It took a week. The lab techs blinked at how simple it was to find 
documents now that she'd rearranged the previously-outdated 
catalogs. They thanked her briefly, and moved her onto the cold 
storage freezers. It was a step up, Zyn told herself. She would 
handle the dead bugs first, and push forward until they trusted her 


Gonzalo considering his own moral inequity, Gonzalo here 
seems to be more concerned that his ‘tribute’ will be sufficient 
for the ambassador. The lights go down. 


1:21:15 — Fifth sighting: SCP-701-1 enters stage left at the 
end of Act IV, Scene 2 as Antonio leaves to secure a blade for 
his coup. Rather than exiting, Antonio stops in front of 
SCP-701-1, who hands him a long dagger. (This is believed to 
be the first appearance of the item classified SCP-701-19 -B; 
note that there is no mention of the item in the prop list or the 
other records maintained by the production.) SCP-701-1 and 
Antonio depart the stage together. 


1:32:41 — Sixth sighting: SCP-701-1 appears on stage left as 
Cornari and Lodovico exit. 


1:35:10 — The lights come up. Act V, Scene 1 — the Banquet 
scene — begins as scripted. 


1:40:52 — Antonio enters, bearing a piece of parchment. Here 
the textual deviations begin in earnest: rather than the 
parchment being Petrucchio’s confession as scripted, Antonio 
instead describes it as an invoice from the ambassador of 
Alagadda, proving that Gonzalo owes more tribute than he 
intends to pay. 


1:41:42 - SCP-701-1 enters at this point from stage right. The 
entire cast seems to perceive it. Gonzalo stands up, curses as 
an aside to the audience, and runs for stage left. The rest of 
the cast — including Alinda and Francisco, who enter from 
stage left — physically restrain Gonzalo and drag him back 
onto the stage. SCP-701-1 meanwhile moves to the center of 
the stage, where it stands in front of Gonzalo’s throne. 


1:43:08 — A noose is dropped onto the stage from above. The 
cast force Gonzalo into the noose, as he begins to curse in 
Italian (and in one place, possibly Latin?). The noose is drawn 
taut, and the cast drops Gonzalo; he begins to asphyxiate. 


1:43:32 — Antonio speaks: “With this, the tribute, in full it is 
paid.” The actor takes SCP-701-19 -B (the dagger) and draws 


with the living. 


That night, she opened her notebook and turned to the page with 
the butterfly. She drew another butterfly below it, wrote the date, and 
wrote one word: "Soon". 


Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your silence that of the forest. 


Zyn was mentally reciting passages from Sun Tzu the day she met 
someone she immediately admired. 


She had been rearranging preserved liver slices in the communal 
cold storage chambers (seven years of backlogged specimens since 
the last big sample transfer and consolidation) when someone called 
out her name. "Kiryu, is that you?" A man stepped between the 
stainless steel shelving units. He looked about her age, maybe a 
little older. "It's good to finally meet you. Did you know people in the 
other bio labs call you the freezer fairy?" 


She was getting a hell of a lot of mileage out of her practiced "true 
neutral" expression. But she was curious. "I'm Zyn. | don't know 
about the fairy part, though. Last | checked, no magic wand, no 
sparkles, no wings." She made a show of looking over her shoulder 
as if checking. 


The man smirked. "Researcher Kiryu, the one who flits between the 
shelves like a butterfly on the wind." He waved at a nearby shelf. 
"Everything gets magically organized when you're around, though 
no one notices you actually moving things." 


Zyn wondered if that comment was supposed to sound vaguely 
insulting. She also wondered why no one seemed to want to call her 
by her first name, but went with a smile anyway. Even if you 
disagree, don't challenge someone unless you need something from 
them. "Guess that does sound like me." Stay focused on the 
immediate. "Is there a specimen you're looking for?" 


"Yeah. Any chance you know where that three-headed sulfuric acid- 
spitting centipede and its siblings are?" The man shifted his gaze to 
a collection of microscope slides, and Zyn got a better look at him: 


tall, sturdy-looking shoulders, and a rather garish streak of blue (/'/ 
have to ask him about that sometime) in his otherwise dark hair. 


Zyn paused, racked her memory, and told him where he'd find the 
centipedes in about five seconds. The man seemed impressed. 
"Pretty impressive, Kiryu." He grinned and scratched the collar of his 
shirt, the motion revealing a small dragon-like design embroidered 
onto the sleeve of his lab coat (this guy does needlework ?). "What 
will the lab techs do when you leave this place behind?" 


When Zyn offered the man a hesitant chuckle (maybe he'd like to 
get lunch sometime ?), he folded his arms (hiding the embroidery. Is 
he embarrassed by it?) and shrugged. "I'm joking. But there's been 
talk in the labs about having you train some of the others. Your 
system works more than well enough to adopt. Higher-ups like your 
ideas." 


This person is privy to conversations that I'm not supposed to hear, 
was what Zyn heard. She nodded, and this time her smile was 
genuine. "If the system works, I'd be happy to teach others to use it. 
Thanks for the heads-up, Researcher...?" 


"Mercer. Riven Mercer. | work in the lab two doors down." 
That was a lab on 408's feeding rotation list. 


"Nice to meet you, Researcher Mercer. Maybe we'll run into each 
other again sometime." We're definitely running into each other 
again sometime. 


Zyn didn't write his name down. She would remember it without the 
notebook. 


Three days later, Zyn was given a team of bright-eyed super-excited 
lab interns. Over the next few weeks, she taught them how to 
navigate the labyrinthine cold storage rooms, setting each intern in 
charge of a section of the organisms and organs locked in frozen 
sleep. She taught them how to talk to the supervisors, coaxed them 
to take pride in their responsibility, to be the experts that others 
would ask for help, to carve out their own prestige. 


The division of labor gave her time to return to the labs, handling 
samples instead of just putting them on the right shelves. It was still 
a far cry from working behind the locked doors marked "SCP-", but 
Zyn still had her interns, her reputation as "The Freezer Fairy," and 
a notebook full of favors waiting to be called in. Would it be enough? 


She remembered Mercer's carefree smirk, and the centipedes. 


The freezer team settled into a daily routine. Zyn would meet with 
the interns twice a day in the morning and evening. The time in 
between was spent patrolling the cold storage. Sometimes they'd all 
exchange terrible science puns they'd heard in grad school — the 
guy in charge of the human anatomy section a/ways got the most 
groans. The day the shyest intern told her that he looked forward to 
the team lunches, Zyn hummed upbeat pop tunes for the rest of the 
shift. 


Things were comfortable. 


Then, one day after lunch, Zyn entered the cold storage vault and 
heard a scream. 


Following the noise, Zyn rushed through the racks of stinging, 
piercing, biting specimens, and stiffened when she saw one of her 
interns sprawled against a shelf, clutching an arm and breathing 
raggedly. On the ground, scuttling through shards of broken 
specimen case, was a vividly-striped magenta scorpion. 


Cold storage suddenly seemed warm compared to the ice in her 
veins. Not on my watch, fucker... 


Zyn grabbed the only thing she could reach—a stapler. Maneuvering 
herself towards the gasping intern, Zyn clenched her hands until 
they steadied. In a split second she saw the pincers click and the 
stinger sway. 


Zyn lashed out in sheer reflex. The toe of her right shoe met 
carapace, and the scorpion was flung against a steel cabinet. It fell 
and flopped onto its back, and Zyn stomped on it, swiveling her foot 
as she crouched down to put her full weight onto the thing once, 


twice, three times. 


When she saw the still form twitch, she brought down the stapler's 
pointy edge in terrified reaction, the sound of her intern fighting for 
breath drowning out the last noises made by the clawed menace as 
it went limp. 


Zyn breathed out and collapsed against a wall, shaking, scorpion 
guts smeared on her gloves. 


"That's why we wear closed-toed shoes in the lab," she said. 


She wouldn't remember much of the next hour; her interns later told 
her that she'd seemed catatonic as she silently transferred the 
scorpion's near-dismembered remains into a reinforced plastic 
container, and the biohazard team arrived to clean up the mess. 


Zyn later endured a long and demeaning lecture from her supervisor 
about the crucial specimen she'd destroyed, her carelessness when 
it came to emergencies, and her disregard for proper procedure. 
She should have let security handle it, left the intern to fend for 
herself. Untrained personnel shouldn't engage. Better to lose one 
than two. 


The callousness of the higher-ups left Zyn seething quietly for 
weeks. Apparently, the simple medical kit tucked away at the front 
entrance of cold storage was supposed to be more than sufficient. 
Besides, the interns had been trained in emergency procedures (a 
two hour seminar months ago) and a breach that threatened the life 
of only one person was a low priority situation... 


That night, Zyn tossed The Art of War back into the lost and found 
box. 


It was obvious that the freezer interns couldn't count on immediate 
backup for anything less than a dinosaur breaking out. Zyn decided 
that her team would never again be left in the lurch with only some 
bandages and disinfectant. She didn't want a med-kit in every 
section, she wanted a specialized chemical kit on every shelf: 
unique to the type of anomalies stored nearby, whether poisonous 


arthropod, noxious reptile, or rabid mammal. 


The specialized kits would take months to design, approve, and 
process, and even longer to put together. Zyn knew that if she 
worked on a side project, she wouldn't be able to compete for a 408 
slot... To hell with it, she thought. 


Her pitch was met with enough enthusiasm to get her interns kicked 
out of the cafeteria. The next day, Zyn began drafting her proposal. 
The report was twenty pages long and cost her several nights of 
sleep, but when the first prototype (Arthropod series, Zyn noted with 
a grin) was handed to her by an amused-looking Riven Mercer 
himself, she felt like she was finally getting somewhere. Within a 
year, the kits had been implemented in every lab at the Site. 


By that time, Zyn had transferred to Riven's lab to begin advanced 
lab experimentation. Unfortunately, Mercer had gone on to work in 
anomalous object processing (promoted before | could catch up...), 
and the 408 roster had been changed. 


Her new lab wasn't on the list. 


A few months passed. The days turned into routine, an endless blur 
of tests, samples, analyses. 


“Researcher Kiryu?” Someone Zyn didn’t know was standing behind 
her. Someone she was immediately suspicious of, since she was 
currently in the biological anomaly lab, holding a syringe filled with a 
caustic substance, and the man didn't seem to care about startling 
her. 


“Yes, sir?” Zyn capped the syringe and placed it to the side. The 
motion had become familiar after months upon months of practice. 
Being interrupted in the middle of an experiment wasn't. 


“I’ve seen your group’s work. Your former interns are doing an 
excellent job.” The man was... hard to place. He was a doctor; that 
was all she could be certain of. She couldn't recall ever seeing him, 
meaning he had to fall on one of the extremes. Newest of the new, 
Ors: 


Zyn suppressed a twitch. “I’m glad to hear the interns are doing well, 
sir,” she ventured carefully. 


The man ignored her pleasantries. “You're moving up to my lab. 
Check your memos, move your belongings, find someone to watch 
your ducklings. Oh, and bring protective gear. I’m going to dissect 
brains today. | expect you in place in one hour, freshly scrubbed.” 


He didn’t tell her that they would be dissecting the brain of a 
deceased reality bender. 


When she exited the lab hours later, visibly shaken, Zyn reviewed 

what she’d learned: Dr. Everett Mann was a no-nonsense man. He 
was meticulous in his procedures, terrifyingly adept with a scalpel, 

and her new supervisor. 


The next day saw her analyzing the brain slices under microscope. 
Successive weeks led to the generation of pages upon pages of 
complex diagrams, sketches, figures. With so much data came the 
possibility of manipulation. Practical manipulation, Mann promised, 
and the engineering of new anomalies nigh-fully understood. 


Further time spent with Dr. Mann revealed an almost worrisome 
fascination with the esoteric structures of the once-anomalous 
cadavers, verging on mania. Though some of his beliefs were rather 
unorthodox, he held to them fiercely, with a self-assuredness Zyn 
envied. When Mann was in these excited phases, usually pacing 
around in a lab coat splattered with the evidence of successive 
dissections, Zyn listened raptly to his theories and scribbled out 
pages and pages of notes. 


Six months into her tutelage, Zyn was granted her first pet project: 
“Kiryu, | want you to take what you've learned and make something,” 
Mann said. “Give it a form and give it a will to obey. You will be 
assigned ten lab assistants and you have authority to make requests 
for materials, which will be approved or denied as | see fit.” 


That night Zyn tore out the notebook page with the butterflies and 
taped it to the wall, next to the calendar. 


Without hesitation, she crossed out the "408". 


A few years passed. During that time, Zyn ended up discussing her 
pet project with almost everyone she met. It started out as smalltalk 
when people asked what she was up to in the labs, but the 
excitement in the replies came as a shock to her. People from all 
sorts of departments offered to help out, and to Zyn's surprise, 
turned aside her insistence on repaying the debts. 


Raw materials? Level-2, full-time researcher, Anatomy and 
Physiology department. The guy who remembers the day of the 
week based on the color of the pen in his lab coat pocket. 
Enthusiastic. My favorite intern from the old team. 


"Researcher Kiryu! It's been forever! | got promoted, just like you 
thought! Remember, you called me the Viceroy of Viscera ‘cause | 
was in charge of the organs in storage? | miss you big time, yeah. 
You and your dumb bug jokes. Come on in, we just got a new 
‘bender brain..." 


A framework? Level-3, senior researcher, BioMed Engineering 
department. The lady with the painted nails. Easygoing. | like 
listening to her talk about the latest site news. 


"Oh hey, 'Ryu. Good to see you again. You should visit, I'm pretty 
sure there's a deceased 408 sample sitting around in my lab 
somewhere. More than enough for a cell swatch. Thanks so much 
for teaching my BME techs your system, by the way: the archives 
and freezers haven't been so neat in decades." 


Power? | need some way to keep this thing alive, and living. Level-4, 
lab director, jumps between three departments. The older woman 
who likes the soft cloths used to clean eyeglasses. Stately. | looked 
up to her when | first met her. 


"The crystals bend the light, see. You can work the wavelengths into 
whatever pattern you like. Test them out, Kiryu. That kit of yours 
saved two of my fingers last week." 


Will? How do | make this thing process, learn, adapt, obey? Level-4, 


lab director, Research and Development. The gentleman whose 
projects are all ongoing, has yet to bear workable results, who 
ended up using his own cells for his experiments. Meditative. He 
understood how | felt when everything was stagnating.