While he went through her backpack — although she would not 
allow him to touch a bundle of cloth she called Anna something — 
and her person, they remained almost entirely quiet. For a minute or 
so, he remained angry, but soon Frank felt genuinely mortified. 
Locke was still glaring at him once he was finished. 


However, she was the one to break the silence: 
"How would you have explained my corpse to your team, anyhow?" 


He shrugged. "Would've told them the truth, | guess. | thought you 
were a Foundation agent, thought you were gonna tell them on the 
Group. I'm sure they would have shipped me out of here." 


As she rose, once again carrying her backpack, Priscilla's face 
became a eulogy to all empathy. 


"Where's my Foundation credentials? You think there'll be anyone 
named Priscilla Locke working for them here?" 


"What, you actually used credentials in your universe? Like, 
Foundation badges?" Frank offered her a grim snicker. He pointed 
at the tank and its inhabitant. "Oh, fine, that thing seems to clean 
dirty water of any thing that is not alive and nobody would let me 
look for a D-class candidate, so | thought | might as well put your 
corpse in there and do the test, happy?" 


Locke looked at him for a moment, and briefly sneered at him. 
"Sure." 


"Really. And what if you had to kill me? How would you explain my 
corpse to the rest of my team?" 


"| wouldn't. There are still some guards tailing me. I'd just get away." 


"Oh, now /'m calling bullshit..." 


The rest of their conversation was lost on the abnormal creature, 
which felt some relief when the hominids were gone and had closed 
the door of the lab that had become its temporary residence. Neither 
of them noticed, but since the moment it woke up, it hadn't stopped 
listening to the being... no, at the ‘thing’ in the backpack. 


Neither of them could have noticed, but beyond the temporary relief 
it felt, it was beginning to feel terrified of the thing in the backpack. 


It still felt terrified when the entire Opal-1 Mission Work Group got in 
motion, and would feel terrified for a time longer than it initially 
imagined. Had it known they would have heeded its warnings, unlike 
all those other times, it would have tried to warn them. 


Unfortunately, it didn't. 


« Who We Are | Hub | Breaking It Down To Me » 
\\ 16th-W-D-AA // 


Breaking It Down For Me 


Frank felt just a bit claustrophobic. 


The darkroom was, appropriately enough, a tiny, dark, hot and 
incredibly moist hellhole with an actual hole in the middle, which was 
enough for anyone to be a little dizzy. The ceiling was barely a 
meter and eighty centimeters high, and it felt like it was breathing, 
periodically combing under its own weight. 


However, the oppressive atmosphere was minor in comparison to 
the smell that penetrated everything. Frank just knew that, despite 
the mask and the overall, it would stick to him, his clothes, his skin 
and his hair. It would probably violate the taste of every meal he had 
in days or weeks and turn his daily ablutions into a nightmare. 


| hate this Vestan stuff, he growled to himself. 


In any case, Frank couldn't deny the efficiency of the Third Vestan 
Donation. The hard-working fungi were rising a building where there 
had been just an empty patch of arid, barren land; a building 
destined to become a hospital with fifty beds, employing thirty or 
more permanent personnel, equipped with an independent source of 
electricity and clean water. 


It was just that the floors still felt — and smelt — like they were 
made of compacted compost and decaying reed. 


But the room was growing, as was the rest of the complex. It would 
become an actual darkroom at some point in the next days. And the 
final product would be just a facade for the tunnel which was 
growing from its floor. 


Growing and digging at the same time. It was a novel concept for 
Frank, whose limited notions of construction screamed at him that all 
that removed soil and rock had to be going somewhere. 


From the looks of it, it seemed to be going straight to the ceiling. 
"When will it be finished?" 


Frank focused on Priscilla Locke. In the day they had been together, 
she had told him about some aspects of her life in the old universe. 
He knew her mentality would be a problem. Even if he didn't want to 
blame her for it, her occasional grimace and racist remarks were 
enough to attract unwanted attention. 


He would have to give her some guidelines and ban some topics. 
Tell her to just avoid certain conversations. But even so, he had no 
idea of how she had found the Charitable, or joined. Or, for that 
matter, how had she been accepted by the Mission Board. 


Both of them were standing over the edge of an unfinished tunnel 
that would lead straight to the underground laboratory where she 
would test her thing, whatever it was. In the meantime, he was 
neither allowed to know what the thing itself was — old feelings of 
frustration stirred at the mere thought of secrets upon secrets piling 
up away from his sight — nor cleared to know exactly who she was. 


"It should be done in ten to thirteen hours, miss Locke," Jacob 
answered, solicitous from the threshold of the wide hole that would 
become the only door, in the room. "It's actually a bit of an 
experiment, we have never used the Vestan Donation to dig an 
underground repository." 


"A... repository,” Frank blurted. He felt more than saw Priscilla's 
eyes drilling through his skull, but the good man didn't even notice 
the implied question in Frank's words. 


"Yes!", stated the Rabbi, joyously ignorant of the scene. "I didn't 
even think of that, and it's a great idea! We are growing a water 
repository down here! See, we have reasonable doubts that the 
Milking Maggots' main vector is another parasitic microorganism, 
Giardia lamblia, that can easily contaminate water sources. It can be 
a bad fucker, if you will pardon the expression, because it provokes 
diarrhea and water supply around here is an-" 


"Thank you, Doctor." Priss said with an absent smile, "Is it running 


smoothly?" 


"Definitely, definitely smoothly!" Jacob almost sung. "No aberrant 
growths, no discombobulated parts, everything according to the 
plans you brought, miss Locke!" 


"Just... Locke." 


"Oh, thank you, you may call me Jacob. Or Rabbi! Everyone calls 
me Rabbi." 


It was Frank's turn to stare at Priscilla's expression, that was rapidly 
becoming sour. 


Nobody knew who she was around there. Nobody but Frank... and 
even he could not point out exactly what was wrong with her. 


"Thanks, Rabbi," he ended up saying to the politely confused 
biologist. "Now, I'll be showing Priscilla-" 


"Miss Locke." 


"I'll be showing miss Locke the procedural growth of a 1-Vestan, and 
then we'll go back to the camp. Okay?" 


"Sure! Have a nice day, Priscilla!", said the Rabbi. 


A few moments after Jacob had left the dark, moist room, Frank 
looked at her associate. "Okay, now, really, what's your deal?" 


Priscilla had the decency to seem distressed. She gnawed idly on 
her lower lip, a sharp exhale leaving her lips, as she resisted the 
urge to blurt out something most likely anti-semitic. "It's just hard, is 
all... like, imagine going to work and having-" Frank was staring at 
her, his withering look all the warning she needed; Locke caught 
herself this time. "-A bunch of talking velociraptors among your co- 
workers— " 


"Sure, fine, okay, never mind," Frank half-shouted at her. "Consider 
this: you are now the only real, decent, genetically sanctioned 
human being left from your universe. Everyone else here is a 
subhuman moron. How do you feel about it?" 


The woman did not back down, but neither did she try to rise to the 
challenge. After a moment, she nonchalantly shrugged, "I'm fine, 
really. It's not like I'd blow up in the street and start attacking them. 
Any way; there's more of them than there are of us. Of me, | mean." 


Frank stood there, looking at that insensitive, brutal idiot. Then, he 
slumped. 


"Fine." 


He pretended to be adjusting his mask just to avoid making eye 
contact with the woman. Typical. He was calling out on somebody's 
douchebaggery and, a second afterwards, he felt guilty about it. 


He rose his gaze again to meet hers. She remained immobile, what 
little could be seen of her face completely devoid of expression. 


"| said fine," he started. "-no, wait, never mind, that was a bit dickish 
of a move on my side. you being new here and all. But you'll have to 
begin accepting stuff and adapting as soon as you can. People 
around here are certainly not what you were used to, back there. 
You'll have to grow used to it quickly." 


She nodded, no change in her expression, still that dead look on her 
face. "Working with velociraptors would be cool." 


Oh for the love of- 


"Sol", shouted Frank, faking a joviality he did not feel. "A 
repository?" 


"I'll be 'performing daily tests' on the water to 'make sure it is 
potable." 


"They will frown at that." 


"That's not my problem; I'm pretending to be an inspector, you're the 
one keeping them out of my hair." 


"You will have to talk to them, Locke." 


"I can talk." 


"Outside your cover. As a person.” 


Priscilla looked at the ceiling and added nothing for a few seconds. 
Then, she said: 


"I'm not new to this. | know what the Foundation does—" 
"The Charitable." 
"The what?" She blabbered. 


"The Charitable. Many of us who work around anomalies, or 
abnormalities, whatever," he snorted at his own confusion on the 
topic. "Anyways. Most people around here don't want to be 
compared to the other Foundation, so they talk of the Manna 
Charitable Foundation as the Charitable. You know," Frank arced 
his brows and lowered his voice to a complicit whisper, "to avoid 
unpleasant comments?" 


Priss narrowed her eyes slightly, mouth slightly hanging as she 
stuttered through an incoherent stream of murmurs. Then she shut 
her mouth and sighed. 


"I get it, really. | just don't know how you people work. Or anything 
about Mister and/or Missus Manna and Charitable. How about an 
actual tour of the place?" 


Frank sighed. "Sure, a full tour on the Charitable's fun, fun story. 
Just... just Keep in mind who you are working with. And for. Okay?" 


"I'll try to adapt." He observed her for a moment. "Really." 


Frank studied her a bit longer. Nothing on her freckled face told if 
she was being serious or not. The security executive member 
forcibly coughed and led her out of the darkroom. 


"Okay," he said while walking down an aisle, still soft and humid. 
The only light came from a few holes in the ceiling; their edges were 
dying and falling down, thinning and slowly becoming the glass that 
would cover several skylights. As Locke joined him, he said: "From 


the top. You know what the reports and the pamphlets say. What do 
you know of the people who work with the MCF?" 


"Nothing." 
"Good answer." 
"What?" 


Frank laughed at her confused expression. "Oh, God, now | 
understand why they found me funny... See, they call that, that face 
you are making, a skipper face. Foundation Agents always get all 
‘the hell' when they see something they don't expect, and most of all 
they get surprised when other people tell them that being 
unprepared is okay." 


Locke glared at him. He kept talking. 


"| mean, sure, it's better to be prepared, but us field agents have 
been told that we have to on edge, and trained to stay there at all 
times," he declaimed, "and then there are people like the volunteers 
of the Charitable, who go through life with wide eyes, large grins and 
the feeling that they are making the world a better place, and tell us 
to tone it down a bit. It's hard enough to do our job, don't be such 
sourpusses." 


"Too upbeat for a warzone?" 


Frank shook his head. "See, you don't get what kind of people work 
with us. It's what | was saying earlier: why is it 'good' that you admit 
you don't have a clue on what these people do here? It has lots of 
good things, the Charitable. But the one thing it doesn't have is 
patience for self-absorbed jackasses who think they have all the 
answers or go looking for sychofants. People like you or me, going 
on a power trip because they found a skip of value and they offer it 
to us... it happens, you know." 


Frank looked at one of the immature skylights. A rapid blur passed 
by over it, perhaps a bird. 


"They go and look for the MCF and sometimes they find us, instead 
of being found by us, which is kind of the norm. They want to prove 


disintegrates. 


Small items and organisms caught up in the stream are continuously 
deposited and dissolved in the hot spring. The reason for this is not 
known. In most cases it does not affect the walls of the basin (see 
test log 676-01). All tested materials introduced to the spring begin 
to fall apart immediately, dissolving completely within a few seconds. 
Dyes and radioactively labeled markers disappear as well, 
suggesting that the process occurs below the chemical level. As a 
result it has proven impossible to take and retain samples from 
SCP-676's basin, and it is unknown if the fluid is water or another 
colorless liquid compound. 


Optical and sonic means of probing SCP-676 have mapped it deep 
underground, but have not located a destination point. Analysis of 
the data indicates that the surrounding bedrock is abnormally soft. 
This may be related to the high incidence of localized earthquakes 
detected in the area, and the periodic shifting of SCP-676's 
subterranean channels. 


Experiment Log 676-01: Testing the effect of withholding the flow 
of water to SCP-676. 


The water feeding SCP-676 was blocked at the junction of the 
stream and the river. The last of the water drained into the basin at 
13:24:02 (local). For three hours there was no response, and water 
level remained constant. At 16:41:57 the walls of the basin began to 
disintegrate, widening the aperture steadily. This proceeded for 12 
minutes, at which time the supervising researchers decided to 
unblock the stream. By the time flow was restored at 18:03:19, the 
basin had grown in diameter by 4000%, swallowing 4 structures and 
the majority of on-site investigative equipment. No lives were lost. 


Since the incident, localized seismic activity has intensified and the 
stream's flow has increased by a factor of 200. Containment 
procedures were updated, and SCP-676's object class elevated to 
Euclid. 


« SCP-675 | SCP-676 | SCP-677 » 


to us oh how great they are, and how they are basically wizards or 
have a pen that manifests cake by drawing it or are going to topple 
all industrialized countries and would like us to help them pick up the 
pieces and create a wonderful, beautiful, Utopian tomorrow." He 
laughed humorlessly. "Well, it's not that people from the Charitable 
hate fellas like those... hell, if we found them bleeding to death in 
the street we would try to save their sorry asses. But that's not the 
point, the point is that pretty much everyone in the Charitable is 
already self-absorbed and will never, ever help somebody feel better 
about themselves by giving them a place among them and patting 
their backs. They don't have the time for those types." 


Frank stood over the rough dark green floor, almost feeling it move 
under his boots. 


"Only people who admit they are flawed, people who want to help, 
people who are desperate to help, get into the Charitable. And those 
never leave it while they live." 


Locke crossed her arms, seemingly bored again. Frank had learned 
to associate the gesture to the limits of her patience. She confirmed 
it in a boorish tone. 


"You talk too much, Westinghouse. Explain it to me so | don't get 
yelled at later."