"Look, I'll have to go for a meeting with my contacts from the local 
banditry. It might take me a couple of days. These guys are 
generally agreeable, we give them limited medical care and drop a 
few veiled threats to their persons and their souls and they stay 
away from the crazy Westerners who want to cure the Sour." 


Locke raised her head with an arced brow. "Their souls?" Frank 
smiled. 


"Good, you're still with us. It's not literal. Well, mostly not literal. You 


SCP-679: Eyerot 


Item #: SCP-679 
Object Class: Keter 


Special Containment Procedures: Samples of SCP-679 should be 
contained in sealed glass vials, with the temperature kept at 25 °C. 
Infected subjects should be kept restrained in a sterile environment. 
All personnel handling samples or subjects should wear class A 
HAZMAT suits. Any material or infected subjects removed from 
containment should be incinerated immediately. 


To prevent potential cross contamination at no point should samples 
of SCP-679 and SCP-1077 be stored at the same facility. 


Description: SCP-679 is a fungal infection of a previously unknown 
Aspergillus species. It was discovered among the local homeless 
population in , Florida. 


It is highly infectious through direct contact with the fungus, though 
other means of transmission have not been ruled out. 


In early stages, subjects complain of entoptic phenomena. Subjects 
report seeing tiny bright dots moving rapidly in their field of vision. 
This is especially prevalent when sneezing or looking into strong 
blue light. 


After approximately one week from initial exposure, the sclera turns 
black. The subject loses vision at this time, becoming entirely blind. 
Within a day of this, small ulcerations appear in the corners of the 
eyes. This causes the vitreous humor to begin leaking out, having 
the appearance of thick black tears. 


Mycelia are also pushed through the ulcerations. Each mycelium 
resembles a thin white thread coated with slime, reaching as long as 
twenty-five centimeters. As the ulcerations widen and more of the 


might not want to know." 
"They buy that crap," she answered. It was not a question. 


"Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, but most chiefs and 
warlords agree that messing with things they can't hope to control is 
a bad policy. True, sometimes they try, and that's when we call the 
GOC. That's another incentive for them to stay the hell away from 
here." 


"They are scared," Locke smiled. "I've said that before, haven't |?" 


"Yup. You can't blame them, the Myrmidons are supposed to be 
food and they can uproot themselves and fight, too." 


"You mean they have done it before?" 


"Another reason to discontinue them. No weapons in our camps, 
remember? Anyways, when | leave, I'll have Olympe report to you. 
He is the French Guianan guy, the one with-" 


"A mech arm. Yeah. Kind of hard to miss him." 


"Well, you'll be with him for a day or two. You'll see how he keeps 
the peace around the place." 


"A bouncer with no guns, a soldier with one arm," Locke sneered. 
Frank stared at her with an entertained grin. 


"Har, har, you've said that before too, haven't you?" 


Among the recently arrived MCF members, there was a very specific 
woman. This woman had entered the almost finished hospital with 
casual walks, dressed with an MCF vest over a white-and-green 
volunteer t-shirt and long but light, comfortable pants. 


The woman's name was not important. Only a few of her coworkers 
knew it anyways, and most of them were really, really far away. 
Here, there, in that place, she was known as Spiffy Dodger. 


While she had helped unloading the trucks and happily joked about 


how well the camp was going, what had attracted some exasperated 
looks from those of her partners who couldn't get a joke, Dodger had 
a single objective in mind today. It was a simple concept. She had to 
check the Vestan stuff, report to Frank Westinghouse as soon as 
good ol' Priss wasn't around him and keep an eye on how well it was 
all going. 


Dodger knew the assignment was half a punishment and half a way 
to get her to do something of use. She preferred it that way, since 
being back home would only bring even more attention from her ex- 
employers. 


They would be asking questions about all that money that had 
suddenly appeared in her new employers’ hands. And in her own 
hands. 


Fortunately, there was a place in the Charitable for anyone willing to 
help, and Spiffy Dodger was so very happy to help all those do- 
gooders and their magical moss. As she walked the almost-finished 
halls, looking the veined walls and curve corners with a critical eye, 
she intimately scorned to herself: "I've seen weirder." 


As she muttered it, a man in a white overall saw her and came to 
her. "Ah. Sorry, miss, you shouldn't be here, it's not finished yet!," 
Dodger heard him said through his mask. He sounded like a school 
teacher. "And, oh dear, you should be wearing at least appropriate 
footwear, this ground-" 


"Rabbit, right?," she cut the man's rambling. "Or was it Rabbi? | kind 
of like the jumpy attitude. It's cute." 


Torres looked at her for a moment, his eyes squinting behind the 
little pair of glasses. "And you would be?" 


"Dodger. Mission Watch." Dodger took the green-and-black ID out of 
one of the vest pockets. "I'm here to reinforce Frank Westinghouse 
and his new best friend, the... auditor." 


She smiled a predatory smile. 


"And, of course, to watch over things. You know... report back at the 


IB and all that. Would you be so kind as to tell me how are things 
going over here? All okay, I'm sure? 


« Bed, Breakfast, Plague | Hub | Over the Bonfire » 


Over The Bonfire 


Priscilla felt lost. 


Not literally lost, not anymore, of course; now she walked, loaded 
with the bundle she would not trust anyone else and rested inside 
her backpack, by the side of the massive Security Executive 
member Francois Olympe. 


They had walked together for days along those dusty roads and 
alley-like spaces between the bright green tents provided by 
successive Logistics Work Group teams that had been dropping 
them at the camp. There were many hundreds of people living there 
at that time, most of them stopping to rest for the night and tend to 
their sick and their wounded. And some of those were 
troublemakers. 


Any troublemaker in the camp, sooner or later, got to meet Francois 
Olympe. 


The man checked on everything and everyone to make certain 
nothing was out of place; not a trivial matter, and not one that any 
one person could take on single-handedly. In a camp that active, 
with so many people coming and going after stops of one or two 
nights, dozens of petty crimes happened at any given moment of the 
day. The worst part was that crimes that would embarrass any 
police force in the world, were to happen in cities of a 'developed' 
country, piled here without ever being reported. 


Olympe seemed to think that his patrols made refugees feel both 
safer and secure, and he had reasons to think so. Her sixth day on 
the camp, Priss had seen him maul a recidivist rapist and child 
molester into the dirt and deliver him to the Laascaanood council of 
elders with evidence, witnesses and — after pummeling the fiend 
against the dust just three times — a confession; she found his 
methods expeditious and effective. 


"lam a violent man, yes," he had told her then. "I have always been 
violent. But | am not hunting down other violent people. I'm hunting 
down harmful parasites before they can keep hurting people." 


Priscilla understood and sympathized immediately. That was a 
revelation for her; she could actually relate to what people felt here. 


She could be a part of the world. 


Despite her lifelong experience and the impact of what 
Westinghouse had come to call "white supremacist indoctrination" 
— like she was some sort of cultist —, Priss was at least finding 
Olympe a very enjoyable company. It was not that he was a 
particularly amicable fellow; he was quiet most of the time. That was 
what made him such soothing company, probably. She could go on 
patrol with him, remain "safe" as an auditor while she did "her job" 
and learned more about the whole bunch of people that worked with 
them. 


Or try to, anyways. Actually, she only understood Olympe and sort 
of Knew what Westinghouse came from most of times. Torres still 
felt slightly creepy, with that squirrely smile he used every time he 
glanced at someone and that grave expression he had when he 
thought he was alone. The satanists had revealed themselves to be 
quite a congenial bunch as well, once you got through their many, 
weird customs; and Priss would never be able to look Mirra — or 
roosters in general — in the eye, of course. 


She would never understand Opal, though. 


But after sixteen days in the MCF Laascaanood camp, Priscilla 
Locke was starting to feel settled. True, the nightmares came and 
went, and some mornings she had to make efforts to not strangle 
that damned gnome of a woman as she woke everyone up by using 
the infernal cube intercom, but most of that was inconsequential. 
She probably would even grow fond of it, eventually. 


She would make herself at home. 


Eventually. 


And, as she thought that, she saw a small kid, with that brown-black 
skin color, that black-black hair and those black-black-black eyes 
over the impossible white-white-white-white of her teeth. She was 
four or five years old, stark naked, and carried a short stick. She had 
pensively placed her fingers inside her mouth and seemed to be 
manually inspecting her little teeth. 


Priss felt herself pitying her and saying, in a somewhat friendly tone: 
"Get outta my way, little monkey." 


The girl opened her eyes run away, apparently scared. Priss cussed 
to herself. 


"Hey, you know English? | didn't wanna-" 
"What did you call her, Locke?" 
Priss turned to Olympe. 


The man radiated something between suspicion and unbridled 
anger. Priss could feel it as he came to her. 


"It was just a-| mean. Um." 


The imposing giant looked at her, projecting her shape on her. "Yes. 
| hope so." 


And then, as a passing storm cloud, Olympe moved on, checking on 
every tent. Priss felt weak in her knees; the world she thought she 
would be part of reminded her again of how little she could fit in it. 


She beheld Olympe as he raised a hand, smiling, to salute one of 
the new MCF volunteers from Logistics that had arrived in the camp 
last night with supplies. Priss knew, thanks to trifling, 
inconsequential minutiae shared between them in the long hours of 
patrol, that he loved a certain brand of chewing gum and they had 
just restocked his stash. 


Except the fact that she was not WPhO, Olympe knew nothing of 
her. Nothing truthful, just petty lies. And, due to a insignificant 
moment of relaxation on her part, he had just seen a flash of who 


she had always been behind all the lies. Priscilla Locke looked 
around her, wanting to find again that peace, the corner were she 
had felt at ease for a second, the place she could be a part of, the 
people she could learn to love. That part of herself that could have 
all those people be part of her. 


The voice from her backpack reminded her how out of place they all 
were. 


As Priscilla arrived in the MCF side camp, she was as tired as she 
had been every night for the past two weeks. Walking up and down 
the camp in the stiffling summer was exhausting, and somehow 
Olympe always managed to laugh at the end of the day and carry a 
pair of kids around, a couple of brothers that had taken a particular 
liking to the silent giant. She had watched them every time, feeling 
silently uplifted as the man placed them, one after another, in his 
shoulders and allowed them to climb his impressive frame without 
moving or even flinching. 


Tonight, however, he had stayed back to help their parents, since 
they had had some sort of problem... or so he had told Priss. 


Unwanted. 


She advanced between the cubes, entering the circle they traced 
around a slab of Vestan concrete where they lit a bonfire every 
night. There was nobody at the place. At that time of the evening, 
every person was either working and grabbing a light dinner or 
already asleep, preparing for a night shift in the clinic or the growing 
hospital. 


Priscilla looked at the shape of the tall tarpauline fences that 
surrounded the top of the hill. It would be open to business any day 
now. 


She took her backpack off and eyed it, feigning ignorance of what 
whispers she could hear from it. 


Unwanted. 


"And then the three kids just run away, like as if | was some sort of 
monster!" 


Priscilla jolted in surprise as she noticed she was not alone. The 
three satanists and Alba Escudero, the Work Group teacher, had 
just entered the ring of cubes. They laughed lightly at the recounting 
of Garziel's day. 


"It's your jaw, Ziel," Mirra said. 


"It's not!," Garziel argued. "It's just that | look much more imposing 
having shaved my head than other people around!" 


"You've not noticed how many people around here cut their hair 
short just to make certain they don't get lice, right?" That was 
Poitriburg, the third Satanist. Alba happily giggled. 


"Most of them aren't from the Charitable! Ah, shut up, you are alla 
bunch of hypocrites who won't even follow the prescriptions of the 
church... | can even see your hair growing back, Poitri!" 


"That's what happens when | don't have the time nor the tools to cut 
it, Ziel!" And she noticed Priss, who was hurriedly hauling the 
backpack to her cube room. "Ah, hello, miss Locke." 


All of them fell silent when they realized she was there. Priss almost 
felt vindicated by that reaction. 


Unwanted, dear. 
"Everything fine there, miss?" 


"Just call me Locke, Garziel. Have to sleep, round of contacts with 
town elders tomorrow and in the evening we'll be starting the first 
Koons crop. Have to be rested. G'night." 


"Wait, um," Mirra started. As she stepped towards her, Priss looked 
at the small, pale woman, practically a girl, who stopped a meter 
from her, then went on to stutter, "I-lwantedto-" 


Mirra looked back at the other three. Despite their collective 
timidness, they seemed to encourage her with slow, gentle gestures 


and soothing mono-syllables, as they often did. 


The woman turned to Priss again and blurted out: 
"I'mverysorryabouttherooster." 


Priscilla blinked a couple of times, surprised. "But that was-" 


"Like a year ago, yeah?," Garziel said, coming up to them with a 
smile from ear to ear. "That's what we kept telling her, that you were 
a professional and you wouldn't even remember. See, Mirra?" 


"Oh, | remember," Priss complained. "| just didn't know what a 
rooster eye tasted like, and it shocked me." 


Garziel and Poitriburg laughed out loud, but between their larger 
frames, Mirra looked like she was stewing in her own guilt. Priss 
finally gave in and added, in a dry tone: "But | am a professional, so 
don't worry." 


Mirra timidly nodded and smiled. For some reason, that irritated 
Priscilla. She would have spouted something outrageous right there 
and then if not for the shouts meant for them from the concrete slab. 


Alba was calling for their attention. "You four, let's get the fire going!" 


Priscilla had tried. She had really tried, and now she was feeling 
stupidly ashamed about it, but it was pointless. The women around 
the bonfire waited for an answer. 


They had broken her, and thus, there was no choice but to answer 
truthfully. 


"| never rode a motorbike. Happy?"