Behind him, a safety railing prevented onlookers from tumbling down 
into the other pocket prefectures. He gripped the railing and leaned 
out to get a look below. Anomalous reflections of Hiroshima, 
Shimane, Tottori, and Yamaguchi stretched out below him, twisting 
and melting together where they met, together making up the 
Chugoku Cellar. Even with the vastness of a pocket reality, Japan 
had found a way to overcrowd. Above him, blurry but still distinctly 
there, the other regions that made up the Honshu island hovered 
above the Chugoku Cellar. It reminded him of the Wanderer's 
Library in a sense, though the Library always held a distinct air of 
order and purpose to the madness of its layout. Here the pockets 
simply bled together at the seams. 


Slipping a hand from the rail to his pocket, Navarro spun and walked 
deeper into the Attic. Down the street a small group of mildly drunk 
Japanese men in business suits exited a building in the shape of a 
humanoid mecha. They chatted away as behind them the building 
struck a salute, snapping its legs together. One of them spun around 
and gave it a salute back, though he swayed slightly. With little more 
than the grinding of gravel the earth consumed the building until 
nothing but a flat plot of land was left. The man swung his arm 
forward to end the salute and hurried after his companions. 


Toward the center of the Attic the buildings became more clumped 
together, brickwork seamlessly running into wood into stone as the 
various shapes of the buildings stood trapped in stolid interaction. 
Amidst a herd of stone animals he didn't recognize stood a perfectly 
cuboid building, an open door frame in the center of the wall. Above 
the archway was a blazing sign that Navarro couldn't actually read. 
It certainly looked impressive, though. 


An earpiece buried probably too deep sparked to life, leaving an odd 


taste in his mouth. "About time you got here." 


Navarro just nodded. Sigma-3 had decided sending a single man 
into only moderately well known territory wasn't the best of ideas, 
especially when said man was a newcomer. So now he had a new 
best friend to chide him from a distance. How fun. Navarro couldn't 
spot her with a few glances around the street, which he supposed 
was probably a good thing. 


Another shocking taste. "Shop's empty of customers right now. Now 
is as good a time as any. Start screaming if you need backup." 


More nods at his hidden teammate and Navarro entered the 
workshop. The place held a warm glow that grew progressively 
more aggressive as he approached the counter. Behind said counter 
was a towering humanoid, probably standing at around ten feet. It 
had grey skin mottled with faded brown, an overabundance of arms, 
and a distinct lack of a face. When it turned to look at him it was like 
staring into a furnace. 


It rose a pair of arms in greeting, the fires in its head licking at the 
edges its "lips." Smoke plumed out, forming words in several 
languages. 


Navarro broke out in an easy grin. "Hey there." 
The golem nodded and then smoked, 


"I've heard good things, and | want to see what you have to offer," 
Navarro said. "Word is you have a collection of various items, but 
your specialty is custom orders." 


"Very much so." 


A section of the counter swung away and the golem gestured toward 
a door leading to the back. Navarro slipped by and found himself 
flanked by two mountains of metal. To the left were a series of 
shelves holding a vast assortment of items, and to the right were a 


pair of vertically stacked cubes with portholes dotting one face. Both 
were making quite the metallic racket, and Navarro could spot a 
partially disassembled sedan poking out of the top cube. 


Navarro raised an eyebrow. "What's going on here?" 


The golem retrieved a ladder from behind the cubes and held it 
against the cubes. It gestured up and Navarro began to climb until 
he could see into the lower tank's porthole. What looked like a 
massive amount of termites were clustered around various odd 
machines. Climbing higher revealed that the second tank contained 
an army of ants, which were busy disassembling the sedan and 
transferring the parts down to the termites below. 


"| take it this is the source of your collection of various items?" 
Navarro asked, a knowing smile on his face. 


A slow nod when Navarro descended, and the golem stowed away 
the ladder. The smoke came in small bursts. 


"So you only work with metal?" 


"So, if | were to give you, say, a hyper-dense wood. You could make 
something from that?" 


Navarro frowned slightly. He was hoping he would be able to play 
around this for longer, and he had a strange feeling on the back of 
his tongue. "Can you work with bladewood?" 


The taste in Navarro's mouth intensified to that of a very thick rug. 
"Navarro, there's a group coming down the street," said the voice in 
his ear. "They seem to be headed for you." 


"That's interesting," Navarro said. He tried not to appear antsy. Or 


termitesy. "Do you often work with it?" 


The rest of the words scattered 
before Navarro could read them. The golem stopped waving its 
arms and stood as awkwardly as several hundred pounds of living 
rock can stand. 


"Navarro, can you hear me? They've entered the building. They've 
got weapons holstered. If you don't say something I'm going to have 
to assume your radio is busted and I'm coming in." 


Navarro cleared his throat and tried to finger the communicator. 
"Just relax, Cartwright." 


The golem tilted its head. 
"I'm going to wait outside the door, at least." 


"Sorry, nothing," Navarro said a bit louder. "Just, uh, how much 
bladewood do you have stored? | have a bit of a project in mind." 


The golem straightened up and puffed out a sentence at a time. 


"| see. That's too bad. Well, would it be alright if | perused your 
trinkets?" 


Navarro examined the various doodads, purely for his own 
amusement. The Foundation wouldn't have any interest in a bunch 
of random anomalous items. For now they were only concerned 
about the sudden appearance of SCP-143 in the yakuza's arsenal. 
He lifted up what looked like some kind of ray gun when there was a 
ringing from the front room. 


The golem had to walk backwards so Navarro could read what it had 
to say. 


"Of course, take your time." 


Navarro lined up the sights with one of the overhead lamps and 
pretended to fire. He set it down to look over something else when 
the golem came thundering back. 


Navarro eyed the trio hanging in the doorway. "Yeah, alright. No 
worries. The visit has sated my curiosity, at least." 


Four hands clasped together. 


A broad smile. "Appreciate it. Have a good one." 


Navarro gave the men a quick nod and slid by them and out into the 
front room. He resisted the urge to vault the counter and exited the 
shop. Cartwright was outside waiting for him. 


"Did it have the tree?" 


Navarro shook his head and started walking for the closest building 
that looked easy to climb. "No, but it gave me a lead." 


A few minutes later agents Cartwright and Navarro sat atop a giant 
marble tiger and stared at the doorway of a cube building. Sooner or 
later the triads, or at least the people Navarro had to assume were 
triads and on reflection was putting quite a lot of eggs in that basket, 
would have to leave the golem's workshop. At which point they were 
ripe for being trailed, hopefully to a location Sigma-3 could relate to 
one of the bigger, stronger MTFs so it could be suitably punched in 
the metaphorical throat. 


Navarro pulled out a carton of cigarettes from his pocket and 
extracted one. It was halfway to his mouth when he realized this 
wasn't another one of his solo ops. "Do you mind if | smoke?" 


"| do, actually," Cartwright said. She eyed the cancer stick for a 
moment. "Quit a few years ago. Plus the smoke may attract 
attention." 


"Oop, sorry." He quickly jammed it back into the box and stuffed that 
into his pocket. After a few seconds of sitting awkwardly he asked, 
"So how long have you been with Sigma-3?" 


Cartwright didn't move for a moment, like the question froze her 
system. "Are we doing this right now?" 


"Yyyes?" Navarro shifted back and forth. "| mean, we're just sitting 
here. Who knows how long those guys will take. We might as well 
get to know each other, right? We're on the same team or 
whatever." 


Her gaze returned to the door. "Look. | am not exactly thrilled to 
have you 'on the same team or whatever.’ I'm well aware of your 
habit of making a scene. A good part of the reason you got brought 
on is because it doesn't matter nearly as much if you spontaneously 
combust in some pocket reality than if you did it in, say, Salem." 


Navarro felt his face light up. "You're oversimplifying that situation! 
And even then, nothing too bad came of it. We got the bad guy and 
no civilians got hurt." 


She shrugged. "All | know is you don't have the best reputation and 
trying to shoot the shit in the middle of a stakeout doesn't exactly 
bode well." 


Navarro crossed both his arms and legs and glared at the workshop 
below. It wasn't so much the accusations that bothered him so much 
as it was the fact they were mostly right. He closed his eyes and 
tried to think about Disneyland. All he got was the mental picture of 
standing in a slow line, regret squatting in his stomach. 


Minutes stretched out and made themselves comfortable while the 
Sigma duo fidgeted atop the rough curves of the roof. Navarro took 
to sucking on an unlit cigarette which quickly devolved into him 
chewing on it. When the trio of potential triads finally exited the 
building he groaned with relief and spit out the frayed mess. 


It was a bit of a journey trying to follow the trio from across the 
rooftops. Clambering from the marble tiger's head to the tail of a 
monkey to the branches of a tree left the two of them almost out of 


breath. Cartwright wrenched open a window to the next building, 
and rather than going over or around it they darted right through it, 
leaping out the other side and landing on a distorted skull the size of 
a silo. 


Their quarry turned down an alley and descended into an unlit 
staircase. Navarro lowered himself down into one of the three eye 
sockets of the skull and continued to the nasal gap as Cartwright 
dropped into the eye. They rushed over to the stairwell and stared 
down into the darkness. 


Cartwright nudged Navarro and pointed up. A sign explained, in 
several languages, that one simply had to think of which of the 
destinations they wished to arrive at when they entered. Below that 
it gave a list of possibilities, and below that in very big letters was a 
warning that no lights were to be brought into the stairwell. 


"Do you understand?" Cartwright asked slowly. 


Navarro looked back at the large flashlight with a line through it. He 
tilted his head and then looked to Cartwright. "Set it on fire?” 


"Yes, well done." She entered the darkness. Her voice already 
muffled, she said, "Try not to get lost." 


With one last glance at the instructions Navarro followed after with 
the intent of going wherever the triads were going. He did his best 
not to think about how dark it was within and how easy it would be to 
misstep. He did slightly less than his best to avoid wondering what 
would happen if he lit up the stairs. It occurred to him that he 
couldn't hear Cartwright's footsteps despite the fact she only hada 
few seconds head start. He wondered just how thick the darkness 
was, and if light would even be able to pierce it. 


A few more seconds passed before he snapped his fingers and 
produced a small flame. The staircase twisted and turned and 
doubled back on itself. He stopped and turned around. Above him 
the stairs did several vertical loops and branched off into several 
paths. Below him, a dot that he assumed — or at least hoped — 
was Cartwright looked to be a mile away. And on an entirely 
different path. 


Navarro sighed and snuffed out the flame. There was nothing to it 
but to descend and hope he could use the staircase again to arrive 
wherever he meant to initially. After another thirty seconds or so of 
slow-paced darkness he could see a light. It was the nice, 
rectangular sort of light that signaled the giant staircase of confusing 
potential-doom was coming to an end. Or at least it would have, if 
the rectangle would get any bigger. For another twenty seconds it 
looked to remain a solid forty feet away. He turned his head to look 
behind himself, for some reason expecting to be able to see 
anything in the pitch black. When he faced forward again, he was 
standing directly in front of the light's threshold. Temptation to look 
behind himself again crept up, but he ignored it and continued 
through the yellow curtain of light. 


The room was dimly lit and was littered with bean bag chairs that 
were covered with people who looked utterly plastered. The air 
smelled of acrid fire, and even a shallow breath felt heavy. A quick 
glance around told him everything was in Japanese. Which wouldn't 
have been so bad, it was a Japanese pocket reality, but everything 
else in the Attic had been multilingual. 


His ear crackled. "Navarro, where are you? Did something happen 
on the staircase? | can't wait any longer, I'm going to follow them." 


It clicked. He had told the tunnel to take him where the triads were 
going. Rather than the proper exit they had likely come out of, it had 
dumped him right into the middle of their final destination. He had to 
wonder if this was due to producing light or if the triads had never 
thought to try walking directly into their little drug den. 


Navarro spun in place to go back but only found a door to a hallway. 
As he heard several people behind him speak in Japanese, likely at 
him, he took out a cigarette. He chomped down on it and snapped a 
spark into it. He took a long drag and considered his options. 


¢ Running sounded good. If he wasn't still tired from the 
haphazard parkour and ridiculous staircase. 

* Trying to talk it out was out of the question, he couldn't speak 
Japanese to save his life. Which is potentially what it would 
accomplish, if could he speak it. 

¢ Shooting was out the question, for a variety of reasons. He 


didn't particularly like the idea, there were too many of them, 
too few bullets, and if what he heard about Spirit Dust was 
true it wouldn't matter matter how much firepower he had. 


Navarro could feel his lungs burn. The talking behind him had grown 
to yelling. Very angry yelling. Bullet shooting, lightning blasting kind 
of yelling. English began trickling into it, demanding who he was, 
how he got here. Drunken questions of whether he had just 
appeared in the doorway or they had imagined that. Despite the fact 
he hated himself for it less than thirty minutes ago, Navarro had to 
smile at the last option. 


¢ Make a scene. 


The corner of the door frame exploded, a bullet lodged into the wall. 
Darkness encroached on the edges of Navarro's vision, his lungs 
trying to leap out of his chest. He stumbled while turning around, 
and he could vaguely hear laughter. Was able to see a light 
emanating from one of the triad member's hands. 


He finally exhaled. Dense black smoke coiled out of his mouth, 
gathering as a wall before him. At least, he had to assume it was 
black. Pretty much everything was at this point. A gun went off and 
the smoke distended slightly, but continued to expand into the room. 
As much as he wanted to take a breath, he knew he had to expel all 
of it or else he'd have one hell of a case of emphysema.