The old lady suddenly sat up, eyes wide, every hint of annoyance 
and boredom vanished. “Good god, you're joking! What in heaven's 
name did she do?” 


05-4 looked over to her, shaking his head slowly as he spoke. “She 
chatted with the oversight staff... then, in the spare second when 
they weren't looking, she put her hand over the testing containment 
shutdown panel... and put a goddamn chess piece on it. A black 
queen, appropriately enough. She then left... just walked out the 
way she came, long gone before we even knew what the hell had 
happened. This was a message, Six. She could have, and she 
didn't. She was looking directly at the camera when she placed it. 
She wants us to know that she can touch us, however she likes, 
whenever she likes. The worst thing is, | don't know if she's wrong.” 


05-6 sat back, shaking her gray head slowly, eyes wide in disbelief. 
“How did it come to this? It's one little girl, how can this keep 
happening...” she trailed off, shrugging her shoulders in 
exasperation. 


“As | said, we need to talk. We have to do something. We can't keep 
hoping the normal protocols just catch her... she knows us, 
somehow, inside and out. We have to do something more direct, 


before someone else gets killed, or worse, she starts breaching 
containment.” 


They sat in silence, a unasked question floating between them. 
“This isn't my call to make, Six. You were MI-5, I'm just the biologist. 
| hate to actually acknowledge one lunatic as a valid threat, but | 
don't see anywhere else to go with this.” 

05-6 looked up at the ceiling, weighing costs and variables, 
meetings and resources... all of it academic, as the decision was 
already made. 

“... Fine. I'm calling it up. I'll put counter-intelligence on alert, and get 
a team together. Lord help me, I'll send a department of skilled, 
trained individuals after one mad, violent girl.” 

“What's this?” 

“Your job, what's it look like?” 


“We're putting together a four-man to go shoot one thief?” 


“Have you not been paying attention in class today? This isn't some 
simple thief. Good men have died because of this lunatic bitch.” 


“Who? Halgrave and Torn? They were sloppy at best, you know 
that.” 


“Listen, it doesn't matter. It's your job, go do it.” 

“Sir, yes sir, whatever you Say, sir.” 

“... Go get your men together, then get the hell out.” 
“Sir, do we have a proposed location, sir?” 

“Stop that. Now.” 

“Where is she?” 


“We have a partial trace hit near a hotel in Chicago. You'd know that 


you will see. 


Freedom from the antithesis zombie city. Freedom from 
the unknowledge of unexistence. 


You will know the light and pray for darkness. 
Addendum 2: Recovery Notes SCP-719 


SCP-719 and SCP-719-1 were recovered from the site of an 
apparent murder-suicide at a ranch outside , Arizona. The ranch 
had been purchased by a cult calling itself “The Guardians of the 
Light"4 who reportedly had at least 35 members resident at the 
compound. On / /19 , agents of the ATF raided the compound 
based on rumors of a weapons cache. The raid found the bodies of 
approximately 20 members of the cult in a barn that had been 
converted into a church. 19 cult members had been shot execution- 
style while facing the altar. The corpse of the 20th member, 
apparently the gunman, was found at the altar with third-degree 
burns on 95% of the body. SCP-719 was on the altar, rear case 
removed, and one instance of SCP-719-1 clutched in the corpse's 
hand. The scene was quarantined and news of the incident 
suppressed by U.S. Intelligence agencies when all bodies were 
found to show advanced cases of radiation poisoning. The 
Foundation was called in when U.S. authorities discovered the only 
radiation source was the case of SCP-719, whose residual 
radioactivity could not account for the damage to the victims. 


The gunman had a note on his person which had almost completely 
burned. Forensic analysis of the remains have recovered the 
following text: 


[...] Cannot understand wh [...] 0 to the u [...] ot what 
they beli [...] op them before they go an [...] ing this, | 
failed. You have to destroy the [...] t's not a window. It's 
a door. 


Footnotes 

1. A minimum of 2 operational standby units shall be kept on site at 
all times 

2. Tests have involved recorded and live over-the-air broadcasts, as 


if you read your goddamn paperwork.” 
“Yeah... see you in a few boss.” 

“.. Hey, Rickter?” 

“What?” 

“| hope she sees you coming.” 

“Love you too, boss.” 

Recall... 

Quiet Game 


Or forge ahead 
-soon- 


Work Journal 2 


Day 45 


It's so strange, at times. Sitting where my father once sat, working at 
the same battered, second-hand desk, sifting through the notes 
black with his nearly indecipherable scrawl. He always complained 
at how his brain outstripped his hands. He'd tape hours and hours of 
audio, but some masochistic urge seemed to compel him to 
transcribe everything to hard copy. | suppose it worked out for me... 
the notes in this old desk are all | have left now. 


| remember first finding these... the attic office had been closed up 
by mom since dad vanished... along with every scrap of research 
and identification. He'd just... dropped out of the world. Mom... went 
crazy. She called everyone, everywhere, the university, the police, 
even dad's office at InTENergy, nobody had seen him. It's like he'd 
packed up all his work, and just stepped out of time and space. 


This is supposed to be a work journal, but | think, with the subject 
matter, | should be allowed a little digression. Mom... is in the 
hospital again. This might be the last time. She was so connected 
with dad... it's not even that she snapped when he left, it was just... 
a whole part of her was missing now, like a limb gone... and she just 
bled out through it. She seems calmer now... but that just might be 
the medication. On the positive side, | can come in here without her 
going into hysterics now. | do wish, however, that it didn't have to be 
this way. 


Anyway, on to the actual work? Lovely. 


It seems that dad was working on some very, very obscure stuff. 
Basically, it looks like he was theorizing about reality, states of 
matter and being, and the idea that was we see and interact with, 
along with what we theorize to be the building blocks of reality are 
really no more valid than how much we feel they are. It's... dizzying. 
| vaguely remember some of this from back when dad was still 


teaching. He got stuck on an idea... | really didn't understand it at 
the time, but | remember dad fighting with the other professors. 

Someone called him a crank once, when they were over visiting... 
dad yelled, and nobody really visited from the university anymore. 


It's odd how, looking back, | can remember things in context now. At 
the time, “tenure review” didn't mean anything to me, but now | 
realize that dad must have really miffed some people off. That was 
about par, though. He was a real “nutty professors” type, would get 
lost for days in a project until mom or someone dragged him back 
out... and never thought of the political side of things... that what he 
was doing might actually upset some people. 


I'm wandering again. In truth, there's no heavy, startling revelations 
for the day. However, | did find an odd notation on the back of a 
note. It referenced someone named Professor Kanin, with some 
kind of code that | assume is an email address or contact 
information. It's the best lead | have so far, which is really quite sad. 


Day 49 


Checked up on the Professor Kanin thing. It goes to a now-defunct 
email address based out of a university in Ireland. | did some 
checking, and apparently this Kanin was doing a lot of out-there 
research as well, but on the less theoretical side, looking for new 
ways to approach things like biology and engineering... and he's 
apparently been missing for almost as long as dad has. Vanished 
one day, no note, no body, all his research cleared from his home 
and office... just gone. 


I'm starting to get a little nervous. Hearing that, and crawling through 
the oddness of dad's notes... it's hard not to get paranoid. | caught 
myself looking over my shoulder more than once the last few days... 
feeling eyes on me or some such. | keep trying to ignore it, but there 
itis. Dad was a bit paranoid as well, if | recall... never let any of his 
in-progress stuff anywhere near shared labs or work areas... mom 
forbade him from putting a full lab upstairs, but all his theoretical 
work was poured out on his ranks of white-boards and legal pads. 


I've been in this stupid library from open to close for nearly two days 


now. It's hard to know even what to ask for... more than once, I've 
found myself in the fiction section, reading up on topics that only 
appear in sci-fi stories... or horror ones. Some of the things he 
theorizes... things that can slide between here and elsewhere as 
easy as we pass through air... but insulated by a membrane of this 
“otherwhere’”, they'd be nearly untouchable in our reality. He actually 
says: “The interaction of different bioforms in our own reality is not 
one paved with compassion and ease of interaction. Let us hope the 
natives of these far spheres are friendly.” 


Greg called me, again. Asked if | wanted to get out for a bit, have a 
drink maybe. | turned him down. Again. | feel bad, but... | can't just 
let this sit. | tried to talk to him about all... this, but he just nodded 
and looked sympathetic. | can't get people to understand... a whole 
part of my life was just... ripped out. | can't just drop it... | can't just 
let it go. | catch myself getting... disconnected. Like dad used to 
sometimes... so focused, things like food or... emotional attachment 
just fade in terms of priority. Even worse... | sometimes find myself 
welcoming it. 


Anyway. | have all the copies and books I'll need right away, anda 
few | ordered should be here within the week. | have vacation time 
saved up with the university, and there's no active projects at the lab 
that need my direct oversight... so I'll hopefully be able to track this 
thing to ground... maybe get closure. | don't know. | keep wondering 
what I'll do if it turns out that dad just ran out on us... or ended up in 
a ditch somewhere... but | don't think that's the case. 


Maybe I'll take some time and yell at my cell phone company... | 
keep getting this weird clicking when I'm on a call. It's been going on 
for nearly three days now. To add even more to my paranoia, it 
started about the same time | emailed Kanin. | think, more than a tin- 
foil hat, | really need to get some rest. 


Follow the breadcrumbs... 
Work Journal 2 (cont.) 


Or turn back while you can. 
Splinters 


Work Journal 2 Cont 


Day 52 


Very...unsettling developments. Dad's notes kept referring to “Unit 
14” in reference to collected materials and documentation. He'd go 
on about something, more often than not what he came to dub the 
“physical anchors” of these reality anomalies... and then just break 
off, stating a reference number, and Unit 14. | looked everywhere, 
through everything, tore the house apart, and didn't find anything 
that made any sense. I'd nearly given up, just writing it off as part of 
the stuff he'd taken with him... and then | went though mom's bills. 
She'd apparently missed a payment on something since going to the 
hospital. A storage unit. Unit number 14. 


To my credit, | didn't speed the entire time. | spoke to the gentleman 
at the counter, telling him about my mom, and how she'd missed the 
payment due to sickness and such... he hemmed and hawed about 
letting me in, but once I'd made the payment with an extra twenty 
bucks, he gave me the spare key. My hands were shaking, 
physically shaking when | opened the unit... | had no idea what to 
expect, really. | almost screamed when | saw just a blank wall of 
boxes. Just another dead end... 


| decided to look, and that's when | found the papers. Mounds of 
them, mostly from newspapers, many from other countries, printed 
articles, scientific notes... it looked random at first. But there was a 
pattern. In notes and scribbles, dad walked me through it... four men 
vanishing from a farm in Idaho. An explosion in a preschool. A string 
of rapes and murders in Japan. The stories didn't make sense. They 
started shocked, confused... one person even reporting seeing a 
“dinosaur” fleeing a ruined home... and then suddenly a clean, 
sanitized explanation, and the story is smothered. It seemed crazy... 
but with dad's notes, and the research... it started to make a sick 
kind of sense. 


A pile of notes stuffed in a box gave me the next piece. Dad 


theorized that these “anchor points” would sometimes jut in to our 
reality... often with unpleasant effects. Kanin apparently felt the 
same, but he was less worried about the math behind it, so to 
speak, but in the practical applications such points could have. They 
argued back and forth for a while, Dad calling Kanin reckless at best 
and suicidal at worst, Kanin telling dad he was being an old maid, 
too scared to take a leap. Kanin apparently said he was going to 
publish a paper on the whole concept... and then it just ends. 


Nothing dated after that letter. Nothing relating to the paper or what 
happened... nothing. It was like looking over a cliff. | think... this is 
when he left. When dad vanished. It was dark by the time | left, 
carrying a few boxes, feeling numb and shivering. The guy was 
locking up, seemed rather glad to have me out so he could go 
home. | went home, ate a sandwich and lay down. 


| was watching the news this morning, and there was a blurb about a 
fire. The storage place... the place burned down. They didn't know if 
it was arson or not. It burned down less than an hour after | left... 
maybe less then half an hour. The guy from the office was found 
burned to death. It's... getting harder and harder not to be paranoid. 
|... don't carry my phone anymore. It's in my car, with the battery 
pulled out. | feel so alone, so isolated, so cold. | can't even see 
mom, they say her state is too delicate right now. I'm scared. 


I'm scared, but God help me, | can't just stop. 


Day 53 


| haven't been out all day. My shades are drawn, lights out... I'm 
writing this in the basement, with the door locked. | woke up this 
morning, went down and collected the mail. Bills, a newsletter from 
the university... and one of those big, tan envelopes that tie shut. It 
was weird... no return address, no anything, just blank. | almost 
didn't open it, | kept thinking about that stupid fire. | did, finally. It 
was a photo. Just one, single photo. Black and white, but newer, not 
faded like those old photos can get. I'm... not... really sure what it's 
of. There's some massive... thing in the middle, looking half rotten, 
and a bunch of men around it, most with guns, but there's three men 
in lab coats, seeming to be looking over the thing in the middle, or 


doing something with it. 
The one on the right is my father. 
Older and thinner, but him, | know it. I'd swear to it.