his feet. People now filed into the 
narrow passage, emerging from the brick walls on each side. Their 
faces, when they had them, were all wrong. Mistaken. 


Moretti tried to move past them, but a man with five eyes and no 

mouth grabbed at him, smearing his clothes all over his arm. The 
other men began to grab at him, smearing the cloth into his body. 
They came over him in waves, their skin clammy and burning hot. 


As the men washed over him, he could feel himself growing weaker. 
Slower and slower he moved as his skin turned grey. Finally, his 
weight was too much for his legs to bear and he collapsed. 


The men with the mistaken faces descended, tearing his flesh in 
chunks. Looking up, Moretti saw was the neon lights at the head of 
the alley blinking off one by one. The alleyway roared in triumph as 
its teeth overtook him. The inky blackness inside of it began to 
squeeze at him and - 


Giraldo Moretti opened his eyes. He was standing in the gallery 
again. In front of him was the painting with the drips of paint and 
God knew what else that led him to the dream. 


He tried to stop the shaking of his hands, failed, and tried to focus 
on other things. The review he had to write tomorrow for this 
exhibition. Rome, with its ancient and endlessly solid buildings. The 
dry conversations of materialism and the thrust of history he and 
Maria shared over long nights and many cigarettes. Everything 
seemed poisonous to him. 


The dream had been so real. This Lawrence Greer- his work - was 
like nothing Moretti had ever experienced. He had tasted the fear. 
He had felt his skin ripping apart. 


He made his way to the exit. Looking around the gallery, he saw 
other patrons staring at the dozen or so other works. Some seemed 
to be in a trance, perhaps like the one he had just been in. Others 
simply looked awestruck. He was still shaking. 


Standing in the basement entrance to the gallery in the dark night, 
Moretti checked to make sure no one was coming. Then, for the first 
time since the war ended, he began to cry. 


Rio de Janeiro, 1958 

The stuttering light of the screen illuminated Carla Carvalho's face. 
She could almost feel it as it moved over and around her in the dark 
basement. It seemed to mingle with the heat that filled every 
centimeter of air in the theater. 


Before her, a dark boy and a light girl walked hand in hand, oblivious 
to the garbage surrounding them. 


The room was silent except for the whir of the projector and the 
occasional cough. Then, all at once, she sensed music. It seemed to 
well up within her, filling every centimeter of her. Great expansive 
notes, ones so small and subtle that she could scarcely notice them, 
others she couldn't even imagine hearing. Indeed, she realized, 
there still wasn't any sound other than the projector. 


Tissue Test Record: 
Sample eradicated. No traces above molecular level remain. 


Termination Test Record: 

SCP-063 was refitted to the end of a rotatory arm, which was 
deployed into 682's enclosure. Initial approach proves partially 
successful, with SCP-682 losing more than 20% body weight before 
regeneration overtakes the destruction process. Newly regrown 
tissues are not vulnerable to SCP-063's eradication effect: 682 
destroys the deployment arm and 0683 digs a hole through the 
enclosure's ground, where it is later recovered. 682 succeeds in 
extending a long prehensile limb through the hole and maiming two 
security personnel before containment is reestablished. 


Hypothesis: 682 is not bound to base Earth biological chemistry and 
can adapt itself to be ‘organic’ or 'inorganic' as necessary. Some of 
the boys on the lab are arguing whether we can even Classify it as 
‘living’, at least as we understand life. This worries me, because an 
unliving, undying intelligent monster... well, that's where you start 
getting sacrifices in your name. — Dr. Zara 


Item: SCP-807 


Tissue Test Record: 
N/A 


Termination Test Record: 

A "682 special" (10 kg of rotten meat and sharpened bone splinters, 
10 L of rancid mayonnaise, 1 L potassium cyanide, and 1 kg 
morphine hydrochloride, combined into a solid mass then 
transmuted via SCP-807) was dumped into the testing room. 


SCP-682 devoured "special", then began loudly demanding more. 
Nine minutes later, SCP-682 collapsed.