All discovered copies of SCP-910 are to be destroyed following 
retrieval and processing, except in the event that the Foundation- 
held archival copy has been damaged. In cases where peaceful 
acquisition of an instance has been deemed impossible, MTF Eta-82 
is to ensure their destruction under 14-ULTRAVIOLET engagement 
parameters. 


SYSTEM NOTICE: Overseer-6, 6 items require your 
attention. 


Description: SCP-910 is an 156-page book titled Organizational 
Symbology: New Tools for the Oldest Craft, which describes 
methods to transform mundane organizations into anomalous 
entities for use in thaumaturgic rituals. Approximately 10 copies of 
SCP-910 have been published yearly since 1955 by the Penn & 


the outskirting suburbs, and caught the first outward-going bus he 
saw. 


They'd never catch him now. 


~ 


Over the next few months, many strange events were reported in 
the neighborhoods of several cities. Multiple gunshots were reported 
being heard around the streets, often coming from alleyways, yet 
whenever these were investigated, no one could be found in the 
area. Empty houses had litter found in them, and many families 
reported burglaries, despite not having left the house during the time 
before the burglary was discovered. 


The reports always died down in a few weeks, before popping up 
again in another city, just as strange and diverse as before. People 
began looking out for anything strange, if their city was the one 
"under attack". 


Yet, once again, no solid evidence beyond mere memory could be 
found. No photos or videos existed, and the most official accounts of 
such events were on internet forums. Many dismissed it as a hoax, 
or as a stunt by some political party. 


The attackers were good at their job. 


For they didn't merely try to catch the thief. It was their efforts that 
insured nobody knew for sure what they had seen and heard. They 
worked efficiently and ruthlessly, and managed a complete 
suppression of information. 


As the number of cities "attacked" grew though, he began to get on 
their nerves. It didn't normally take them this long to catch their prey. 


~ 


Jayun tossed and turned in the bed, only half-asleep. The last time 
he had slept, the people in black had been knocking the door down 
by the time he'd grabbed the machine. 


He didn't take it off to sleep anymore. 


It was ridiculous, he thought. Ridiculous and unfair. Sure, he'd stolen 
a lot of stuff, but who would ever go to this much trouble to catch 
someone? They might not have succeeded in that, but they sure 
had succeeded in making his life a living hell. 


His leg twinged. The pain had died down, but had never gone away 
completely, and he suspected it never would, while the bullet was 
still there. 


The worst part, he thought, the absolute worst part, was that they 
always managed to track him down. It didn't matter where he went, 
even if he didn't venture outside the entire time, they still found him. 


He sometimes wondered if he should give up, just give them the 
device they wanted so much. 


But he suspected they wouldn't just let him go after that. They didn't 
seem like the forgiving type of people. 


He rolled around in the bed, trying to relax without sleeping. 


Well, tomorrow he'd be leaving this place, this whole continent 
altogether. It'd be hard for them to get around in a place like Asia, 
and he could move easy. Eventually, they'd have to give up. 


After all, nobody could care that much over a simple device, could 
they? 


~ 


As it turned out, yes, they could. What the thief didn't know was that 
they didn't need to follow him; they already had people in Asia, 
keeping an eye out for them. They had people everywhere. They 
needed people everywhere. They had gone to more trouble over 
less than a working teleporter, and they didn't stop. 


He tried numerous times to give them the slip, but they always found 
him. Even after he'd gotten the bullet out, they kept on searching, 
not letting him rest. They had many people, and he was but one. 
They knew he'd have to give up sometime. 


Except he didn't. 


The months stretched into years, and the chase continued. The thief 
escaped to more continents, only to find them waiting for him. 


Yet he kept running, kept blinking into the ether before they could 
stop him. This was strange behavior to them, but they couldn't stop 
in their mission. They believed in what they did, as much as a priest 
believed in their god. 


As time went on, they noticed a change in the thief's appearance. 
He grew a beard, his hair turned white, he didn't walk straight. They 
knew this wasn't an attempt to disguise himself. They estimated that 
for every day he spent in the world, he spent 6 in the void. His age 
was beginning to catch up to him. 


Despite this, though, he still did not submit. 
But they had him now. The chase would only take a little bit longer... 


~ 


Jayun lay under a tree. It wasn't the best of hiding spots, but he 
knew he'd have at least an hour before they came this way. 


He knew their tactics. Not that it helped. 


The sun was up, and it was a beautiful day. He took a moment to 
appreciate the nice weather, the cool air, and the trilling birdsong. 


He had to take moments like these when they were available. 


Most of his waking mind was spent in blackness. And sleeping, for 
that matter. He'd long since decided to do all of his sleeping in 
transit, so that he'd be awake when he arrived. It was one of the 
habits that had helped him evade capture for so long. 


And what a long time it had been indeed. According to the 
newspapers, it had only been 9 years ago that he had come upon 
the device in the lab. 


It was more like 60 to him. 


He couldn't remember the last time he'd taken it off. The skin 


underneath the straps had turned into scar tissue, and there was an 
ugly red line along his palm where he pulled the lever. 


He wasn't even certain why he ran anymore. Somewhere, he knew, 
he had relatives. He had tried reaching them, in the relatively 
peaceful times, but they had always been nearby, waiting for him to 
reveal himself. The best he had managed was a voicemail, and he 
wouldn't be surprised if they had never heard it. 


He knew he should get up, find somewhere more secure, have 
some food and water. But the ground was so soft, and he just 
wanted to sleep... 


~ 


In a secret location, there was a scientist. She had been put on the 
project only at its very end, yet had been asked to write the report. 
Typical bureaucracy, she thought. She hadn't even seen the man 
before they'd caught him. She took a sip of the coffee in front of her 
and looked at her work: 


"The object came to the attention of The Foundation after a series of 
seemingly impossible burglaries. The Foundation examined CCTV 
footage and noticed an individual, believed to be the object's 
creator, disappearing from sight shortly before each burglary. The 
individual appeared to be using the object for short jumps to access 
inaccessible locations. The Foundation pursued the individual 
across 3 continents over a period of 9 years before the individual 
was finally found having died of old age due to extensive use of the 
object in ; - 


Silly, really, that she had to censor the name of the place. But 
everyone who'd read the report knew where they'd got him, so she 
supposed it didn't matter. 


She clicked the save button and went to the cafeteria. Within an 
hour, the matter had left her mind. 


Name, Rank, Serial Number 


"Sergeant Thomas Allenby. Serial number nine four two—" 


The butt of the revolver cracked against his jaw, hard. Sergeant 
Allenby laughed bitterly as he spat out a broken tooth onto the 
packed dirt floor. "If you break my jaw, | won't be able to tell you 
anything," he sneered. 


The man cocked the hammer of the revolver and placed the cold 
steel muzzle against the Marine's forehead. "You will tell me 
everything!" the man growled. "Starting with how your little patrol 
managed to find this place!" 


"Sergeant Thomas Allenby, serial number—" 


The gun fired. Allenby screamed in pain, then laughed out loud, his 
voice shaky with pain and manic shock. "FUCK!" he screamed. "The 
fucking LEG!? Are you crazy? Hit the femoral artery and you'll kill 
me in seconds, then you'll never get anything out of me!" 


"You will tell me what | want to know, or the next bullet goes in your 
brain!" screamed the man. 


"FUCK you!" Allenby shouted. "You fucked up! You shouldn't a’ shot 
me! Now | know you're fucking bluffing! You can't kill me, I'm the 
only one who knows what you want to know, you slopehead gook 
motherfuck—" 


The revolver was cocked again. The muzzle was placed back 
against Allenby's forehead. The man took up the slack on the 
trigger. Allenby knew that he should be afraid, but pain, shock, and 
adrenaline were conspiring against him. All he could do was laugh. 


"Dai Ta?!" someone shouted. A newcomer. He was jabbering 
something in Vietnamese, too fast for Allenby to understand. The 
colonel chuckled in response. Something exchanged hands. 


"It seems," smirked the colonel, "That | have a reason to keep you 
alive a little longer." He thrust a manila envelope into Allenby's face. 
"What is this?" 


"|... [don't know," Allenby said, staring past the envelope into the 
colonel's eyes. "I've never seen it before in my life." 


"Lies!" growled the colonel. "It was in your backpack! And more..." 
He turned the envelope around. "Do you see this? This is the 
symbol of your Central Intelligence Agency!" 


Oh shit. For the first time since the Viet Cong had captured him, 
Allenby was afraid. 


"| have... | don't know what you mean," Allenby protested. 


"More lies! You are no soldier, you are an American spy!" He struck 
Allenby across the face with the packet of papers in frustration. "1 
ask you again. How did you find these tunnels?" 


"A map..." Allenby said, then immediately bit his tongue in 
frustration. 


"A map... Ah... | see." The colonel laughed cruelly. "Very clever of 
you Americans." He shuffled the papers together. "Doubtless, if | line 
up this triangle with this..." 


His voice stopped abruptly. Allenby smiled. 
"Sir?" one of the guards asked. 


"Tuan," the colonel said slowly, then something in Vietnamese. 
Probably, "Come take a look at this." 


After that, things got a bit chaotic. 


Allenby didn't see what happened next. He could barely even hear it 
through the heavy cell door. He didn't have to. He already knew. 


He knew that the confused murmuring that turned into panicked 
shouts were the colonel and the guard forcing some poor sap to 
view The Image. 


He knew that the scratching sounds were an infected individual 
scratching The Image into a wall, with a knife or a key. 


He knew, when the screaming started, that the infection had gone 
terminal. 


It was half an hour after the dying started when the colonel burst 
back into the room. He was waving the packet of papers in Allenby's 
face. "LOOK AT THIS!" he screamed. "LOOK AT THIS, PLEASE!" 


Allenby just closed his eyes and smiled. "Sergeant Allenby, ser—" 


"LOOK, DAMN YOU, LOOK!" The colonel forced Allenby's eye open 
with his fingers and pushed the image into his face. "LOOK, 
PLEASE, for the love of GOD!" 


Allenby smirked. The smirk became a low giggle. "You never 
noticed,” he said, shaking his head. "You never noticed..." 


Then the colonel did notice. Both Allenby's eyes were glass. 


Allenby heard the colonel go for his gun, heard him try to cock the 
revolver, but the man's palsied hands were shaking too hard for that. 
He heard the gun clatter to the floor. 


It took the man a long time to die. Allenby enjoyed hearing every 
moment of it. 


Some time had passed. 


The underground tunnel complex was now a charnel house. The 
dead and dying lay everywhere. 


Allenby staggered through the tunnels, the manila envelope with the 
two halves of The Image (carefully realigned to the "safe" 
configuration) tucked into his belt. He was using a discarded enemy 
AK-47 as a makeshift walking stick. Every once in a while, he 
paused to listen and to feel for air currents. 


It took him a long time to find the exit. 


He emerged from the stuffy dankness of the tunnels into the 
oppressive humidity of the Vietnamese jungle. He sighed happily, 
feeling the sun on his face. 


There was a rustling in the undergrowth. He turned. "Nolan?" he 
asked, expecting to hear the calm voice of his pick-up. 


Instead, there were two sharp clicks, like a typewriter. Two silenced 
.22 Caliber bullets ended his life. 


"Sorry." 


"... What is this?" 

"| believe you already know what this is." 

"Looks like a bunch of lines." 

"It does. But if you place this plastic overlay over—" 
"WAIT! STOP!" 


".. It's a fake. So you do know what this is." 


" " 


"| do have to admit, your delivery method is diabolically clever. A 
blind operative, trained to compensate for his disability, used to 
handle a dangerous object that kills when seen. My higher-ups were 
fascinated by this. We may adapt this idea for our own purposes." 


"...@amn you..." 


"Allow me to repeat the warning | gave you when you first assumed 
this position, Mister Schlesinger. Do not meddle with what you don't 
understand. Otherwise, there is a high probability you will find your 
tenure here short, and unpopular." 


"... damn it, you people don't get it, do you? We're fighting for the 
sake of the free world here! If the damned Reds take over 
Indochina, that'll collapse the entire Pacific..." 


"Ah, yes, your vaunted domino theory. | will be blunt, sir. An 
ideological conflict between two mere nations, even two as powerful 
as yours, is of no consequence to us. We have little interest in 
saving the "free world" at the cost of the actual world." 


" " 


"Here is my ultimatum: cease and desist all of your efforts towards 
PROJECT OMEGA immediately. We want it all shut down and 
disavowed. MK Ultra. Groom Lake. Even that little project in 
Philadelphia. An auditor from our Foundation will come by in a few 
weeks to check on your progress. Good day." 


<click> 


"... holy shit. Miss Jones, could you please hop down to the corner 
store and buy me a carton of cigarettes and a fifth of bourbon, 
please... oh, and contact Building Security. | want a camera set up 
outside my office door... oh. To watch out for vandals..." 


"What have you got there?" Crow asked. The young researcher 
looked up from his newspaper, where he was circling various stories 
with a red pen. So far, he seemed most interested in rumors of an 
artist's project gone bad. Apparently the statue had come to life and 
started killing people... 


"Not much," Cog said. The young man hung up his triloy hat and 
jacket on the coat-tree. Unlike Crow, whose desk was a complete 
pigsty, his side of the small office they shared was clean and neat, 
almost mechanical in its precision. "| took a trip up to Langley to give 
the CIA Director a message from The Administrator. | believe it went 
well." 


"Did you bring me back a souvenir?" Crow asked, grinning. 


"My travel budget included no allowances for personal purchases," 
Cog pointed out. 


"You've got no heart," Crow sighed. "Oh yeah. Xav called. He wants 
your complete report on The Pattern on his desk by tomorrow 


morning." 
"Have you started a file for it yet?" Cog asked. 
"Not yet. Was going to let you do it." 


Cog walked to the large file cabinet that took up half the office, filling 
up the entire back wall. Each drawer contained file folders with the 
original reports and mimeograph masters for every anomalous 
object in containment by their Foundation: all but one, which was 
labeled "Unassigned Numbers." He reached into the drawer, pulled 
out a random manila envelope from the stack, and opened it up, 
looking at the number typed onto the file folder within.