Thank God, she thought, it's working. Then she laughed at the irony. 


The Harbinger never moved its gaze from her. Only its hands 
moved, rising to the harpoon. She knew it couldn't remove the fully 
powered harpoon bolt, not while it was leeching away the being's 
essence. But the Harbinger didn't try. 


Instead, it dismantled it. Tore open the casing, unwrapped the 
internal wiring, got to the power source and cracked it open with a 
pinch of its fingers. Immediately its light returned to full strength. 


The Harbinger tossed the remnants of the now-useless harpoon 
aside and walked towards her. It lifted the Lock from her nerveless 
fingers. 


Yara Mirski fell to her knees. 
"Oh, cut that out," the Harbinger said. "I'm not going to kill you." 


Its voice startled her back to her senses. It was mellifluous and 
otherworldly, still without discernible gender, but casual, undramatic. 
And... weary. 


"Don't be too hard on yourself," it said. "Really." 


pulled off. There is a flash of some kind of twisted, 
shaved animal, but then a human head appears.) 


(the human head is that of a man around thirty five, with 
thick black hair and sideburns. He has extremely pale 
skin and dark circles under his eyes. He is severed at the 
neck, which reveals muscle and a bloody hole.) 


Head: Where am |? Who am |?! What the hell is going- 
(Begins looking around and turning up, down, and to the 
sides) Everything seems at a weird angl- hey, what are 
you doing! Get that knife away from me! 


Waiter: Bon appétit, gentlemen. 
Head: (begins screaming) 


« SCP-603 | SCP-604 | SCP-605 » 


She sized up the Harbinger again. No wound was visible from where 
the harpoon had pierced its chest. There should have been a gaping 
hole. There was nothing. 


It didn't look at her. It was examining the Lock. 


"That was very clever," it said. "It almost worked. Another time, 
another place... maybe it would have." 


"Why didn't it?" she asked. 
"If | told you that," the Harbinger said, "... well, then you'd know." 
She couldn't think of a response to that. 


The Harbinger reached into its form and drew from its... robes? ... 
the item that, somehow, Yara knew it would have. A small ornate 
object, resembling a key. Exactly as it had looked in the recovered 
sketches. 


It looked so tiny. So ordinary. 


"Stop," Yara said. "Wait. Please. | know you've ... You obviously 
want to do this. But think about it, please. Do you have any idea 
what could be in there? Do you know—" 


"Actually..." The Harbinger seemed to chuckle a little. "| know 
exactly what's in there." 


Yara felt a little cold. Spell of containment... "Apakht," she said. 


"Apakht," the Harbinger agreed. It inserted the Key into the Lock, 
and turned the Key. 


There was a small flash, and something about the world was 
irrevocably changed. 


For a brief moment, the Harbinger wasn't a glowing hundred-winged 
angelic being. It was nothing more than an ordinary human. 


Their eyes met. 


"| know you,” Yara said, without thinking. "You're—" 


She couldn't finish the words. She couldn't even think the thought in 
her head. It — /t— the Harbinger was doing something to stop her. 


"Sorry," the Harbinger said. Its glowing radiance had returned in full. 
"Nothing personal.” It looked at the Lock, as if watching. Or listening. 


"What did you do? What is it? What did you unlock?" She could feel 
something vibrating in the back of her brain. Her eyes kept being 
drawn to the lock. It looked exactly the same, visually, but it was 
also incredibly different. "What's Apakht?" 


"It's the End," the Harbinger said. 


The fabric of reality began to unfold before their eyes. 


Canon Hub | The Gate Opens (Part 2 of 3) » 


The Gate Opens 


Yahweh awoke in His human form in His room at Site 17, knowing 
that the hour had arrived. 


In an instant, He was at Site 0. The personnel in the control room, 
some half asleep, leapt to their feet as He appeared. He took a 
moment to watch the dawning look of comprehension on their faces. 
05-14 staggered to his feet. 


"The Time has come," Yahweh intoned. 


In another eye-blink, He was at the Gate. The being that the 
Foundation called SCP-001-Gamma bowed in front of Him, lowering 
its burning sword, its four flaming wings spread in reverence. 


"Uriel," Yahweh said. "It is Time. Open the Gate. Lead My armies 
across the Earth." 


"| HEAR AND OBEY, MY LORD AND MY GOD," Uriel said. 


The Gate began to creak open. Behind it was an army of angels, 
thousands of bright creatures, many-eyed, burning with pure red 
light. They raised their white swords, singing a chant of war, and the 
rustling of countless brilliant wings filled the air. 


The thing inside Site 10, the singularity that was, was not, had 
always been, and had never been a part of the Lock, unfurled itself 
like a flower. 


Site 10 was demolished in an instant. No one inside had any 
moment for last thoughts before their deaths. 


Then they were all alive again, shaken, deposited somewhere in 
New Hampshire. Along with Site 10, intact, aside from the 
destruction the Harbinger had dealt to it. 


Meanwhile, the ruins of Site 10 and the corpses of everyone in it 
were buried deep within the vast valley that had never existed 
before on the planet Earth, and yet, now, had always existed, 
displacing a few thousand miles of desert in the Middle East. It was 
still both there, and not. Either way, it was. 


Waves of blue and green energy washed about, and the valley filled 
with plants and animals the like of which had never been seen 
before. 


In the very center, orbiting in a wash of iridescent rainbow color, the 
Lock hovered in the center of a tiny singularity. Open, at long last. 
Sending out its signal. 


Dr. Everett Mann was in the middle of dissecting a recently dead 
instance of SCP-098 when its legs started to twitch. 


Everett paused his scalpel in mid-cut and watched with curiosity. 
This had never happened before. 


He looked over at the cage of live SCP-098 specimens. They were 
also acting oddly. They were stock still. Not a single red-orange limb 
was making so much as a twitch. SCP-098 were not exactly the 
calmest species of anomalous crustacean, and Everett had never 
seen them behave this way. 


They appeared to be... watching. Waiting for something. 
The dead 098 instance kept twitching. 
"Hmmm," Everett said. 


His cell phone vibrated in his lab coat. This was the secure cell, the 
one that only rang in serious emergencies. Everett put down the 
scalpel and picked up the call. 


"Everett Mann, Site 2036, status five," he said. 
"The sword falls and rises," the voice on the other line said. 


"But it kills in one stroke," Everett replied. 


"Emergency Order Patmos is now in effect," the voice said. "995 has 
breached containment. 616 has opened. We are awaiting report 
from 001-Gamma. We are securing 073 and 076..." 


"And you want to know about 098," Everett said. 
"Have SCP-098 activated?" the voice asked. 


"lam sorry to disappoint you. They are acting a bit odd, but | cannot 
say..." 


The dead 098 instance froze, then burst into pale orange flame. 


After another moment passed, the other 098 specimens burst into 
flame, all at the same time. Little slots in their shells opened, and 
delicate, vibrating, dragonfly-like wings sprang out. As far as Everett 
could tell, each 098 instance sprouted as many wings as they had 
limbs. Even the dead instance. Which was now looking significantly 
less dead. 


They breached the sides of their cage in an instant, all chittering at 
once in some alien language. They ripped through the plate glass 
window of the sealed experiment chamber and swarmed away 
through the site, demolishing the walls that got in their way. Everett 
stared after them. 


"Never mind," Everett said to the voice waiting on the other line. "I'd 
say that probably counts." 


Yahweh appeared to the entire remaining thirteen members O5 
Council at once in thirteen different locations. He did not appear, of 
course, to the Administrator, because the last Administrator had died 
years ago and had not been replaced. O5-14 no longer voted on 
Council matters, and therefore the Council no longer need a 
tiebreaker vote. But to all the rest, He appeared. They were all His, 
and had always been His. Even the non-believers, who thought of 
him as nothing more than a reality bender with a god complex, 
would have no choice but to go along. They were a// His, as sure as 
the hands attached to His Body. 


Thirteen people leaped from their seats, from their beds, fell to their 
knees, tripped and fell to the ground. 


"Uriel, my servant, once told your Founder to prepare for the great 
and terrible day of the Lord," Yahweh said in thirteen voices at once. 
"This day now approaches. Make your final preparations. There is 
nothing else you will need to do but wait. My armies ride across the 
Earth. Soon | will call the Four Horsemen. Once the last judgment 
has been unsealed, then shall the great and terrible day of the Lord 
come. And then all will have Paradise." 


He returned to a single human body, without waiting for a reply, 
returned to a slight feeling of vertigo. He might have been an 
omnipotent super-being, but it would not have done to cram 
everything into this tiny human body that He'd elected to stay in until 
the End of Days was over. Because of that, He hadn't recently made 
a practice of existing in several places at once. It came naturally, like 
breathing, but still felt unusual, like breathing for the first time after 
spending long minutes underwater. 


Actually, there was something odd... some little twinge of memory, 
triggered by what He had just done... 


The thought slipped from His grasp. That was the downside of 
human frailty. This was a perfected human body, but even a 
perfected human body was still flawed compared to true 
omniscience. 


He knew the next step, as he always knew. He would return to the 
ancient Valley with no name. The first place He had ever created, 
the precursor to Eden. The Valley where none had ever set foot but 
Him, and never would, not even after the End of Days. 


He took a step, and was there. 
And... 


He wasn't alone. 


Klaxons blared in Site 2036. Everett Mann listened, bemused. 


Emergency Order Patmos or no, there was no need for all that 
racket. 


He stepped out of the former auxiliary research and containment 
chambers for SCP-098, into a mob of personnel. No one stopped to 
give him the time. Fairly rude, Everett thought. 098 wasn't even 
killing anyone. Just... leaving. The holes in the walls and ceiling 
could be rebuilt. 


He spotted Gears in the crowd and made his way over. Another 
person who could be trusted to deal with situations in a reasonable 
fashion. 


"It seems we have a massive containment breach," Gears said. 


"Yes, SCP-098," Everett said. "| hear 995 and 616 have breached 
containment as well. 001-Gamma, soon, I'm sure. But | don't see 
what the fuss is about. We've stopped XK-class scenarios before, 
we can do it again. The only difference in this case is that we might 
have to deal with 05-14 putting up a fuss—" 


Gears held up a hand. Interruption was not his style, Everett knew, 
which is partly why he could stop anyone in their tracks with that 
gesture. "I'm not speaking of Patmos," Gears said. "Nor 001- 
Gamma." 


"Oh?" Everett raised an eyebrow. "What else has gotten out?" 
"A whole damn lot," Gears said, perfectly calmly, swearing for the 


first time that Everett had ever heard. 


« "Apakht" (Part 1 of 3) | Canon Hub | Revelation (Part 3 of 3) » 


Revelation 


Yahweh walked into the Valley, more astonished than He could ever 
remember feeling. An astonishment beyond words. He had never 
been at a loss for words. 


The Valley — His Valley — was crowded. A massive flood of spirits, 
of winged things, of crawling things, of monsters, of people, of... 
Ol; 


Of others. 


A spirit whale swooped overhead. A gigantic furred thing lumbered 
its way over a distant mountain. A cadre of tiny glittering blue 
humanoids blew past His face, giggling, and were gone. A pure 
black humanoid figure appeared, blinked at Him, and vanished 
again. A massive not-centipede skittered by, giving Him a passing 
glare. 


Almost in a stupor, Yahweh made His way down towards the 
humanoid crowd, feeling, for the first time He could remember, the 
instinctive need to be near others like Him. 


As He approached, a figure detached itself from a crowd. A poised, 
brown-skinned woman with piercings in her lip, and long dark hair. 
For a moment Yahweh found Himself oddly attracted— 


|! am not a man, to wish for carnal knowledge— 
"El!" the woman said. 


"Who are you?" Yahweh asked, before He could register the 
impossibility of the question in His Head. 


The woman looked at him funny. "I guess it's not surprising you don't 
remember. We've all forgotten a lot in the past few thousand years. 
But you especially." 


Yahweh could think of absolutely nothing to say. 


"Asherah," she said. "It's Asherah. | was your consort for several 
hundred years." 


There were strange stirrings inside his head, alien memories that He 
could not comprehend— 


These were other gods, they were the false idols of the ancient 
times, He remembered being a god of the wind and a god of storm 
and a god of the sun, a parochial, jealous deity, He remembered 
creating the Heavens and the Earth in seven days, He (he) 
remembered being a completely non-divine yet unspeakably 
powerful boy born into suffering and pain, He remembered being 
someone else forced into the shape of an artificial god, He 
remembered a feeling of exultation upon realizing He was the last 
god standing, the last god who had not faded away, and the future 
of Earth was His forever, He remembered having no parents, He 
(he) remembered his grandmother's smile, He remembered a million 
impossible contradictory memories, and they were doing it, this 
cursed human form had let them in, it was them— 


"Enough!" He roared. 


Yahweh raised His hand, looked at the crowd of creatures trampling 
through His Valley, and with a wave of His hand wiped all the false 
gods out of existence. 


Or... He tried to, anyway. What He actually did was wave his hand, 
and then absolutely nothing happened. 


"You know," Asherah said with a wry smile, "| may be your ex, but 
wiping me out of existence is a really rude thing to try to do." 


She put her hand on Yahweh's shoulder without His permission, and 
did not explode into nothingness out of blasphemy. 


"| Know why you're here," she said. She pointed, directing His gaze 
towards the center of the Valley. 


Yahweh saw it, a tiny object that floated in a rippling core of colorful 
light that moved like water. 


It was a Lock. 


"You're here to end the world," Asherah said. "And so are we. 
Everyone here." 


"This is not possible," Yahweh said. He was feeling that vertigo 
again. 


"To be frank," Asherah said. "I'm not actually sure I'm the Asherah, 
and I'm not actually sure you're the Yahweh." 


"What." 


"You might have noticed that you remember a whole lot of 
contradictory things," she said. "So do I. | remember both helping to 
create the world and being born into it when it was already ancient. 
That's just for starters. Now maybe this kind of thing is part of being 
a god, or maybe... Maybe it's just part of being more powerful than a 
human was ever meant to be." She looked back at the crowd. "Not 
all these things are gods, | know that for sure. We're just two of the 
beings that are 'supposed' to end the world. Everyone in this valley 
is." 


Yahweh turned His glare on her. "So you — all of you — are here to 
make war with Me? To come against Me, to stop My End of Days?"