It was late, and | was tired, but | got a general impression of short 
hair, slightly ratty clothes, a general slump, like she was tired. She 
was just standing by the road. We'd helped out break-downs before, 
but | didn't remember seeing any cars off to the side on the way in. 
She might have broke down farther up, and was walking back...what 
a shitty stretch of road to get stuck on. | started slowing down, when 


Site 16. While this does pose a possible threat 
leading to an eventual NK-Class "Grey Goo" 
end of the world scenario, Foundation staff are 
doing their best to contain the problem. Site 16 
staff have enacted Protocol Grey to slow the 
rate of SCP-622 spreading and are currently 
looking into how SCP-622 was able to breach 
the Biosphere Testing Facility. 


To help alleviate fears, here are a few facts 
that we would like you all to know. 


All of the biological SCPs at Site 16 
have been secured and transferred 
away from the spread of SCP-622. 
Space will be slightly more cramped, but 
the situation is under control and all of 
the SCPs are in proper containment. 

As of 7/18/12, SCP-622 has only spread 
a total of less than three square 
kilometers, and the rate has slowed 
thanks to Protocol Grey. At the rate it's 
going, it will only be able to overtake Site 
16 in 7 years. Even then, we still have 
plenty of time before it reaches any 
urban areas. 

SCP-622 can be slowed down by water; 
especially fluoridated water. As long as 
we keep pumping over water to Site 16, 
it will buy us extra time until we can think 
of a solution. 

We have a list of all of the known 
companies that are still in possession of 
SCP-622 and are actively seeking to 
contain every last canister before they 
can be used. 


Lastly, | know some of you are shaky about 
Protocol Grey. It may come back to bite us, but 
I'd much rather worry about an XK-Class end 


suddenly my trainer spoke up, totally lucid. 
“The fuck are you slowing down for?” 


| jumped, told him to look, someone was in trouble or something, still 
slowing down. My trainer looked, looked back at me, and got up. If 
you've ever been in a semi cab, you know that, while no resort suite, 
they have a fair amount of room. He stood next to me, grabbed the 
wheel, and pushed his foot down on the accelerator. | was more 
then a little confused, he looked really weird, and had basically 
taken control of the truck from me, which he hadn't done like this 
since my first couple days of training. What's more, he was putting 
us up to around 70 in a 55. 


| started yelling, and he just told me to shut up, gogogo, keep going. 
| almost screamed when | looked up again. The girl had walked from 
the side to the middle of our lane. | started swearing at my instructor, 
telling him we're going to kill that girl, almost hit him a couple times, 
just freaking the hell out, and he wouldn't say anything to me, just 
kept staring out the window. | did scream when | looked out and saw 
the girl standing about ten yards in front of our grill. She looked tired. 
| closed my eyes and just balled up in the seat. 


And then...nothing. No crunch, no bang, no skidding and screaming. 
| looked, and we were still rolling. My trainer was back in his seat, 
and | had to grab the wheel before we started to drift. | looked back, 
and saw the girl standing in the exact same place, staring at us as 
we drove on. | looked at my instructor as he was settling back in to 
his seat. He looked at me through one eye, and sighed. 


“Sometimes, she waves.” 


| was so shaken, by the time | started asking questions, he was 
already asleep. Finished my training a week or two later, and didn't 
really see him again. Been on the road for a few years now, and 
haven't had more then the normal amount of problems. As | think of 
it, | don't remember the name of the road we were on, or if | ever 
knew it, really. | think about it, now and then. You hear stories, 
sometimes. | wonder what would have happened if I'd stopped. Or if 
she'd waved to me. Or what happened to make a well-seasoned 
trucker do almost 40 over the limit down an empty stretch of nothing 


road. 


Sometimes, late, | think | see her. Overtired, mind wandering, but 
still. 


She's not waved yet. 


Delia 


TRANSCRIPT BEGINS 11:00:00 
You a doctor or something? 
No, a student, actually. 


Never had much business with doctors. Doris took sick once, went 
to the doctor. Jabbed her fulla holes, sent her home with some pills, 
didn't fix a goddamn thing. 


Well, as | said, I'm not a doctor, at least not yet. I'm a research 
student, and | happened on your daughter's case in one of the 
university medical files. 


Eh? You mean Delia? Goddamn, must have some long memories 
there. 


*‘laughs* | suppose that's right. She was a unique case, and those 
sorts of things tend to stick with people. | just wanted to get a little 
more information. 


Don't know what | can tell you that | didn't already. Delia came back 
from the woodpile one day, said she didn't feel good. She's normally 
healthy as a horse, so | took it to heart. Let her lie down a bit, but it 
didn't do any good. Got paler and paler, sicker and sicker. Doris got 
more and more scared, by the fourth day she almost dragged me 
and her to town to see the doctor. 


Did they give any diagnosis? 


Well, they hemmed and hawed over her for a while, but didn't come 
up with anything, just bounced us to the university hospital, see if 
they could figure it out. Fat lot of good that did. She kept fadin' and 
fadin' each hour. She...she stopped breathin' for a while. Few hours, 
| think, the doctors were ready to give up, but then she sat up again, 


finally. Gave us all a fright. 


They say you removed her after that? The notes say they were 
concerned about a strain of rabies or something similar, weren't you 
concerned? 


My baby girl was up and around again, and | didn't want those fellas 
pawin' over her anymore. They didn't know, and | didn't care to let 
them fiddle around until they did. Oh, hell, might as well let you hear 
it from the horses mouth, right? DORIS. DORIS! BRING DELIA 
DOWNSTAIRS! 


Wait, your daughter's still here? 


The hell else would she be? | know things are different in the city, 
but here, family is still important. She's my girl, and I love her. It's 
hard, some days. At first it was bad, she'd snap at anyone, but | 
think it was all the proddin' and pokin' she took. She gentled down 
after a few months, and we take care of her. 


How...old is your daughter now? 


Well, she's about forty now, and a little worse for wear, but she's still 
my girl. The hardest part was figurin' out what she needed after that. 
Took ages, and she got worse and worse, but old Parkins helped us 
figure it out, god rest his soul. Gotten harder lately, but...ah, here's 
my girl now. 


What...oh my god. 


It's been hard, yeah, but we get by. We always get by, always have. 
Now, boy, you settle down now, ease down, | don't wanna make this 
hard. Boy, you- BOY! 


‘inarticulate noises 
*three gunshots 


Goddammit boy, | told you to ease down. | wish it wasn't this way, 
but it is. She needs it, not sure why, but she's my girl. Family still 
means something here boy, means more then life or death itself. 
She gets dry like that now, doesn't get around much, but she's still 
my Delia. Her muscles have gotten all tight and such, so we gotta 


chop everything up, like makin’ pemmican, but raw. You ease down 
now boy, just let it take ya, it'll be over... 


Harold, she's gettin’ excited, might wanna move off a bit before she 
hurts you or herself 


Alright, let her go Doris, she can't hurt him none now. Least she's 
still got her teeth. 


*inarticulate, moist sounds 
recording and photograph recovered from small bundle of personal 


effects, believed to belong to missing research student Paul 
Investigation is still ongoing. 


Climber 


He felt as if his lungs were going to crystallize, the ragged, frozen air 
scraping over the long-dried membranes like trying to breathe an 
aerosol brillo pad. He swung back, waving a moment before burying 
the pick into the sheer ice wall with a muffled oath of anger and 
victory. In the end, the climber knew it was his own fault. Refusing to 
take the easy, known route, wanting to explore the more remote 
parts of the range...which was all well and good until he'd run in to 
the sheer, glossy-smooth edge of a glacier. 


He cursed, setting another pin and stretching up for another foothold 
in the sheer ice. The snow had closed in shortly after he'd started 
the climb, and now he was in a bubble of fog and pouring snow. 
He'd guessed the cliff face had been about two, maybe three 
hundred feet tall from the ground, but it felt like that distance had 
passed hours ago. Glaring up through frost-rimed goggles, he kept 
climbing, pushing up, and up...always higher, always more cliff face 
to go. 


He'd tried to circle around, but found more of the same, a set of icy 
cliffs set in staggered sequence, with snow-choked valleys between, 
long since rendered impassable. Beyond them was a massive 
valley, with a set of peaks and rises the climber had never seen 
before, or even heard mentioned. He grinned, teeth gritted behind 
the ice-stiffed scarf, at how the others would be spitting blood, 
knowing that he'd been the first, for once. First to find, first to 
climb...hell, it was rather remote, maybe he could even get a peak 
named after him. 


Lost in imagined vengeance, he swung his pick through open air 
and nearly lost his footing, having abruptly reached the top of the 
cliff. He stared out across a wide, perfectly flat plane, watching in a 
mute daze as his brain tried to process the sight, before releasing a 
ragged woop and scrambling up over the edge to stand on the cliff 
top. As if finally capitulating to his dogged ambition, the storm 


started to clear, and he was able to peer down the dizzying, sheer 
wall of the cliff he'd scaled. From here, it did look more like four 
hundred feet at least, as sheer and empty as a painted-over mirror. 
He spun back, hollering out his victory to the open air. The cries died 
slowly on his lips as the clouds lifted more, and his current position 
became more clear. 


He stood at the top of a massive pillar, at least four hundred feet in 
height, ending in a sloping plateau less then fifty feet in width. The 
wind had long since torn the snow from this high peak, and left it a 
bare, ribbed mass of ice. He peered around more, confused, 
wondering what strange twist of nature to raise such a peak on the 
edge of a glacier. More puzzling, it didn't appear to be a one-time 
fluke. Three other, nearly identical shards of ice jutted up in a neat 
row, the sloped tops quickly dropping into another sheer, if not so 
glossy-smooth, set of cliff faces. The climber's eye followed the 
cliffs...the snowy roll of hills...the oddly humped-up masses of 
peaks and valleys in the base of this massive geologic dish. He 
stared, then looked again, following the lines...then suddenly 
shouted, instantly cramming his hands over his mouth, before 
starting a nearly suicidal decent down the cliff, ending in a forced 
march back to town that cost four toes, a finger, and partial use of 
one of his lungs. 


He never climbed again, retiring from the sport without a word. He 
became a phantom, a cautionary tale of a man broken by the 
mountain. He spoke to few, and even fewer about what happened 
on that last climb. Only one man ever got more than monosyllables 
or a frozen stare from the broken climber. He was young, and 
fascinated by the tales of the old mountaineers, of the Sherpa's 
frightened whispers of gods dwelling in the high peaks. He plied the 
old, broken climber with drink, until finally he related the story of the 
frozen cliff. His eyes grew wide, speaking of the odd, massive caves 
he'd seen...the sudden, roaring crash as a massive rift opened on 
an isolated hill, growing wider and wider, swallowing a small 
mountain of snow. He gripped the young man, hissing his revulsion 
as he'd been forced to flee, forced to climb back down that vile cliff 
once more, never to return. 


“Not a drop of ice, not a bit of it. Too soft, by half. Too yielding to the 


pick, boy...” 


“It was a fingernail.” 


Stitches 


It's amazing how death changes a person. That's not to say the 
person themselves (even though it's safe to say they do undergo a 
profound change), but who they are to you, and how they stand in 
your memory. Evil men can become saints and vice versa the 
moment they give up their last breath. Paul was neither, yet he's 
still...changed, with his passing. Then again, this all might be invalid, 
as I'm more and more certain that Paul is not actually dead. Just the 
Paul that | knew. 


But I'm getting ahead of myself. |...am pretty much nobody. | work in 
an office of a company you would know if | told you the name of it. 
I'm single, female, thirty-five, and have pretty much peaked out in 
my life's achievements. If it weren't for Paul, I'd probably have 
passed by life unnoticed, with no great change of character after 
death's call. I've always wished for some kind of...excitement in life. 
Now that | have it, I'd give anything | have to make it go away. 


Paul was a fellow cube-slave, a office worker of zero ambition and 
even less presence. He was short, slightly overweight, had a 
nervous laugh, and slowly advancing (receding?) baldness. | think 
he was around thirty or forty, but | couldn't be sure, and he always 
seemed to have a slight...agelessness about him. As if he was born 
in suit and tie, already fortified with a head full of PowerPoint and 
team meeting schedules. You could probably pass him a hundred 
times a day, and wouldn't be able to recall the color of his limited 
hair at gunpoint. 


We were office friends, the special kind of hazy, organic relationship 
that develops around those who are somewhat trapped together, but 
don't want to commit to actual friendship. We worked and went to 
lunch in the same area, so we ended up bumping into each other 
enough to force some kind of rapport. | think he also had a crush on 
me, which was flattering. I'm not pretty, so any attention is at least a 
bit of a ego stroke, even if the giver is about as plain as tofu. 


We would talk, sit at the same table at lunch, walk to our cars, all 
very easy and non-committal. He told me about his dog, his interest 
in movies, various tv shows. I'd tell him about my two cats, my rather 
insane mother, and my ongoing car problems. He was painfully 
lonely, and | think | may have been one of the few friends of any 
persuasion he had, if not the only one. | felt very humanitarian... 
instead of donating a dollar a day to Africa, | was donating time to 
Paul. 


Looking back, it started with the dream. Paul was sitting at the lunch 
table, and had a massive bandage around his arm. He'd been even 
more closed off then normal for the last few days, and had even 
missed the day before, which was very odd. The worst thing was, 
almost nobody had noticed. One coworker, who sat a few desks 
down from Paul, actually said “Who's Paul?” when | mentioned his 
absence. | felt a twitch of actual, genuine concern when | sat down 
across from him.