and brushes. With broad strokes of my widest brush, | lay down my 
base colors: deep, dark blue for the water, brown for the mountains, 
pale cerulean for the sky. | move quickly, for Cassy is impatient, but 
| am careful to pace myself, to slow myself down and really see what 
is there before | place it on the canvas. Under my brush, the 
mountains slowly come alive, the flat browns giving way to deep, 
craggy peaks capped with snow, then bursting forth in greenery as 
the pine trees explode over their craggy sides. Down low, | take 
some time to paint out some more details on the closer trees: the 
broken branch on one, the bent trunk on another, the slight hint of 
wood rot in a third. Closer in, closer to Cassie, | take some time to 
paint in the slightly dry grass in darker greens, dabbing in a little 
bright yellow to form the budding flowers of mustard. 


Even as | begin to start on the lake, the painting begins to come 
alive. A soft wind rustles the high branches of the pine trees, 
causing dried needles to come drifting to earth, thickening the dark 
carpet of pine needles under Cassy's bare feet. The lake, which had 
begun as a deep, blue blotch of paint, quickly takes form under 
layers of lighter and lighter hues, then under highlights of pure white 
mixed with a hint of cerulean, to reflect the sky. Little wavelets, like 
the ones that had lapped at the sides of the rowboat that Rachael 
and | had drifted in for hours, form on the surface of the water, and 
begin to move, to ebb and flow. 


| lift my paintbrush up, and | step back from the painting. Something 
is missing here... something that is not in the photograph, nor in the 
painting, something to make it complete... 


Cassy knows. "Can you paint me a dock?" she asks. "I want to dive 
into the water." 


| can't talk to her now, for writing anything to her would ruin the 
painting, so | respond by laying down four quick lines of black, then 
layering over it with brown and walnut. The dock is a bit rickety, and 
the piles appear to be a bit old, but that is part of its charm as well. | 
am tempted to add a mallard duck to the scene, but that would only 
remind Cassy of her loneliness. | settle for a leaf on the water, 
drifting across the lake, casting small ripples on the surface of the 
dark water. 


"Thank you," Cassy says, turning towards me and smiling. "It's 
beautiful." 


| sign my name in the corner in white paint, and add a small, "You're 
Welcome" and a smiling face to my signature. Cassy gets up from 
the park bench and walks towards the lake, her bare feet crunching 
over the pine needles, seeming not to care about the rough ground, 
and | wonder whether it is because she has never felt the true 
feeling of pine needles against bare skin that she does not know that 
it should hurt. 


It's a mistake to get distracted like that... in my philosophical haze, | 
trip over my tray of paints, and my little tubes of Burnt Umber and 
Vermillion scatter across the containment room. "Fuck!" | sigh. 
Getting down to my knees, | start rooting under the piles of 
canvases and papers, trying to gather up my various paints and 
supplies. 


I've finally gathered up my last tube of Cadmium Red and am 
arranging them in my box when | notice a flash of pale flesh on the 
painting. | turn and immediately turn away, blushing, as Cassy pulls 
off her blue dress and lets it fall, carelessly, onto the dock. Her bare 
back is pale, and slender, and her loveliness is that of an Aphrodite 
rising from the sea foam as she takes the ribbon out of her hair and 
lays it atop her dress. She dives into the water with a bright splash, 
emerges in a shower of sparkling water droplets, and slowly begins 
to swim across the lake, reveling in the coolness of the water. 


Some mad impulse in me wishes she'd choose a backstroke. 


| manage to fight back my mad libido and close my artist's case 
slowly, quietly. Stupid. She can't hear me, or see me, but it seems 
somehow... intrusive... when she is swimming bare naked through 
the lake, uncaring of what | might see. | am putting my pallette away 
when | hesitate, realizing something that | had forgotten. 


| have just enough white left. | put my brush to paint and quickly add 
the missing element to the pile of clothing on the dock. 


Closing up my case, | leave the containment facility, swiping my 
card through the reader and turning out the lights as | go. Cassy will 


know what went wronf but one of the kids just 
disappaered. we dug around everywher and you know 
where she was? IN the concrete. we need to stop,we 
need to stop. This is wrong wrong | killed a kid today. | 
let them kill her 


they did it wrong. | warned them this would happen. Do 
they listen to me? No, they go out and sell them 
anyways. They aren't safe anymore, we know this. All it 
was supposed to do was take kids off if they were too big 
or got unruly. But they all go under. It's killing them and 
nobody is stopping 


it's gone 


Footnotes 
1. The same citySCP-2812was recovered from. 


« SCP-760 | SCP-761 | SCP-762 » 


not mind: to her, the sun will stay bright and shining, the wind will 
always be cool, and the water will always be crisp and clean, until 
she is ready to go back home, to the sketchpad left duct-taped to 
one corner, to her usual world of monochrome blacks and whites. 


| wonder, as | head back to my office, why | did that last bit. Perhaps 
it would have been better just to leave her be, so that she would 
never know that | had seen her dive, naked, into the lake? Maybe. 
Maybe it was just that it seemed unfair that | could see her and she 
could not see me, or maybe it was just my way of teasing her. 


Perhaps, as a gentleman, | just didn't feel like leaving a lady to swim 
without a towel. 


Interlude 1 


"Agent Lassiter's performance, given his recent emotional troubles, 
has been exemplary. His psych reports show that although his 
mental state is... unmmmm... still distressed... he's become much 
less suicidal than before. In fact, if we're lucky, he might decide not 
to cut his own wrists with a razor and bleed out on... fuck... let me 
start all over." 


"Although Agent Lassiter remains in a state of emotional distress, he 
has made good progress in the last few months. | have every 
confidence that he will make a full recovery and return to field 
work... yeah, and he'll lay low for a few months and then blow his 
brains out with his sidearm and maybe take the team with him, 
fuck... let me start over..." 


"Agent Lassiter is a fine operative... no, he WAS a fine operative, 
now he's a fucking basket case, and rightfully so. The kid saw his 
girlfriend... no, she was his fiancee... was she? | know he bought a 
ring, but did he ever manage to give it to her? Dunno, the kid was 
fretting about it like mad... anyway, he saw Maggie Lyndon torn to 
pieces by Scip Six-Eight-Two, and he couldn't do a damn thing 
about it because she was on the wrong side of an emergency 
partition, and if | ever find out who decided to make those things out 
of reinforced nine-inch plexiglass so you can see the horrible things 
that happen to people trapped on the other side, I'll murder them..." 


"_.. fuck, | can't say that, they'll make him a Delta. Screw it, this 
telling the truth thing is getting me nowhere. Agent Lassiter is a fine 
operative who just needs some time to recuperate. | recommend 
that he be given a low-priority duty containing Safe-level SCPs until 
he makes a full recovery. There we go. And if anyone buys this 
bullshit, I've got a bridge to sell them. Fucking personnel reports, 
should never have accepted this stupid promotion..." 


- Excerpted from the surveillance logs of Assistant Director Clef's 
office, six months before the Lassiter Incident. 


Tales 1 


1,001 Dark and Stormy Nights 


THE TALE OF THE RESEARCHER AND THE MINOTAUR 


SCP-1893 had breached. Whether it had dragged them all into its 
narrative or somehow broken out into their own, the Minotaur walked 
among them. Doctor Sharra Hassad huddled in the dark with five 
other personnel, all of them junior researchers and low-level clerks, 
all of them terrified. The knocking of the Minotaur’s baseball bat 
grew closer and closer. 


“It's going to be here any second. We can’t fight that thing. You saw 
what it did to Eric.” L1 Researcher Wendell’s eyes were wide and 
voice rushed. Sweat beaded his face. “We have to do something.” 


“| have an idea,” Sharra told them. “I'll go. Lock the door behind me, 
and wait for help to arrive.” 


“You'll be killed,” Wendell protested. 


“Better me alone than all of us together,” Sharra countered, sharp 
glint in her eye. “But don’t worry. We all have our day to die — | 
intend for mine to come much later than this.” 


The hallway was dim. The lights had been smashed out, and 
stormclouds blotted the moonlight, shadows leaving the strewn and 
battered corpses even more shapeless than the Minotaur had. 


SCP-1893 took the shape of a tall, shirtless man, heavy-browed and 
dense with muscle. A pair of elaborate horns jutted from its forehead 
— Sharra couldn't tell if they were real, or a tattoo fooling her eyes. 
The bat at its side was crusted with blood and brain. 


She stepped over Doctor Carlson — her friend, sprawled, skull 
collapsed — and held her ground. “Hear me,” she said, “for | have 
something you want.” 


The Minotaur stepped forward, snarling. She felt its heat, saw the 
steam of its breath. Its eyes narrowed and head cocked as it lay the 
bat on her shoulder. 


“I can offer you more subjects — more characters to encounter. If you 
just kill everyone here, that’s the end of this story. If you hear me 
out, there will be more. And more, and more, and more.” 


The Minotaur stared down, impassive. It caressed the side of her 
head with the bat, wooden end rasping against her hair. But she was 
still alive, so she kept talking. “Just listen. There was another 
Foundation staff, in another breach, kind of like this. | bet you never 
heard... 


THE TALE OF DOCTOR BENSEN AND THE SARKICS 


Bensen’s gun clicked empty. The fleshcrafter gurgled with laughter 
and drove a tentacle right through Bensen’s shoulder. A smug face 
emerged from the know of exposed muscle composing his chest. 


“It's over, Doctor. The site is ours.” 
“Fuck you. Kill me.” 


“In time,” he laughed. A large, grinning mouth appeared where its 
stomach should have been and spoke in unison with the sneering 
face above. “You’re a prisoner now. Your life is ours. Your death will 
be earned through servitude.” 


The senior researcher grit his teeth, bearing the pain in silence. 
There was no point in declaring that he would never help them; he 
had no doubt they could hurt him enough to make him do whatever 
they asked. He tried to struggle to his feet for a last stand, to make 
them kill him so he wouldn't have to live through whatever they had 
planned. A flare of burning agony from his shoulder convinced him 
to abandon that idea. 


The fleshcrafter flexed his tentacle, dragging Bensen to his feet. “We 
know the Improvement Engine is under your purview. You will take 
us to it.” A tongue extended from his extra mouth and began snaking 
its way into his own eye socket. 


“Nine-fourteen doesn’t work on live tissue,” Bensen rasped. “It’s 
useless to you.” 


“Do you think me a fool?” His free hand twisted into another whip, 
and he lashed Bensen across the face. Blood trickled down 
Bensen’s cheek — the sarkist had studded the limb with extra teeth 
before slapping with it. “What’s useless to us is prized by our 
enemies. We would see it demolished. You would thank us, if you 
only knew what they would use it for. Now take us.” 


There were dozens more sarkists in the hall, in various states of 
inhumanity. Men, women, and things in between, shaping their flesh 
like clay. Spears of bone bristled and retracted from them, which 
they used to butcher the personnel they’d slain; they exchanged 
lumps of flesh from the victims amongst each other, trying limbs and 
eyes for size before absorbing them or ripping them off to throw 
back. 


The discarded remnants of researchers and guards were stacked in 
heaps. Cultists searched the offices, carrying more dead. Bensen 
heard desperate begging that shot up in pitch before cutting off 
suddenly. Priests with elaborate bone formations erupting from their 
skin combed through the bodies, peeling off flesh and sorting it. 


“Behold, our glory. You’re now the last of your people here. Take us 
to the engine, or you will envy what we’ve done to the rest of them.” 


A dozen of the cultists, bodies twisted and ill intent in their eyes, 
broke away from the crowd and followed them. From time to time 
the tentacle inside Benson would twist and jab under his skin. /’m 
dead, but all is not yet lost. 


“Here we are,” he said, weary. The pain and exhaustion made it 
easy to keep all hope out of his voice. He led them into a vast 
containment vault, occupied by a looming tank. They saw a 
massive, boxy construct inside it, an impossible knot of clockwork 
more intricate than anything they'd ever laid eyes on, in whose 
shadow they could all easily stand. 


“Why is it underwater?” 


“We keep it in saline to protect the mechanisms.” 


The fleshcrafter had nothing to say to that. Bensen lurched to the 
control panel, grunting through the pain of the cultist’s tentacle 
dragging behind him. He began to enter the elaborate series of 
bypasses for the chamber’s manual override — it scanned his eyes, 
his hands, his voice, listened to the sound of his heart, and 
prompted him through a recital of cryptic passphrases. The console 
chirped and flashed a green light at them. 


Then sirens blared frantically, and the room began strobing red. 


“Why is it doing that?” the sarkist’s mouths roared in unison. The 
tentacle stabbed into Bensen’s side, deep, and he fell to the ground 
in agony. 


“We're not... We’re not ever supposed to drain the tank.” Bensen 
rolled onto his back. “That’s why only an L4 can access its override. 


” 


‘This-" 


"This isn’t Nine-fourteen,” Bensen grinned, blood flecking his lips. 
The object began to whine and chatter as gears within started 
working free of their rust and clanking to life. “I locked us all in here, 
you son of a bitch. It wants you to feed it metal, but you don’t have 
any, so... you'll see. You'll-“ 


The fleshcrafter extended a spur of bone and stabbed him in the 
face, furious. He dropped the body and turned to the control 
console, trying frantically to unlock the vault as the shrieking of the 
metal intensified. The alarm blared unceasingly, but the panels had 
all gone dark. They were trapped. 

Hours later, the clanking of machinery was even louder than the 
alarm. They’d all grown flaps over their ears, of course, but the 
sound penetrated their very bones. 


“| have to do it,” Cultist Gniles said at last. “It needs to be fed. It 
needs to be fed. We have to use what we’ve got.” He continued 
shouting matter-of-factly about the necessity of feeding the 
clockwork as he walked to the tank and climbed up its side, 
repeating himself until the gears caught his face and yanked him 


inside. Blood seeped from the edges of the mechanism, but the 
gears spun on. 


“Is that going to happen to all of us?” Cultist Grek asked. 


“In time. If we keep hearing the sound.” An idea came to the 
fleshcrafter. It was unlikely to work, but he was the leader here; he 
had to take whatever chance his people had. “We can distract 
ourselves. Maybe, if we’re distracted, we can block out this horrid 
machine. Maybe we can hold on until the Jailors send a team in 
here to capture us.” 


“| don’t have any better ideas,” Grek said doubtfully. “You go first.” 


“Well. Even the mighty can end up in bad spots,” he began. “Even 
the great Marshall, Carter, and Dark can be humbled by error... 


A TALE OF RUPRECHT AND IRIS