"No, it's never been done before," Twelve agreed. "Since the council 
began, every overseer has left feet first. Shot, stabbed, blown up, 
turned inside out, reduced to a memetic concept that can never die 
—" He nodded slightly to Nine, who nodded back in recognition. "— 
and variously reduced to their component atoms. But this whole 
thing with Site 19 has me thinking. | am an old man. If | die, | will die 
on my own terms, in my own bed, looking at a picture of my dear 
wife." He paused, and glanced at his hands. 


Two reached over and set her hand on top of his. "It's okay, Adam. 
We all miss her." 


"| don't care for your excuses," Five snapped. His finger prodded the 
table, like he was trying to point at a clause in a contract that didn't 
exist. "The rules are very clear. Once you have taken the oath, once 
you have joined the Council, you are in it for the long haul. If you 


wish to leave, then we will be glad to have someone remove you... 
permanently." 


Five missed the glance that was shared around the table at that, 
from Six, to Two, to Nine, to Three. Clearly, the glance said, 
someone is overreacting. He wouldn't have cared if he had noticed. 
Of course he was overreacting. Someone had to. 


"Except | didn't take the oath," Twelve replied, very softly. "I helped 
create the oath. But | never took it myself. The records will bear me 
out." 


Five stared, open mouthed. He slumped back in his chair, and 
shook his head. 


Seven took up the slack, and stood from her seat. "Be that as it 
may. You do not get to quit. As one of the few remaining founders 


"I'm not—" Twelve began. 


"You were here when it all began. Original council or not, you're the 
closest thing we have, and we need you here. We need the 
knowledge you hold, and we cannot risk you being out on your own, 
where some other group might try and take you." 


"Oh don't worry,” Twelve interjected. "I'm not stupid. I'll still have 
bodyguards. Like an ex-president, I'll still be protected. I've actually 
spent the last decade or so building myself a small town, up in the 
mountains where | raised my boys." He carefully did not look at Six. 
"It's filled with retired agents, and not a few blissfully ignorant 
scientists. I'm being careful. | can't be anything but." 


He took a deep breath, and let it out, eyes rising to find Six. "I had 
children. | never saw them, because of this job. Some of them grew 
up to be good people, not because of me. | have grandchildren, I've 
only seen through pictures. | want to reconnect with my great- 
grandchildren. | want to bounce a baby on my knee in my dotage. | 
want to be able to see the new millennium on my own terms, not... " 


Tears welled in his eyes, and his voice caught in his throat. "I... | 


want to be able to sleep, not thinking about whether the decision | 
made that day..." His voice trailed off, and he returned his gaze to 
his hands. 


A voice normally silent spoke. "It's simple enough. We vote. As is 
proper, yes?" The gathered council nodded silently to the One in 
charge. "All opposed to Twelve retiring?” 


Hands went up. Seven. Five. Eight. Nine. Four. Eight looked 
expectantly at the others, his glare intensified when they clearly did 
not move. 


"All in favor?" 


Six and Two shot up like they were fired out of a cannon, both eager 
to support their... friend? Nine's hand raised at a more sedate pace. 


Eleven wobbled... then shook her head. She wouldn't support, but 
she wouldn't negate. 


Twelve moved to raise his hand, but lowered it again at a glare from 
One. Clearly, his own vote would not count. 


Three shook his head in negation. He had no dog in this fight. Ten 
was Clearly deep in thought, but her hand rose as well. To the shock 
of all, One's hand rose. 


"Five to five," Eight said. "Ties go to the opposing side. You stay." 


Twelve sat there, his gaze locked on the table, as if all his broken 
dream were laid open there. 


Until someone coughed behind him. Twelve didn't move, just 
watched as the eyes around the table both lit up, in the case of his 
supporters, and squinted almost shut, in the case of his detractors. 
He didn't need to turn around to know who would be there, with his 
hand raised. 


Adam, Twelve no more, jumped from his chair. He spun around to 
grasp the hand of the tall lanky man behind him, and pumped it 
vigorously. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" 


"You're welcome." Thirteen pried his hand away, and held out a 
small box to the first ever retired Overseer. "| hope you don't mind, 
but | got you a watch." 


Snakes And Ladders 


A lot of people pass through Site-19. 


The most common movement is the daily rush from lab station to 
experimental room to cafeteria back to lab station (with a few 
detours to the restrooms). Then there are those who move from 
enlightened to exhausted. There are those who move from 
mundanity to madness. There are the others who pass through 
sterile rooms in body bags, and move no more. 


And then there are the movements that are not through halls, but 
through hierarchies. 


When Researcher Zyn Kiryu was first assigned to Site-19, her 
orientation included a tour of the biological anomaly containment 
cells and a quick meal in the ground floor cafeteria. She was then 
offered space in the on-site living quarters. She decided she could 
learn to ignore the pervasive emptiness of the halls and the faint 
mechanical buzzing present everywhere in the site. 


She'd get used to it because in the midst of the lesser anomalies 
she'd been shown, she'd seen something that remained in her 
memory long after the voice of the guide had faded out. SCP-408 
would soon need a new assignment of Level-2 caretakers watching 
its feeding schedule. The tour guide had recalled that Zyn liked 
butterflies, and wouldn't it be nice if she was on the roster for 408 
after she'd gotten settled in and was ready for it? 


Watching a cluster of the butterflies morph into a perfect replica of 
the silver pendant she wore, Zyn told herself that one day, that 
Level-2 would be her, and wondered what "ready" meant. 


A week later, Zyn moved in. She brought the usual necessities, and 
a few personal possessions to stave off the unfamiliarity. A spider 


plant in a pot decorated with painted butterflies. A gift from her old 
school friends: a teddy bear wearing a little lab coat. Her spare 
poetry journal. 


Flushed with the excitement of her first day as a live-in researcher, 
Zyn immediately sought out the 408 roster and added her name to 
the list of hopefuls hoping to work with the illusory butterflies. Later 
the same day, she received a very polite, professional email 
informing her that she'd been taken off the list because she lacked 
the requisite experience, and please do not re-apply at this time. 


Zyn blinked at the email, then closed it and shut down her 
Foundation-issue laptop. She picked up her lab-coat teddy bear and 
put it on her head, concentrating on keeping it balanced. She then 
stared out her window, sulking, for the next half an hour. 


Lack of experience. Do not re-apply. Not good enough. 


The next day found Zyn tearing through the living quarters in a mad 
dash because somehow she'd lost three pair of socks she must 
have misplaced during the move-in. Someone who was napping 
earlier had pity and pointed her towards the Lost and Found. 


Said Lost and Found was a large cardboard box sitting in the 
quarters’ main common room. Zyn approached the box with caution, 
noting the stained sleeve of a lab coat trailing over one side, and 
wondered if she should have brought protective gloves. 


She didn't find any socks, but halfway through the box she 
unearthed a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, wrapped in a plain 
paper cover so as to seem utterly unremarkable. She opened to the 
first page, where three names were written neatly, next to dates. 
The most recent owner had purchased it second-hand nearly thirty 
years ago. 


After some hesitation, Zyn took the book. 


Reading The Art of War gave her a strange sort of comfort. She was 
new, unknown, effectively nonexistent to everyone else in the site. 
With only a Bachelor's and a few years of graduate-level lab work, 


she knew she wouldn't be turning heads anytime soon. The book 
provided advice and guidance no one else would give. 


Think of the reasons not to trust you. Eliminate those reasons. 


She needed allies to stand a chance here. Allies, not minions, 
because you want someone just as good as you watching your 
back. Someone who will claw for recognition just like you, plot and 
plan and covet just like you, will consider your achievements a 
means towards their own ambitions. 


She’d made it this far relying on herself to keep promises, repay 
favors, gather friends. This was just a new piece of the sky to 
navigate, a new network of clouds and stars to build. 


She drew a butterfly in her poetry notebook, labeled it "408", and 
added in parentheses, "someday". 


Two weeks in, Zyn endured her first failed experiment. Glassware 
cracked, sample rendered unusable, hours upon hours’ worth of 
careful work lost in one careless mistake. Her coworkers barely 
spared her a second glance; just shrugged it off and left her to mop 
up the sad remains of the biological anomaly slide. 


lt wasn't that they disliked her, she decided as she tossed out the 
cleaning rag and her soiled gloves. They didn't even know enough 
about her to like or dislike. Only a few of her labmates remembered 
her face, and even fewer bothered to learn her name. Why would 
someone be concerned about a nameless stranger's mistakes? 


When Zyn slunk back into her quarters later, she ignored her 
notebook and glared at the Sharks of the World calendar she'd 
affixed to the wall opposite her desk. Logic. She could drown out this 
bitter taste of not good enough with logic. Facts. Hard truths. The 
shortfin mako shark is the fastest shark in existence. Highly 
intelligent, and capable of leaping nine meters into the air... 


What is a worse thing that could have happened? 


The unstable sample might have exploded, contaminating the entire 


lab and all the researchers present. 

What is the worst thing that could have happened? 

Everyone might have died. 

Did the worst thing happen? 

No. Not even close. 

Then you pick up the pieces and salvage something from this. 


Zyn crumpled a tissue, swiped at her eyes, opened up the 
Foundation internal messaging system, and read through the 
newest memos without really reading them. She remembered the 
indifferent looks of the other researchers in the lab. Allies, she 
reminded herself. You need allies. 


She saw a memo sent out two days ago, mentioning two Level-1 
interns coming into the lab for the first time. 


No one else cares about these guys, she thought. They're 
distancing themselves in case the new meat makes mistakes... | 
can use this. | can't be the only newcomer to mess up. | can't be the 
only one to feel dejected, lonely, not good enough... | may be new 
and inexperienced, but I can still become a mentor. A colleague. A 
friend. Someone to share stories with. Someone who makes this 
place less empty, less cold. 


Zyn composed a message to the new initiates. 


The next afternoon found Zyn sitting alone at a table in the site's 
second-floor cafeteria. In between bites of sandwich, she was 
composing a sonnet about the inevitability of failure wnen someone 
(one of her supervisor's colleagues, apparently) sat down in the seat 
across from her. 


"| hear you're new to the labs," the guy said as he set down a lunch 
tray, opened a container of dressing, and proceeded to drown his 
salad in it. 


Zyn blinked. "Yes," she ventured, "| am. Nice to meet you, Doctor 
—?" 


The man told her his name and a lot of things she hadn't even asked 
for: department, clearance level, and half an hour of personal 
anecdotes. Zyn hardly got a word in edgewise, but as she listened to 
the man describe the various insect toxins his lab encountered, she 
busied herself picking apart the monologue for cues. 


Shaking his head, eyebrows drawn, hand gripping coffee cup tightly 
when talking about recent data. | should make a sympathetic sound 
and avoid introducing the topic... Posture relaxed, more gestures, 
talking about some sort of experimental prototype. Make sure to 
bring that up if you ever see the guy again. 


When the man finally stood and thanked her politely for the 
discussion (Kiryu, he called her, not Zyn), Zyn scratched out the two 
rhyming lines she'd composed and scribbled down everything she 
remembered from the encounter. 


Eventually, the notebook came to hold more people than poetry; 
every time Zyn learned something about someone, she wrote it 
down. It was a way to remember faces, names, life stories, when 
they next met... and they would come to remember her name, even 
if they only knew her as the person who remembered them. 


It took time, but it was an investment. Every person was someone to 
share lunch with, someone to swap gossip with, someone to vent to 
when lab work went awry. Moreover, they could a/so vouch for her, 
bring her closer to 408, give her an advantage over anyone else 
aiming to be 408's caretaker. 


Chance was something Zyn never trusted. When it came to things 
she really wanted, she preferred to stack the deck in her favor. 


Somehow, Zyn attracted the attention of a lab director. She was 
invited to research meetings. The supervisors discussed a lab 
transfer. She did the transfer paperwork herself (show them your 
worth. Demonstrate responsibility and self-sufficiency). 


On her first day in the new lab, she entered the room ready to get to 
know the other lab technicians, hopeful and wondering where the 
anomalous insect specimens were... but the lab techs exchanged 
sheepish looks and mumbled something about a miscommunication. 
They ushered her into the near-ancient lab archives holding 
handwritten notes, case files, and other artifacts of research from 
decades ago. She was asked to retrieve a series of documents, and 
maybe do something about the deplorable state of the stacks. 


Zyn kept her expression carefully neutral, put away her lab gear, 
and got to work pulling charts. When the door closed and she was 
left on her own (can't spare a second of their time for the new 
person?), she sauntered over to a stray plastic cup sitting ona 
bookshelf (no doubt left by some slob who didn't pick up after 
themselves), scooped it up, and calmly crushed it in her fist. 


It wasn't anger, she told herself. She was just making the trash more 
space-efficient. 


For the next few days, Zyn reported directly to the archives and 
made herself comfortable there, shuffling between the rows of 
accumulated research. Dust and solitude make decent company for 
strategy, she thought while she tugged at a sheaf of diagnostic 
graphs jammed between two binders. The lab techs would be very 
much indebted to her when she fixed up the mess here, Zyn told 
herself. Then she grit her teeth as a stray medical certificate grazed 
her hand, and she bandaged her third paper cut that week. 


Since no one who visited these archives ever talked much, Zyn had 
plenty of space to think about how to turn the situation to her favor. 
She would do her assigned task well. Better than well. She'd 
practice searching the shelves until navigating the stacks felt so 
natural that others envied her skill. Then she'd develop a system to 
make it that easy for everyone else. There would be no more to gain 
keeping her here, and no choice but to move her on.