"How did you get in here?" said Spencer. The only people with 
access to the lab were researchers and select administration. She 
didn't recognize him as one from the site. From a different area 
then? Someone even higher up? 


The man stepped towards her, still gripping the edge of the table. He 
swayed slightly as he walked. Almost unconsciously, Spencer 
stepped back with him. As if his presence were a physical force 
pushing her away. "You're better than this, Edith." 


"That's what I've been trying to tell my supervisor, but he just doesn't 
seem to listen." Stupid. Wisecracking to cover up the fear. As if that 
would make it less obvious. 


"They say this is about protecting the world. Keeping the peace. But 
you know better than that. You've already felt the doubt, haven't 
you?" He pulled a manilla folder from inside his coat. "You've seen 
the signs." 


"Should | call security? I'm beginning to think | should call security." 


He placed the folder on the table in front of her. "Read this. Then 
you'll understand." And with that, he left. 


When she got home, she opened the envelope. Inside was a stack 
of papers, perhaps 30 in all. The story they told seemed ridiculous. 
This was not the first Foundation to exist. Reality was not what it 
appeared to be. The world had ended once, and the founders had 
rebuilt it. Reshaped it. Put it under their thumb and squeezed until it 
screamed. 


It was a ridiculous story. One that went against everything she knew. 
And yet. something about it tugged at her. She should have just 
dismissed the report outright. Instead she began to search. And the 
more she searched, the more discrepancies she found. The more 
incongruities. The more warnings. 


She never saw the man again. A different Watcher returned to her 


two weeks later. By then she'd read the contents of the envelope so 
many times that she had them memorized to the punctuation, and 
she hadn't been able to get more than three hours of sleep at a time. 
The new man asked her if she understood what needed to happen. 
She said she did. He asked if she was ready. She told him to lead 
the way. 


And now, six months later, she sat in her office watching the blip that 
was Dr. Clef wander through the map of Site 2000 and disappear. 
She smiled, more out of reflex than happiness. Good. He was doing 
his part. Time to do hers. Grabbing her backpack, she left her lab 
and stepped into the bowels of Site 81. 


Entering the containment wing was sickeningly easy. The guards 
only gave her the most cursory examination as she walked through 
the check point. After all, wnat was there to worry about? Just Dr. 
Spencer doing some night research, like she had almost every day 
for the past year. A small thread of guilt tugged at the back of her 
mind, but she brushed it aside. She could wallow in guilt later. Now 
there was work to do. 


She shouldn't have had access to most of the containment areas. 
As a recently promoted full-researcher, the only scip on site she was 
allowed to even know about was whatever one currently fell under 
her study. But having two O5 council members and a site director on 
her side meant doors didn't stay locked for long. She flashed her 
badge over the door to L-wing and stepped through. 


Aside from a few echoing growls and hisses, the biological 
containment wing of Site 81 was silent. Dim lights highlighted the 
specks of dust drifting through the air. It felt more like a tomb than 
research station. Her footsteps echoed as she routed through the 
hallways. Around her dozens of anomalies held in only by a few feet 
of steel and glass moved. Most of them could easily kill her. Many 
would do even worse. It was a thought she'd become strangely 
comfortable with. Spend long enough dancing on the knife's edge, 
and you forget that it cuts. 


The door to the creature's containment sat on the eastern edge of 
the wing. Normally, it was impenetrable except by using enough 
explosives to destroy half the building it was in. All it took Spencer to 


Footnotes 
1. This door does not appear on any blueprints of the mall. 
2. Researcher Patton had not turned down any previous promotion. 


« SCP-714 | SCP-715 | SCP-716 » 


get in was a 7 digit key, provided by the O5. The door slid open 
without a noise. Exactly the same way it would for anyone else 
accessing the chamber. But she wasn't anyone else. 


Her stomach clenched as she stepped through the door. She'd read 
all the documentation on the scip. Every testing log, every data 
collection, every recovery file. Each boiled down to the same 
conclusion- we don't know. We don't know where it came from. We 
don't know what it wants. We don't know why it does what it does, 
and half the time we don't even know what it's doing. Even putting it 
in the biological wing had been a guess, a symbolic shrug of the 
shoulders accompanied by a "hey, at least it looks alive." 


The crystals grew in rough, uneven formations that didn't seem to 
have any underlying pattern. They had covered every centimeter of 
the 120 meters of surface area within the cell, and when that was 
done it had begun to cover itself. There were spheres, jagged 
pyramids, deformed pyramids, stalactites. Each crystal flashed with 
its own color and rhythm, reds and purples and yellows and teals 
that seemed to form a pattern just out of reach of full 
comprehension. As Spencer walked further into the room, the 
rhythms slowed. The colors deepened. A slow murmur built in the 
room. The whispers of thousands of inhuman intelligences, 
reawakening. 


In the documentation, beneath the careful layers of clinical 
language, Spencer had read fear. It wasn’t because they didn’t 
understand the creatures. The Foundation thrived in the realms of 
mystery. There was nothing more pleasurable to it than dissecting 
an enemy and examining it molecule by molecule. It was because 
they understood just enough. They understood that there was no 
observed limit to its replication. They understood that it warped the 
laws of physics around it. That it was communicating with something 
beyond the scope of this reality. But they didn’t know what. 


The Watchers did. And they wanted to meet it. Soencer withdrew 
the tools from her backpack- a jar and chisel. Simple enough. She 
began to chip off the crystals. The lights seized as she struck the 
rocks, and the whispers intensified, but there was no other reaction 
from the creatures. As the chips fell into the jar, their light faded to a 
dim glow. Once it was finished she replaced the jar in her bag, took 


a final look at the room, and left the room. She didn’t close the door. 


Behind her, too small for human eyes to see, luminous crystals 
sprouted along the corridor walls. 


« "Thieves!" Screamed the Ghost | Hub | Home Is Where The 
Hatred Is » 


Home Is Where The Hatred Is 


llias Kantos was going to get some fucking answers. 


Three days. Three days since his world had been shredded. Three 
days since they’d put him in this call-it-anything-but-a-cell. Three 
days since he’d last seen Cipher. And in that time he’d learned 
exactly nothing. No idea why he was here, or who these people 
claiming to be the Foundation were, or how the fuck he had been 
partnered up with a goddamn reality bender to bodyguard a missing 
O5. 


They kept telling him he wasn’t a prisoner, something he’d have 
been inclined to believe if there wasn’t a tail on him every time he 
left his quarters. It was difficult to spot among the heavy traffic of the 
Site 19 hallways, but at this point checking was as natural to Kantos 
as carrying a weapon, and they weren't trying very hard not to be 
seen. Or if they were, they were really bad at it. They stayed a 
constant 10 meters back, matching Kantos’ speed exactly. He 
suspected it was more for show than anything else. 


His mind still reeled a bit as he stepped into the hallways of Site 19. 
Every other the site he’d been unobtrusive, out of the way. Tucked 
underground or hidden inside some abandoned office building or 
just too far in the middle of nowhere for anyone to give a damn it 
existed. Even the largest facilities he’d worked at hadn’t had more 
than a thousand people working in them. Here, he passed that many 
on the way to the mess hall. Walking through the facility was like 
navigating a New York sidewalk. The map of the sub-wing of the 
floor he was staying on looked like it could hold every site he’d 
worked at once with room for a new research wing besides. 


Size aside, it wasn’t too different from any other Foundation facility 
he’d worked in. The same undecorated, blindingly-white walls and 
harsh lighting. None of the rooms in the hallway or on the map were 
named. It was just “research lab 14.07”, “administrative office 
4.001”. Standard Foundation security measures. Made it difficult to 


navigate if you didn’t know where you were going, but not 
impossible. Like all field work, it came down to recognizing the 
pattern. He tried to look aimless as he walked through the halls, like 
a restless guest just going out to stretch his legs. But his eyes 
darted from person to person, noting everyone he passed, 
evaluating, cataloging. He stopped briefly in the mess hall, 
observing the flow of traffic through the five entrances. Watching the 
patterns begin to form. 


He didn’t know what he was looking for. But that wasn’t important. 
What was important was the looking. Sifting through the details until 
what looked like noise revealed itself as something more. He tossed 
the rest of the Jell-o and set out into the hallways. Hopefully to his 
tail his route would look like mindless wandering. But the route he’d 
planned, though circuitous, would eventually take him through every 
bit of the wing. 


And slowly, the pieces came together. A picture began to form, one 
that had been hinted in the map and was now displaying itself in full. 
He saw it in the way people turned their heads when they walked. In 
the way traffic flowed to avoid certain sections of the wing. In the 
expressions of the guards as they watched the scientists and 
agents. It took another two days of observation to confirm, but then 
he was sure of it. None of these people were real. 


A fly crawled across the ceiling. Donna Cipher, who had once been 
known as Emily Vakes, watched it as she lay on the bed. She waved 
her hand and erased it from existence. She flexed her wrist again, 
and it reappeared, crawling along as if it had never left. Seventeen 
years since she’d used her abilities, and they still felt as casual as 
swatting a bug. But why wouldn’t they? They were as much a part of 
her as sight or smell or taste in others. She’d spent so long trying to 
ignore them, but they’d always remained. Waiting for this day. 


Whoever these people were, who called themselves the Foundation, 
were putting on a big show of trust. Taking the color off. Saying she 
could do as she wished. All fake. If she actually tried anything, they 
probably had a dozen stopgaps in place to separate her brain stem 
from her skull in a millisecond. At least, the real Foundation would. 
And though these people were pretenders, they seemed to be doing 


a good job of it. 


The room they'd given her was nice. Clean carpet. Queen sized 
bed. A well-stocked bookshelf next to a nice desk. It was the type of 
room you only gave to someone as a symbolic gesture. Cipher 
hated it. After twenty-six years of operating with the Coalition and 
Foundation, anything more comfortable than Motel Six made her 
suspicious. 


The door opened. The woman from the car strode in. Sam, as she’d 
introduced herself. She smiled at Cipher. For a second, Cipher 
considered just unmaking her. Sure, she probably wouldn't live 
another eyeblink if she did. But that moment in time would be 
satisfying as hell. Still. Probably not worth it. She settled for an 
annoyed sounding grunt. 


“| hope your accommodations are to your satisfaction,” said Sam. 
“| hope that isn’t a serious statement,” said Cipher. 


Sam laughed in a way that sounded practiced. “We care about your 
comfort, Emily. We want you to understand we don’t mean you any 
harm.” 


“What about 05-4? Is what that what you told her before you killed 
her?” 


“We didn’t kill her, Emily.” Sam pulled the chair from the desk and 
sat across from Cipher, legs crossed. 


“So who did?” 
“5-7.” 


“Bullshit.” Cipher watched the woman’s expression. She had a damn 
good poker face. Her muscles didn’t even flinch as she stared back. 


“It isn’t, and I’m sure he’d be happy to tell you himself, when the time 
comes.” Sam’s eyes darted over Cipher. Cipher wandered what she 
was watching for. Suddenly, the woman’s expression hardened. 
“Don’t try to pretend you’re a woman with loyalties.” 


“Excuse me?” 


“You worked for the Coalition because they could keep you from 
being consumed by your own power. And when they turned on you, 
you fled for the Foundation. That’s you do. That’s what you are.” 


“This is you asking me for help? It’s not a great strategy.” 
“I’m making sure we understand each other.” 


Cipher stood, took a few steps towards the door. “And what happens 
once we understand each other?” 


“Then we can fight the real enemy.” Sam pointed at the bed. “Sit 
down, please. | want to tell you a story. So you understand just what 
the stakes are.” 


She said it like it was a choice. Cipher sat. Sam began to speak. 


When she was finished, Cipher knew the world would never be the 
same. 


« War Within A Breath | Hub | Interlude - Dead As History » 


Stealing Solidarity Hub 


Stealing Solidarity 


A canon about cyborg catgirls 


Company Dossiers 


Boss 

Height: 1.95 m (6 feet 4 2 inches) 

Weight: 83 kg (183lbs) 

Hair Color: Calico 

DOB: 04/15/05 

Known Aliases: Major Motoko Kusanagi, Voyevoda, Sir Integra 
Helsing 


Leader of the Black Rabbit Company by unanimous nomination, 
Boss is the lynchpin and stabilizing force of the operation. She cuts 
the deals, she keeps the books, and makes sure that everyone and 
everything is running smoothly. She’s everyone’s big sister, and the 
one looked to for support and guidance both on a personal and 
group level. 


Boss was the driving force behind the original breakout — hardly the 
first to desire or attempt such an escape, but the first to organize 
and run a successful attempt. 


Boss focuses on practicality, sensibility, and efficiency; she uses 
what she has available to the greatest extent she can. Running the 
group is her responsibility, and she’s the kind of person who would 
be utterly directionless without that responsibility giving her focus. 


While she is not particularly prone to expressing her emotions 
outwardly, this does not mean that she is distant from her sisters: 
Boss knows how to read her sisters, and vice versa. 


She has a special fondness for Wizard, and was instrumental in both 
his admission into the Company and the adoption of the Company 
charter — to this day, neither one of them can remember who came 
up with the spaceship idea. 


Skillset: Administration, hand-to-hand combat, swordsmanship, 
tactical command, fixer, staff therapist, herding cats 
Humor: Balanced 


Momoko 

Height: 2m (6 feet, 7 inches) 

Weight: 95 kg (209.5 lbs) 

Hair Color: Black bicolor 

DOB: 04/15/05 

Known Aliases: Milly Thompson, Rally Vincent, Alex Armstrong, 
Yoko Ritona 


Momoko is the muscle of the Company, occasional second-in- 
command, and all around larger-than-life character. She’s loud, 
gregarious, easily excited, and fun-loving, fond of good friends, good 
food, and good drink in vast quantities: in short, a classical 
Epicurean.