As the bird winged off into the distance, Callus pondered his next 
step. This must be carefully regulated, or terrible things could be 
done. 


He walked through the halls of the University where he had once 
worked, wandering towards that place where it had all begun so 
many years ago. As he walked through the desolate hallways, the 
years of abuse the University had suffered made themselves 


apparent. He was no longer the scholar he had been, but he was 
still able to see the mold growing from abandoned binders, the 
broken windows, the doors that had been wrenched from their 
frames by an army of beasts looking for any uninfected human. 


Magnate Callus held his head in his hands, a sense of defeat 
flooding him. Their very first mass shipment of birds had been 
infected with a rare avian flu, and only a few had survived to their 
destination. An entire crate, filled with little technological marvels, 
dropped dead. He could not afford a mistake of this scale, and he 
knew he would be unable to continue operating. 


Callus sighed and stood. He whistled, and a small monkey leaped 
from the floor to his shoulder in a few short bounds. There it stayed, 
perfectly balanced, as Callus left his office. He pondered his 
situation, staring up at the night sky. 


He would have to sell his technology to the University, and hope that 
the price would be enough to pay off that shipment. He felt a 
crushing sense of failure as he realized that he would never profit 
from his discovery. He closed his eyes, his head still pointed 
towards the sky, and felt the beginnings of a tear beneath his 
eyelids. His chance at fame, destroyed by one terrible mistake. He 
would be forever remembered as the brilliant inventor who failed. 


He had blamed himself. When there had been others, he never 
shared his name. He knew what it would mean for them to know that 
the man who had doomed their race was sitting only feet away. 
There had been days when he had stopped running, when he had 
simply sat down and waited for death to find him. But he had 
something to do. 


Handler Callus stood before a class for the second time in his life, a 
small cat perched on a table beside him. The tail ticked back and 
forth rhythmically as Callus spoke to the class, teaching them the 
proper tones and patterns for commanding the Controlled. He 
demonstrated with a quick, low whistle, and the cat leaped from the 
desk and towards Callus. He caught it in the crook of his elbow, 


holding the animal close to his chest. 


As Callus held the small cat, he heard a sound from outside. A very 
faint whistle, something that sounded almost like- 


Callus felt the ticking tail slow, then stop. The cat in his arms blinked 
and turned, staring at him wide-eyed, the confusion Callus felt 
mirrored in the cats green pupils. Another faint whistle, and Callus 
yelled as the cat bit sharply into his gloved hand. He dropped the 
cat, the thick glove still in its teeth, and ran. 


Survivor Callus entered the auditorium and stopped, standing 
straight. The rows of chairs were the same as they had been, 
undisturbed for years. He walked slowly, absorbing the feel of the 
room. Not even the death of humanity could take the majesty from 
this place. 


As Callus arrived at the stage, he assumed his old place. Never 
again would the freshman class of the University be greeted here. 
He felt the old pain in his chest flare up, and he leaned against the 
podium. Years of fear and guilt and running had wrecked his body, 
but he had still managed to survive. At least he had survived. 


Callus raised his eyes from the podium on which he leaned, taking 
in the empty room. As he looked, his eyes fell on a flash of color. 
There, standing atop a seat, was a bird. 


Callus sighed. Everything. He had lost everything. And now, this. 


He felt the slight pressure as the bird landed on his shoulder. He 
had always preferred them to land on his shoulder. Callus barely felt 
the nip as the bird gently bit his neck, holding in that position. Callus 
knew what was happening, what would happen. But he had been 
running for so long. Why keep going? 


Several minutes later, the bird released the pressure on his neck. It 
leaped from his shoulder and flew swiftly out the front door, gone 
almost before he noticed it had left him. He knew what would 
happen to him now. He sighed, and decided that he would lose his 
humanity with dignity. 


Pushing himself as straight as he could behind the podium, the last 
man on earth prepared to die. 


Pain 


Nikolai rubbed his hands together for what felt like the millionth time. 
Even after months here, he still was not accustomed to Stalingrad - 
the battle or the weather. / miss Vladivostok... 


Still, only one was better than both. For the first time in days 
(weeks? Time was subjective under constant gunfire), he was alone. 
He and a few other men had become separated from their unit; they 
had encountered a few Germans here, and the two men with him 
were killed and resting beneath a few centimetres of snow (Nikolai 
thought better of burying them). He could hear faint reports of 
gunshots and shouting in the distance, but in the area he was in was 
quiet. 


His thoughts were interrupted by a creaking noise in the bombed-out 
building behind him. He instinctively turned around and raised his 
Mosin-Nagant, darting his eyes and listening closely. After getting 
within a few feet of the building, he saw an arm stretched out from in 
front of a knocked-down doorway. 


He stepped inside, and immediately felt cold - but it wasn't the 
weather. He felt cold in the way he hadn't felt since he had first 
heard the Germans had invaded his country. 


Something isn't right here. This room feels...wrong. 


As he stepped in front of the doorway and saw the soldier lying on 
the ground, his unease turned into horror. 


It was a German soldier, dead but somehow breathing. His skin had 
peeled off of most of his face; Nikolai could see bare bone sticking 
out. His uniform was mostly in tatters; beneath it, his chest and 
stomach were almost entirely raw flesh. The sense of unreality only 
intensified when he raised his hand. 


"Stop!" Nikolai said in Russian. The man pointed at the door, his 


finger dangling from his hand as he did so. 
"L...lauf. Monster...I-l-lauf..." 
Nikolai did not know German, but his eyes widened all the same. 


"Get out," the man said in thickly accented Russian. "The man...he 
is not gone." 


"What man?" 


"The pain...." he retracted his hand to hold onto his stomach, which 
only had the effect of making him whimper in agony. 


"What are you talking about? Were you in a fire?" 


"No..." The man's eyes widened, and he gave Nikolai a look that 
scared him more than every German gun he had ever faced down. 


"The pain. Where...is...the pain?" 
"What?" 


"The...the..." Both his and Nikolai's thoughts were interrupted by the 
creature they saw in front of them. 


It was flesh and skin, but it was not man. It stared at Nikolai and 
inclined its head. 


The man on the floor saw him, and smiled. 


The creature looked down at him. His faced contorted ever so 
slightly into a small frown. Then, it faced Nikolai once more. 


And it smiled. 


Nikolai ran. He ran faster than he thought he could, through the 
courtyard and into another building. 


He looked around. The walls were the same as the previous building 
he was in. But the corpse was gone, and when he turned around, 
the door that he had come through was replaced by a corridor. 


A long, narrow, corridor, with a wooden door at the end. 


Nikolai walked down, more scared than he could remember being. 
He attempted to calm himself. 


Focus, Nikolai. Remember what mother taught you - "when you are 
scared, remember what you know for sure." 


He knew for sure that whatever that creature was, it was nota 
German. And somehow, he knew that wherever this corridor led to, 
neither it nor the other side of the door were in Stalingrad. 


As he stopped in front of the door, he noticed a note on the front of 
the door, written in Russian: 


"Don't overthink it. It's easier that way." 


He looked behind him. There was nothing behind him after a few 
metres; just a solid concrete wall where the corridor had previously 
been. 


His hand moved towards the door. He was too afraid to notice that 
he had not moved his hand on his own accord. 


He opened the door and saw...Lenin. 


Well, not quite Lenin. After his mind had taken a moment to register 
the shock, he recognized his location: Lenin's mausoleum. His 
mother had taken him here on a trip to Moscow in 1927, when he 
was just six. He saw people lined up to pay their respects, but could 
not see his mother or a younger version of himself. 


He tapped an elderly man on the soldier. "What is-" 
"You can't talk," he curtly replied. 


"No. Stop." He put his hand on Nikolai's lips, and put it down again. 
Nikolai tried to speak, but even as he felt his vocal cords, he did not 
make a noise. 


"The talking. It distracts me. When you are here, your mind talks for 
you." 


He looked down, and found his legs moving. Strangely, he felt 
neither shock nor urgency at this. /t's going to be alright, he felt, 
rather than heard, someone say. Walk up to Lenin. 


He did, and as he did so the crowd wordlessly parted to make way 
for him. Soon he was standing directly above the embalmed leader, 
staring down at its lifeless body. 


He felt a tug on his hand. A little Oriental girl stood next to him, 
smiling that same non-smile the creature had. 


"We talked about this part for a little while," the girl said tonelessly. 
"He wanted to grab you, take you into the corpse to bring you down 
further." 


Bring me down? He thought. 


She blinked. "I don't know why he insists on taking his time. Maybe it 
feels better that way." 


| do not know what is going on here? Where is Stalingrad? Where 
are Hitler's soldiers? 


She touched his hand - and as he did, a searing agony burned 
through him. He wanted to recoil in pain, but his body was frozen in 
place. 


"One at a time." A man walked up to her and put her on his 
shoulders, so she was now directly staring at him. 


"You won't have to worry about Stalingrad anymore," she said, 
speaking to him as if she were fifty years older than him. "He likes 
these places, you know. Warsaw, Leningrad...it reminds him of 
where it all began." 


His hand was as the German's had been - his skin peeled off in 
loose fragments, each one bringing him new pain as it flipped back 
and forth like a Soviet flag. 


He blinked, and Lenin's mausoleum was gone. Now he was in 
Berlin, which he recognized even though he had never been there. 
He stood on a platform on a roof, overlooking a large gathering of 
people with Nazi flags surrounding him on either side. Next to him, 
he was somehow unsurprised to find, was Adolf Hitler. 


"Here," he said, speaking through a microphone and pointing at 
Nikolai, "you see the Slav. You seem him in pain as he bears the 
wounds of his mind." The crowd cheered before Hitler raised his 
hands for silence. "Pain is eternal. Pain unites the Jews and the 
Slavs and the Aryans. Pain, as it strikes through us and silences us 
in its relentless embrace." 


Again, the crowd roared. This time, Hitler stepped towards him, and 
spoke to him while still speaking through the microphone. 


"| have seen you, Nikolai," he said. "| have seen Vladivostok, and 
Moscow, and Stalingrad. | have seen your mind as | have brought it 
here." 


Why? He heard himself think. 


"Because it calls for you." The crowd repeated the last four words 
Hitler had said in unison. 


"When | was there, in that fire, | knew pain. Then | fell down, and | 
met it. And now, you must meet it." 


As he finished speaking, the body of Hitler slowly changed. His 
mustache fell off, then his hair, then his uniform - until finally, the 
same creature he saw earlier stared back at him with a smile. 


"Pain." It said that one word, and said it many times, as the crowd 
repeated it. 


Nikolai did not remember when the scene faded, and when the 
words "pain" were replaced by thoughts in his head. He did not 
remember when the thoughts become feelings, then sensations of 
agony that spread beyond what his mind could comprehend. He 
could not remember when the year became a day, or a week, ora 
century. 


« SCP-971 | SCP-972 | SCP-973 » 


When at last it stopped and he found his body atop the corpses in 
Stalingrad, he screamed. For the pain he felt was not only in what 
remained of his body, but in its absence. 


He screamed at what he did not feel, for all he knew how to feel was 
pain. 


The Scarlet Shadow Saves The World 


The St. Paul night was colder than her Ex's heart, though a bit of 
frost was nothing a superhero couldn’t handle. 


The Scarlet Shadow crept atop the roofs of Main Street; the cloying 
scent of litter and car exhaust dogged her steps. Her crimson cape 
was an echo of the bloody secrets this city tried to hide. But tonight, 
it was going to be different. Count Cold and his lackeys in City Hall 
would be jailbirds by morning. If they weren't, the entire city could 
die. 


The Shadow leapt to the street below in a confident motion- and 
promptly slipped and fell the moment her feet touched the ground. 
“Uff-Da, | must have really botched that landing.” What a time to 
have to massage her ankles. “A little fall like that shouldn’t have hurt 
at all.” She ceased speaking as her prey revealed themselves in the 
opposite alley. It was time for justice. 


“Evening Count. Soon you'll be on ice, and not in a way you’d like.” 
She sauntered into the alley, letting the city’s dark heart know that it 
couldn’t scare her. She glanced at the second man. “I’m 
disappointed Mr. Mayor. | was hoping the rumors were wrong.” 


The two men looked at each other, and the Mayor took a step 
forward. “What the Hell are you talking about? Actually, who the fuck 
are ya?” 


“Don’t play dumb with me, boys. | have super senses, so your 
pathetic disguises are nothing before my piercing gaze.” She 
extended a finger from her fist of vengeance to accuse her enemies. 
“| saw the Arctic Crystal in your hand, Count. You can’t hide from 
Justice!” 


Count Cold jerked as if struck, but a haze of confusion still shrouded 
his eyes. “Arctic... Crystal? Anyway, no one fucks with my 
business.” He drew back his coat to reveal a dastardly freeze ray 


hidden in his inner pocket. “Get lost or get shot.” He turned his back 
to her, a mistake he’d soon regret. 


The heroine charged forward with her fist cocked, ready to deliver a 
punch with all the force of the North Star inter-urban heading for 
Duluth. The hit connected, and Count Cold fell in defeat. The Mayor 
stepped back and tried to hide the wad of cash he'd been holding, 
but was too shocked or foolish to run. Evil men just never seemed to 
comprehend being bested by a woman. 


“In this city, justice is red!” The Scarlet Shadow struck a victorious 
pose and imagined the glory that would come in the morning. This 
was her first step to saving the world. No more dead-end job; no 
more double life. She’d travel the world righting its wrongs, and 
finally get the respect she deserved. 


A fist connected with her cheek, fracturing her left cheekbone and 
knocking her to the ground. Before another thought could enter her 
dazed mind, a left hook broke her nose. Then came a blow to her 
gut, and her temple, and her chin. Blood bloomed on the ground as 
a fallen rose, its iron tang filling her mouth. 


“Wh..what?” She managed to stumble to her feet by grabbing the 
nearby wall. How could the Count be strong enough to overcome 
her durability? 


"You made me slip, Bitch!" The Count grabbed her cape and yanked 
her towards him. The tattered cloth ripped under the force.