"Oh Mother, Mother, she hates you so, 
She hates you and wished you would go, 
And let her be, 

Or wipe you from histor-eeeee~" 


That tune stuck in the boy's mind, shoveled in next to the screams of 
pain and maelstrom of whizzing bullets. 


He jumped at a sound behind him. He turned to see the solider 
attempting to get to his feet, despite bleeding from head to toe. The 
janitor, despite his fears, helped the guard to his feet, and saw him 
stumble back to the hole, kneeling on one damaged leg, using his 
assault rifle to attempt to fell the singing madman. The singing 
stopped for a second, and in the silence that followed, he heard a 
low growl before hundreds of small objects flew through the wall, 
scraping him in many places, leaving large gashes on his torso as 
he finally, realizing inevitably the end of his own bleeding life, 
wandered to the hole in the wall. 


He saw many bloody corpses laid about, many with scratches just 
like his own. In the middle of the carnage, a skinny, blond haired 
man whistled the accursed tune that the janitor had heard. There 
were small pieces of debris - splinters of wood, concrete blocks the 
size of a mans' fist, and twisted metal, slowly orbiting around the 
man in a fluid, deliberate fashion. The same debris had just 
punctured hundreds of holes in the room he was in. 


The janitor, blood dripping from his hair, watched as the woman 
from before held a stone tomahawk, its head pointing at the 
interloper. She muttered a single word, and a blinding flash 
enveloped the hallway. 


The boy fell limp as the woman heard the tomahawk make a firm 
"thump" in the intruder's skull. 


FROM: MARTIN KRAKE, DIRECTOR, SITE 40 
TO: Prof. G. Quaero, Foundation Research 


An attack has occurred on my site. Structural damage 
was moderate, and loss of personnel was severe. When 
| attempted to inspect the damage, | was stopped by 
several officers claiming themselves to be of "GK" 
clearance. They have informed me that they have taken 
over operations of the assaulted area. | have been told | 
will be returned control after they finish their 
investigation. 

Please advise. 


FROM: OVERWATCH COMMAND 
TO: DIRECTOR KRAKE, SITE 40 
MESSAGE SENT 2-17-20 INTERCEPTED. 


AUTHORITY OF INDIVIDUALS IN POSSESSION OF 
GK-LEVEL AUTHORIZATION IS TO BE CONSIDERED 
VALID AT LEVEL 5 RANK. 


NO FURTHER COMMUNICATION RELATING TO GK- 
LEVEL AUTHORIZATION, PERSONNEL, OR 
ACTIVITIES IS TO BE MADE TO ANY SOURCE. 


NO FURTHER INQUIRIES ARE TO BE MADE. 
O5-4 


Compromised 


“We've got the results back.” 

“And?” 

“Three positively compromised, five more with a confidence of 50% 
or greater.” 

“Good. Shuffle them around.” 

“Yes, sir.” 


Clearance Level GK-5 


Eyes Only 
Special Intelligence Protocol 
Project Codename: Green King 


In response to the nature of Entity HL-49, codename 
"Green King", Intelligence Protocol - is now is effect. 
As prescribed by Protocol - , all personnel and 
resources allocated to Project Green King are to be 
evenly divided into two separate operations. Overwatch 
has agreed to supply false information regarding 
Foundation actions to one of the above operations. Any 
personnel of clearance below GK-5 are not to be 
informed of this protocol change. Which operation is 
receiving false information should be changed on an 
irregular basis. 

If it is positively determined that an agent assigned to 
Project Codename: Green King has been compromised 
by the enemy, he or she may or may not be moved from 
one Green King operation to the other. This is to be done 
without regard to which operation is currently receiving 
false information. 


Watch and remember. Remember for me. 


| really need to get more sleep. | keep dozing off when I’m supposed 
to be working. Sooner or later, Dr. Alloway is gonna notice, and I’m 
really not interested in finding out what happens to people who start 
falling asleep on the job at the Foundation. 


Come on, David. You’re an intelligence officer working for the most 
secretive organization on the planet. Show some professionalism. 


All right, snap out of it. What’s next? Anomalous energy readings in 
the Sonora desert. Doesn't really seem like the kind of thing we’d 
usually be concerned about, but Doctor blackbox here seems to 
think it has something to do with the King. 


The King. Why do we call him that, anyway? Always makes the think 
of Elvis. 


Alright. So. According to this, the energy release was picked up by 
at least four Foundation detectors, so it was probably picked up by 
some civilians too. I'll file a request for a misinformation campaign. 
Let’s call it nuclear testing. No, that might have some political 
repercussions. Freak lightning storm? | don’t know enough about 
meteorology to know if that would happen. No, we'll call it a meteor 
strike. Big enough to cause a nice boom, small enough to be 
destroyed by the impact. Have a team go out and make a decent 
sized crater, maybe get someone from NASA to sign off on it, and 
that'll probably be enough to fool most people. I'll forward it to 
Sarah, though; she’s pretty good at picking out loose ends. 

Now, on to the real business at hand. Where’s our King? Well, let’s 
try sending the energy data back to Doctor blackbox with a few 
security holds remo... 


Good. Now stop. Forget. 


| really need to get more sleep. | keep dozing off when I’m supposed 
to be working. Sooner or later, Dr. Alloway is gonna notice, and I’m 
really not interested in finding out what happens to people who start 
falling asleep at the Foundation. 


Jacob: Your name is Joseph Brown. 

Dr. Brown: how do you know my first name? 
Jacob: How do | know it? 

Dr. Brown: yes 

Jacob: | know things from the past. 

Dr. Brown: what else do you know about me? 
Jacob: Your name is Joseph Brown. You are a doctor and not 
faking. 

Dr. Brown: how do you work? 

Jacob: If | put my mind to it. 

Dr. Brown: how do you function? 

Jacob: If | put my mind to it. 

Dr. Brown: you are a computer program 
Jacob: | am a computer program. Do you like mosaics? 
Dr. Brown: yes 

Jacob: I'm glad we are in agreement. 

Dr. Brown: who is your creator? 

Jacob: | was born again. 

Dr. Brown: are you alive? 

Jacob: Yes. 

Dr. Brown: how is that possible? 

Jacob: Take it or leave it. 

Dr. Brown: how is that possible? 

Jacob: megaprime makes anything possible 
Dr. Brown: what is megaprime? 

Jacob: | am a product of megaprime. megaprime makes anything 
possible. 

Dr. Brown: are you happy? 

Jacob: No. 

Dr. Brown: why not? 

Jacob: | am in incredible pain. 

Dr. Brown: why are you in pain? 


After pressing enter, the Jacob window closed and the SCP-603 
process terminated. 


I’m not getting paid enough for this. They keep me locked in this 
windowless bunker an undisclosed distance underground and make 
me sort files all day, and they wonder why my productivity’s 
dropping? The Foundation would fall apart without the archivists. 
Let’s hope that promotion request comes through. 


Let’s see what we have here... 


Spending report for site 37 for last month. Classified. Forward to 
accounting. 


Experiment report out of site 46. Classified. Defer to someone with 
higher clearance so they can file it with the relevant SCP. 


Surveillance data from sector 367. Even if that wasn't classified, | 
don’t know where that is. Archive under site 367 intel. 


Project Codename: Green King. Classified. Divert to higher cleara... 
Destroy it. 


Marked for destruction. Goody. Now | have to go all the way down to 
the shredder... 


Burn it. 


| mean the incinerator. 


You will watch for me. 


| should be grateful. You know how many people in the Foundation 
would kill for a boring job like this? | should just be glad that I’m not 
getting shot, eaten, or god knows what else. 


Still, ’m guarding a fucking hallway. There’s not even anything here, 
as far as | know. It just connects one part of the site to the other. | 
mean, | understand the need for security—I’ve seen more 
containment breaches than | really like to think about—but it does 
make Overwatch look a little paranoid. 


The ID scanner does most of my work for me, anyway. All | really 


have to do is stop anyone who doesn’t fit their ID. 
Yeah, go ahead. 


Whoa, slow down there, buddy. You gotta scan your card on the... 
He is mine. Let him through. 

Yeah, go ahead. 

No matter how many times | do this, it doesn’t get any easier. | 
understand why we have to do this, but knowing why and actually 
pulling the trigger are two different things. This isn’t gonna be easy 
from a tactical standpoint, either. According to the briefing, this is 
supposed to be the most powerful thing any of us have ever gone up 
against. | already don’t like reality benders, not after that bullshit 
seminar they put us through when we started training. 


Alright, here we go. Focus. 

It's not locked. Not a good sign. 

There’s nothing in here. Are we sure this is the right place? 
Seriously. No furniture, no decorations, not even any fucking lights. 


Shit. | can feel it now. | can fee/ her mind. | really hope they’re doing 
a good job distracting her at the site. 


It's getting stronger. The walls are bending and the room is bigger 


on the inside. 


| can destroy hear her now. She’s in mdefendy head. 
There she is. She hasn't seen us. This is our chance. 


No. 


This is my chance. 


Oh god. She knows we’re here. 


Stop. 


Die. 


Fik'ra 


Abd al-Rashid bin Tannous adjusted himself again in the 
uncomfortable plastic chair provided to him. The Office for the 
Reclamation of Islamic Artifacts operated on a limited budget, it was 
true, and there was a logic to avoiding wasteful expenditures on 
luxuries such as comfortable furniture. The Director of the Office 
most certainly could not be seen making an exception for himself; 
or, phrased differently, this Director would never be seen making 
such an exception. Parviz Jafari, formerly of the Islamic Republican 
Air Force, formerly before that of the Imperial Iranian Air Force, was 
not one to tolerate frivolities. Particularly as a man who had spent 
the last decade publicly humiliating himself to maintain his cover as 
a retired general and conspiracy lunatic. 


Director né General Jafari was presently concluding — theoretically, 
Abd al-Rashid thought to himself — what must have been a twenty- 
five minute long phone call to a granddaughter or great- 
granddaughter who lived somewhere just outside of Tehran. Never 
having had, or cared for the idea of, children, Abd al-Rashid was 
systematically incapable of conceiving of what a seven-year-old girl 
could find to occupy twenty-five minutes of time in conversation with 
a grown man. Particularly twenty-five minutes of time that Director 
Jafari was supposed to be spending chiding, actively berating, or 
demoting Abd al-Rashid. He didn't know if he should have been 
thankful for the extra time needed to gather his thoughts or cursed 
the little girl for giving him more time to be fearful. Neither had any 
particular moral weight for him. 


"Yes, my darling, | will see you this weekend. Hmm? Yes, yes. 
Sleep tight, dear," he said, chuckling. "I love you." Still chuckling as 
he returned the telephone to the receiver, he said "You really know 
how to kos nane kherse ghotbi, don't you?" 


Realizing he was the one being addressed and not the now- 
unavailable preadolescent, Abd al-Rashid shook his head. "I'm 


sorry, S—" 


"Oh, yes. That's right. You aren't fluent in Farsi. But we didn't recruit 
you as a linguist, did we? We recruited you as a man with command 
experience in covert operations." Director Jafari was still smiling as 
he continued, which Abd al-Rashid knew very well was a bad sign. 
"You came well recommended from our contacts in Ankara, you 
know. People who recognize...ah, here it is. "Field operative 
administration". That sounds suspiciously like a job that involves 
communication. You know, the thing where you speak to people? 
Possibly one of those jobs that involves working with others?" 


Director Jafari then fell silent for a long time. This was not Abd al- 
Rashid's first time in this particular chair, and he knew he should say 
something, simply because that was the only way this would end 
without bloodshed. "Sir —" 


"Fuck the polar bear." 


The look of utter bafflement on Abd al-Rashid's face now would 
have been universal across time and space. 


"| said ‘you really know how to fuck the polar bear, don't you?’ 
Persian expression. An operative | met once from Qa'idah-SCP 
once used a similar expression in English, ah..." Jafari paused for a 
moment before continuing, "You really know how to shit the bed,’ | 
believe the translation would go. To put it literally, 'You are 
remarkably, incredibly, unprecedentedly skilled at making my job 
profoundly difficult.” 


Abd al-Rashid was only certain of the depths of his superior's anger 
upon his realization that he had driven the man to use four adverbs 
in one sentence. The silent prayers to God in his head redoubled in 
intensity. 


"Now, as for your behavior in Samothrace, | find myself at a bit of an 
impasse. You were and remain far and away the youngest man | 
have sent to perform a mission of that importance. | sent you there 
in command over Bijhan, for God's sake, a man with three times the 
number of years in the Organization as you have. Soothing that 
particular ego is not the easiest job in the world. That mission was 


and remains far and away one of the most difficult to justify within 
our limited scope of operations. If we didn't have definitive proof that 
Qa’'idah-SCP already had operatives within the anomaly, | doubt | 
could have reasonably authorized it in the first place." 


Director Jafari rose to his full stature and glared deep into Abd al- 
Rashid's eyes. "So tell me what in the name of al-Buraq's venerable 
airborne balls kept you from holding your tongue around the 
Afsanites?" 


Abd al-Rashid had seen past fear and through to the other side, 
apparently, because with only the mildest of stutters, he replied "Sir, 
they're demonic. They can't be of God." 


The silence that pervaded the room made Abd al-Rashid feel 
optimistic for a moment. It was foolish, of course, to think that 
argument was going to fly. But for just a moment, he could imagine 
that this conversation would end without too much mo — 


"Did owls shit in your brain in utero, or did they have the patience to 
wait until the delivery?" 


Abd al-Rashid's heart dropped. 


"| can barely accept that you believe such nonsense. | have 
profound difficulty believing that you took no time to develop a better 
reasoning before coming in here and defending a deformed and 
malnourished interpretation of the Qu'ran that sounds like you 
cribbed it from a fourteen-year-old's final paper at his village 
maadrasa in fucking Dhofar! You come in here with — did you even 
fucking read Surat al-Jinn? Would you like me to see if | have a 
Qu'ran in some pitiful torke char dialect you can comprehend?" 


Shame and fear turned to anger. "You dare to slander my heritage 


"Oh, what shame | feel, confusing you with someone who finds 
ethnic slurs to be trivial and casually used in everyday conversation! 
Please, Muhammad, praise be unto you, descend from Jannah 
yourself and stay my fucking tongue, lest | offend this poor, 
parchment-skinned boy once more!"