"We have a security breach," Price replied, handing over several 
sheets of paper from the table. McDonnell thumbed through them. 
The first was a testing log for some zucchini that grew nearly 
instantly, printed on Foundation letterhead. The second, also on 
Foundation letterhead, was documentation on a slightly worn high 
school yearbook from 1976. The third was in Russian, with a KGB 
seal in the corner. "The first one there is SCP-506, and the second 
one is SCP-1833. My Russian's a bit rusty, but the third one is 
something about an old lady able to ‘hear’ nearby radio 
transmissions. I've never heard of that one," Price said. 


Taking a puff on his pipe, McDonnell shook his head, "Neither have 
|, old chap. Neither have I." He furrowed his brow and picked up 
another paper. It was part of a budget for the Global Occult 
Coalition's previous fiscal year. "Is there any sort of method to this 
madness?" 


Price laughed, "Not that | can tell. And this will keep the chaps at 
Site 11 busy for a week or two. What | do know is that someone has 


top level access to the Foundation, GOC, Marshall, Carter, and Dark 


"Prometheus Labs and the Factory, according to this, sirs," one 
agent said. 


"Found something here on Wondertainment's distribution network," 
another added. 


"List of IRG operations in Latin America," a third noted, holding up a 
sheet. 


McDonnell nodded, "I get the idea. Persons unknown managed to 
obtain a sizable quantity of classified information from some of the 
most secretive organizations on the planet. Definitely bad news, but 
hardly a crisis, | should say." 


"Uh, | wouldn't place a wager on that, sirs," one of the other agents 
interrupted, "you should read this." 


"What is it, Harding?" asked Price, taking the proffered page. His 
jaw dropped as he read the page. "Shit." He handed the paper to 
McDonnell. 


Reading the paper, McDonnell swore loudly in his native Gaelic. It 
was a detailed schedule of the whereabouts and security 
precautions of all thirteen of the Foundation's Overseers during the 
last week in December 1988. In other words, the week which would 
start in a mere five days. A scribbled note at the bottom stated ‘Ideal 
timing for action on the twenty-sixth at 0300 Zulu.' A second page 
with fair quality photos of the Overseers was stapled to the first; 
05-5, O5-6, 05-7, and O5-8 were all circled in red ink. 


McDonnell was intelligent enough to realize that he didn't know 
exactly what was planned, but he certainly had some guesses. He 
turned to Price, "Alright, Price. Bag it all and bring it in. As of this 
moment, everything related to this is Level 5, need to know access 
only. | want copies of these documents stored at our site in 
Manchester; have the originals delivered to my office." The wheels 
in McDonnell's head were already turning. He'd use his contacts in 
Whitehall to arrange for a diplomatic courier bag to carry the 


documents on a transatlantic flight. The papers would go to the 
analysts at Site 11 so they could stir the tea leaves, while he could 
give his report personally to the O5 Council at Overwatch HQ. And, 
with any luck, he'd be back home for Christmas. 


Interlude 


"They found the warehouse. McDonnell is taking the evidence to 
Overwatch HQ tonight." 


"There will be copies." 


"Those are stored in the Manchester annex. They will be taken care 
of." 


"Good. Everything is going according to plan." 


Explosions 


Scottish airspace 
Wednesday, 21 December 1988, 1858 hours local time 


At just before seven o'clock the following evening, Director 
McDonnell was sitting in Clipper Class on the Pan Am flight with a 
diplomatic pouch in the next seat, handcuffed to his wrist. The cabin 
had a number of Foundation personnel: O5-5 was sitting the next 
seat forward next to his bodyguard, while McDonnell's deputy was 
seated behind him. He also recognized a couple of American 
intelligence officials and two fellows who looked to be their 
bodyguards. McDonnell cracked the first of his stack of novels. It 
would be a long flight to JFK, and the pouch meant he couldn't sleep 
through it. 


At exactly 19:02:46.9, an explosion punched a large hole in the left 
side of the fuselage. McDonnell and his diplomatic pouch were 
instantly incinerated. Shock waves from the blast ricocheted through 


the aircraft, meeting pulses still coming from the explosion itself. 
Due to a quirk of fluid dynamics, these shock waves, technically 
called "Mach stem shock waves", traveled twenty-five percent faster 
than the waves from the explosion itself, and with twice the power 
thereof. As these shock waves pulsed through plane, a section of 
the 747's roof a few feet above the explosion's source was peeled 
away as if by a giant hand. The force of the explosion smashed 
through the bulkhead wall separating the forward cargo hold and the 
cockpit, shaking the flight-control cables. This shaking caused the 
front section of the fuselage to roll, pitch, and yaw. The entire front 
section of the aircraft, with the flight deck and first class cabin, 
separated from the rest of the plane and flew upwards and to 
starboard. There, it collided and sheered away the number three 
engine. No longer under any control, the aircraft (or what was left of 
it) went into a steep dive. The plane continued to disintegrate as it 
plummeted 9,400 meters through the night, crashing into the 
Scottish town of Lockerbie two minutes later. 


Unnoticed and flying without a transponder, an unmarked Cessna 
flew past the wreckage. Though maintaining radio silence, the 
Cessna's pilot would report his observations as soon as he landed. 


Office of Solicitors, Carnegie & Potter, Manchester, UK 
Wednesday, 21 December 1988, 1904 hours local time 


Over two hundred kilometers away in Manchester, the four story 
office building of Solicitors, Carnegie and Potter was empty, save 
three night shift security staff and two caretakers. Though Carnegie 
and Potter were indeed two well-respected solicitors, they mostly 
handled litigation related to the Foundation's activities in the United 
Kingdom. Their office was also one of the Foundation's secure 
document repositories. In the building's safe sat what were now the 
only remaining copies of the documents recovered from the 
warehouse by Xi-13. 


A nondescript package a meter on each side sat in the building's 
receiving room. Because of its late arrival, and the fact that was not 
labeled with the codewords for Euclid or Keter objects, it hadn't been 
processed; the security guard who had signed for the parcel knew 


the staff would handle it in the morning. All the employees were 
properly briefed on handling unusual parcel deliveries at odd hours, 
as well as the appropriate code phrases for various hazards. This 
package was labeled as reams of blank legal paper (hence the 
weight) for the offices with the proper supply authentication phrases. 
In all, it was a thoroughly mundane delivery for a building which 
often received items which were anything but. 


The contents were not reams of blank legal paper (though had the 
guard opened the package for inspection, two layers deep of paper 
reams sat atop the true contents). Most of the package's cubic 
meter of volume was taken up by Semtex, supplied by two very 
helpful members of the Irish Republican Army now feeding the fish 
in the Irish Sea. Like squirrels with their nuts, Irishmen were always 
hording arms and explosives for the day when they would rise up to 
drive the English from their island. Or that was the plan of some of 
the more radical countrymen, at least. The revolutionary struggle 
that had continued for over seventy years showed little sign of 
concluding in a manner agreeable to the IRA. Over time, many of 
the caches of weapons and bombs were forgotten about as their 
owners retired from their struggle or were arrested or killed by the 
British military and police forces. So, for someone with the right 
contacts and sufficient ruthlessness, it was not difficult to acquire 
large quantities of high explosives with no clear connection to the 
user, assuming that someone did not mind incurring the wrath of a 
fairly nasty terrorist organization with a good memory. IRA reprisals 
did not concern the men who had appropriated that organization's 
Semtex. 


A brief radio signal reached a radio-receiver attached to the plastic 
explosive's detonator. In an instant, the cube of high explosive 
detonated at a velocity of over eight thousand meters per second. 
The explosion tore through the building, reducing the military-spec 
architecture to as much gravel. All five people died with merciful 
haste as the shock wave overtook them. The fireball, burning at 
temperatures sufficient to melt the structure's steel skeleton, turned 
the building's safe into a crematorium for the secured materials 
within. Hundreds of thousands of pages of classified Foundation 
documents, including the copies of the documents from the 
warehouse, were reduced to cinders by the inferno. Within less than 


ten seconds, the parts of the office building not strewn across the 
area by the explosion itself crumpled inward into a mound of twisted, 
charred rubble. 


The local police and fire department arrived on the scene within ten 
minutes, just missing a nondescript sedan with an unremarkable 
driver leaving the area. With his radio detonator hidden away under 
the vehicle's dash, he stopped at a telephone booth a few blocks 
from the scene to report that his end of the operation had occurred 
without incident. 


« Prologue | HUB | Part | » 


portable containment chamber fitted with a life-support system. 
Agent is under close observation, both to ensure psychological 
stability and to study the relationship between Agent and 
SCP-607. At this time, SCP-607 still displays suicidal tendencies 
when removed from restraints. It is unknown if SCP-607 has always 
displayed such tendencies, or if they are due to its resentment of the 
Foundation and the initial testing performed on it. 


« SCP-606 | SCP-607 | SCP-608 » 


Conspiracy, Part | 


Ramifications 


Foundation Commana-02, Washington, D.C. 
Thursday, 22 December 1988, 0755 hours local time 


The early morning sun illuminated the large lobby as Timothy Harper 
strode into the the Foundation's Command-02 Headquarters in 
Washington, D.C. Though it could not compare to Overwatch HQ, its 
proximity to one of the world's most powerful capitals ensured it was 
one of the Foundation's main decision-making nexuses. It was a 
relatively unremarkable seven-story limestone office building like so 
many others in the city. Faceless, nameless drones in the vast 
bureaucracy flitted in and out of the building, not unlike the other 
buildings in the Federal Triangle. 


After passing speedily through the obligatory security checkpoint, 
Harper browsed the headlines of his paper as he made his way to 
his tiny office on the third floor. A plane bombing in the UK was the 
leading story. Nasty business, international terrorism, Harper 
thought. Not his area of concern, though. Probably. He was one of 
the Foundation's top counterintelligence investigators. Pushing fifty, 
his black hair was streaked with gray from many late nights spent on 
the job. The job nearly cost him his family as well: though a drunk 
driver had taken away his family ten years ago Christmas Day, he 
discovered going through his late wife's papers that she was 
planning to file for divorce and seek custody of the children. With his 
family's death, he'd thrown himself into his work, finally accepting a 
promotion as Section Chief, followed a couple years later by a 
further promotion to his present job of Roving Special Investigator. 


"Morning, Troy," Harper grunted. He and Troy Muir, a former 
intelligence case officer invalided out of field operations when he lost 
his right leg, shared the cramped office. "Where's Monica?" he 


asked, referring to Monica Daniel, the grad student from GWU who 
was interning in the Cl Directorate. Always on the lookout for talent, 
the Foundation was more than happy to pay for someone's 
education, assuming they passed a thorough background check, 
signed a four hundred page non-disclosure agreement, and agreed 
to work three years for every year of schooling the Foundation 
funded. 


"Errand to the Ethics Committee Clerk's Office, | think." His one- 
legged office-mate looked up. "Tim, they want you on the seventh 
floor ASAP," Muir reported with a frown. 


"Any idea which way the wind was blowing?" Harper asked. A 
summons to the seventh floor, domain of the directors and 
overseers, was rarely a happy prospect. 


"They didn't say,” Muir replied. Harper nodded, and left. 


Harper was met on the seventh floor by a security officer. Only those 
with Level 5 security clearance were permitted on the floor without 
an escort. The guard led him to a darkened conference room and 
ushered him in. A severe dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties 
stood alone, looking out the heavily-tinted window at the Capital 
Building. Harper recognized her as O5-7, one of the Overseers. 
Though none of the Overseers had an assigned specialization, it 
was Harper's understanding that Seven tended to take particular 
interest in the Foundation's intelligence matters. He'd seen her 
speaking with Director McDonnell before, but had never actually met 
her himself. 


"Mr. Harper," Seven said quietly in greeting, not turning around. 
"Leave us." The security guard excused himself. 


"Ma'am," Harper said. 


"The Foundation is under attack, Mr. Harper," the Overseer stated, 
her back still to him. "Two nights ago, acting on an anonymous tip, 
under Counterintelligence Director McDonnell's personal 
supervision, MTF Xi-13 raided a warehouse outside London. They 
recovered a large number of classified documents relating to the 
Foundation and several groups-of-interest. Some of these 


documents apparently suggested the existence of a plot to 
assassinate several members of the O5 Council, including myself." 


"| assume plans are in place to handle the situation, ma'am?" Harper 
asked, hiding his alarm. 


"There are plans in place, yes, Mr. Harper. The Foundation has 
plans for everything," Seven replied. "More concerning than the 
apparent plot is the implication of these documents. According to 
Director McDonnell's initial report, the Foundation documents found 
indicated the breach was caused by someone with at least Level 4 
clearance, if not Level 5. The penetrations of the GOC, Serpent's 
Hand, Chaos Insurgency, IRG, Factory, Prometheus Labs, 
Wondertainment, Church of the Broken God, and MC&D appear to 
all comparably high level." 


At this revelation, Harper's eyes widened. Somebody had top level 
penetrations of nearly every major player behind the Veil, including 
the Foundation, and this was the first they were finding out about it? 
Nobody was that good.