"Such violence," Dodger moved up beside Rhiannon, "Alright; we 
send you to Somalia, and if you try to run, we kill your sister." She 
patted Rhiannon affectionately on the head. 


"Let's get you properly settled in, first," Mr. Kone put in, gloves and 


fish gone as he extended a hand to Priscilla Locke, "It will be a 
pleasure having you on board, Ms. Locke." 


Priss shuddered lightly, then silently cursed herself. How long was it 
going to take to get over her visceral reactions? Vestigial emotions 
from a world long gone. She forced herself to shake his hand and 
smile. The simple little pleasantry filled her with an almost 
overwhelming sense of joy at having done so, "Thank you, Mr. 
Kone." 


Mr. Kone turned to the other man with them, "We will have to warn 
the Work Group. You got this, Lindsberg?" 


The other man shrugged and nodded, "Sure. Something like this 
would warrant using one of the toy birds, wouldn't it? We got nine 
boxes yesterday. 'Bout time we start putting them to use." 


Hub | Who We Are » 


-pock claims he has "reversed the polarity" on a phas- 
[DATA CORRUPTED] 


« SCP-673 | SCP-674 | SCP-675 » 


Who We Are 


"There is no way you are drinking that." 
"Oh, but somebody has to." 


"You are just trying to spook me, aren't you? Tell me you are trying 
to spook me." 


"| don't think he is trying to spoo-ook you, Frank!" 
"Just shut up, Desjeux. Now, please, PLEASE, put the glass down-" 


In a single swift movement, the Rabbi downed the half filled glass. It 
wasn't difficult; after all, it was a small one, a standard piece of 
plastic made to be filled, discarded and dumped in crazy parties 
where the young would go and hook up in so many cities of the 
industrialized world. 


Or in some operations run by people from those countries in regions 
where plastic glasses were not so commonly used. Marere, 
Somalia, was one of such places. 


Or in a very specific type of party within that operation. A party of 
three, cramped in the small lab organised in the large all-terrain 
heavy duty semitrailer that served as their temporary base of 
operations. A party composed of Frank Westinghouse, also called 
Skipper, Sarah "Opal" Desjeux and the Rabbi, Jacob Torres. 


Who had just drunk a potentially lethal concoction. Frank remained 
frozen, his hand hovering close to where his holster used to be. 
Sarah looked a bit stunned but her excited grin was still there, with a 
certain measure of trepidation attached to it. Both of them looked at 
Jacob as if he was going to explode into a portal for the legions of 
hell. 


"... nnno. Sorry," smiled the Rabbi, "It tastes fine. | mean, it is water, 


so it's not like it was gonna taste of anything in particular. What 
would hippopotamus pee taste like, anyways?" 


Opal clapped her hands and hugged the Rabbi, the tension 
suddenly dispersed. "Oh, this is perfect, perfect! We'll finally be able 
to clean the water tanks!" She turned to Frank. "I'll go warn the 
others so they start unhinging them!" 


The short woman zipped by Frank, who was grunting soundly at the 
scene. The Rabbi looked at him. 


"Yeah, she's always that bubbly and it annoys you, | know... you 
could try and smile though." Frank rubbed his eyes at that. "Skipper, 
the Hippo magic works. What's the matter?", he calmly added. 


Frank laid against the tank that occupied most of the semitrailer. It 
wasn't just a small mercy, he needed the moment of pause; his legs 
were shaking still, and he didn't want to show how scared he had 
been. Not to the Rabbi. He would never hear the end of it. 


I'm not even wearing my gun anymore. Why do | keep going for my 
holster? 


"Look, Jacob. We had an agreement. You and your people teach 
me about what we can do for all these poor people and fill that 
emptiness in my heart and all that crap, and | tell you people all you 
didn't ever think and needed to know about OpSec. You know, that 
thing necessary when taking anomalies in?" 


"Abnormal donations, Skipper. | know it's an old habit, but really. 
Learn the lingo, okay?" the Rabbi answered; he was busying himself 
already with samples, already categorizing new vials of water from 
‘dirtier’ to cleaner so they could test the Hippo. "It'll take us a while to 
actually clean the tanks, I'm afraid-" 


"Anomalies, abnormalities, whatnots," Frank said. "We need 
operational security when dealing with them, or eventually we'll get a 
Trojan horse. Yes or no?" 


"We need to trust someone too." 


"Fuck that. You know better than to trust entities, particularly skip 


makers." Frank was feeling better. He stood again in the cramped 
interior of the semitrailer, the motion upsetting the resident of the 
water tank, who made a sound that could only be defined as a 
grave, moaning 'thaaaaaaaanks.' 


That put him on edge again. "And | thought | had already told you to 
sedate the bloody thing!" About the same time Frank said the word 
bloody, there was another moan that could be transcribed as 
‘ruuuuuUUde.' 


That grated his nerves a bit further. 


"Look, Frank," started Jacob, glancing at him as he searched for 
something in his work bench, "the Board took you in 'cause you 
know how to be paranoid, but | feel they sent you here, to me, to us, 
‘cause you couldn't know when not to be. Place the trusting ones 
and the ex-skipper together in the same room. You know, that sort 
of thing that turns into a gun fight or a good punch line for a bar joke. 
But both of us know it's not a matter of trust, it's a matter of training. 
I've accepted you will never be able to trust our donors and 
benefactors in the same way | instinctively know how and when to 
trust them." 


"Bullshit", Frank said, adjusting his glasses of black, thin frame and 
staring at Jacob's back, "you trust them every time. That's no way to 
proceed. You don't understand these thi-" The "thing" in the tank 
moaned again. "You don't know anything about these ‘donations’, 
you don't actually know the motives of your benefactors and you still 
use them! Damn, Torres, you just want them to work, | get it! But 
you want it so badly? With that mindset | doubt you actually care 
about your safety, or the safety of others for that matter!" 


Jacob stood still for just a moment, but it was enough to make Frank 
aware that he had gone too far. 


"Well, not others, ‘others’, | mean, I'm not talking about the 
refugees-" 


"Our benefactors. And our donors, our affiliates. And | do care. Are 
you done interrogating me, Agent Westinghouse?" 


Jacob sounded more than a bit dry. Both stayed silent for a moment; 
Jacob kept searching between his things until he found the small vial 
with mercury he had been looking for. As he closed the drawers he 

had opened during the search, he sighed and turned towards Frank. 


The stocky, balding man was staring blankly at the tank, the white- 
blue radiance from the fluorescent tubes set by it giving him a 
somewhat ghostly appearance. 


"Sorry, Frank." 


"Right. Yeah, I'm sorry too,” he said. "But that shit was still reckless, 
Jacob." 


"Look, I've said earlier | understand and | mean it. | would never take 
a donation from, oh, the Insurgents, or the Hammer, or, god forbid, 
the Marshall, Carter and Dark people... not that they would ever 
give us anything for free. | would never do something reckless 
around a recovery-" 


"If we ever found one", sneered the other man. Jacob laughed as he 
pulled the culture to the small bio-hazards work bench. 


"Yes, of course, it's unlikely that we would ever find abnormalities 
out there in the open. Terribly so. How many this month?" 


"With or without the parasitic earrings of last weekend?" Frank 
answered, his pocket notebook already out. Jacob laughed again at 
his friend's incapacity to recognize sarcasm. "Why the laugh? It was 
a big outbreak... oh." He said, catching on. 


"Yes, quite. Not that we ever find anything we can use as an asset, 
though... only Concerns. Which is why we have to trust our 
benefactors, Frankie. We'd be lost without them." Jacob answered. 
He passed a hand over his eyes before sighing and saying: "Look. | 
understand you feel like the entire Charitable is going to blow up on 
your watch because of me being careless with donations or Opal 
being too open about abnormalities to the refugees, but we have to 
trust. Okay? | trust donors, and | trust our Research Work Groups, 
and-" 


"| thought this one was from a novel donor," Frank interrupted him. 
"We have to be careful." 


"Sure, sure, it was from a novel benefactor, so what? It has been 
studied by Ruperts-2, it's clean." Jacob picked up a large hardcase 
and opened it. It was filled with a full body bio hazard suit. "Trust, 
Skipper. It's part of our objective. It's part of who we are. We can't 
help anyone if we aren't open to others. Both to those who offer their 
help," he pointed at the tank and its resident, who moaned again 
"and those who need it" ended, turning to his bio-hazard suit. 


"Yeah, | know." 


"Then don't sound so unconvinced. This is not the other Foundation 
anymore, Skipper. Get with the times already." Even if he could not 
see his face, that was already behind a bio-hazard helmet, Frank 
knew the Rabbi was smiling. 


He left the metal room with a bit of a frown to let the scientist work 
and closed the trailer's door a bit stronger than strictly necessary. 


The heat of Somali midday struck him. The camp was an unending 
mess of people coming and going, all of them unidentified, all of 
them anonymous and absolutely free to wander and wonder about 
the nature of the trailer, its occupants or their 'methods", which were 
being used in different operations all over the camp. He couldn't 
even believe how much of a nightmare this would be when the 
Containment Teams were called in to amnesticize and... 


Oh. Right. He wasn't working for that Foundation anymore. 


The veil that every Foundation field Agent had between their eyes 
and the world was lifted and, for an instant, all he saw was an 
unending mess of people coming and going, all of them willfully 
ignorant of anomalies. Or at least ignorant of the anomaly inside the 
trailer, which was Frank's only concern. For a moment, he knew he 
was free and doing his best to help others. He smiled, feeling 
somewhat relieved. 


It didn't last. 


Frank managed to walk for a few steps before checking for possible 
hidden weapons, certain attitudes an intruding agent would show, 
anything that would mean danger or a possible threat. He had been 
a Foundation agent for ten years. He did not remember how many 
artifacts, creatures or — he shuddered at the thought — people he 
had taken into Foundation custody, but he did remember the 
method. The process that allowed them to capture anomalies 
without destroying them and still come on top, with minimum 
casualties and so limited mayhem. That made him a valued 
Specialist at first, and a prized Security Executive member later. Ina 
way, he was irreplaceable to the Work Group, but he never quite 
managed to fit in. 


All in all, Agent Westinghouse would always believe the Foundation 
was necessary and efficient at what it did. He remembered their 
method so well because he had survived enough missions as to 
know it better than walking and breathing. You had to be a paranoid 
son of a gun because the alternative was a nondescript body bag. 


The last one. 


Frank snapped out of it when he realized he had been staring back 
at an old woman for whole minutes. She was sitting in a stool made 
out of plastic boxes and a square wooden plank. Even in the midst 
of acamp filled with people, Frank managed to get lost inside his 
own head. 


Learned it better than to walk, my ass. Somebody could have 
stabbed me four times and you wouldn't have felt it until tomorrow 
morning, Frankie, he thought to himself. /'m getting soft. Or old. How 
was the sayin'? Old, sane, keen; with an Agent career, you have to 
pick two out. 


Frank passed a hand over his black-grey hair. You never stopped 
being a Foundation field Agent. 


He shivered. A young man had just walked past him, very close. So 
close that he thought for sure somebody had gotten to him. He 
reached for the reassuring weight of his gun and then remembered 
he did not use guns anymore because the MCF was very serious 
about that. And then Frank felt fear again. 


It was just a kid. He did not seem to be a threat, there were 
AMISOM forces everywhere and he had spent three days making 
sure the camp was more or less safe by checking every angle, on 
every one person who meant something there. He had bought 
loyalties among the troopers. He was certain nobody was there to 
hunt him down. Intellectually, he was perfectly aware of all that. 


As he tried to think, he realized his upset breath. It was the only sign 
he needed to understand that he was just having a crisis. He 
grunted, dizzy and feeling the panic raising through his throat and 
going back down in his chest, where it became a red-hot weight. 


He looked for a quiet place — a smaller tent, empty save for a 
couple of NGO volunteers who did not pay attention to the man in 
the kaki-and-green uniform, because everybody knew how weird 
Manna Charitable Foundation Executive members were — and 
crouched, carefully drifting through anxiety and disjointed thoughts 
without letting them wash him away. 


He took a pill from one of the front pockets in his vest and downed it 
with a quick sip from his canteen and tried to breathe deeply, as 
Desjeux had taught him to do, hah, you remind me of my girls when 
they are delivering, Skipper, and convince himself that everything 
was going to be okay, that he was not having a panic attack and that 
he just wanted it over so he could go over his damn business in less 
than ten minutes of senselessly panicking. 


Then he noticed the two small girls, their hair covered in 
headscarves and wearing short, lively-colored dresses, that were 
looking at him from just outside the tent. His breath and heart rate 
were still fast, but he was slowly coming to his own self; at least he 
could think straight. However, the girls seemed scared. "I'm fine, I'm- 
crap, how did that go. Uh-right, raalli iga ahow? No? Wait, maybe, 
maybe in Arab-" 


The one that looked older, who could not be older than thirteen, 
stepped forward and raised a hand and said: "A-are you alright?" 


That shocked Frank for a moment. She spoke slowly, intoning every 
syllable, but he understood every word. 


"What-right," he blurted, "the school. You've been going to school, 
huh? Who teaches you, Alba?" 


The younger one smiled when she heard the name and held the 
older one's hand, saying something in a fast blurt of Somali. The 
older one listened to her, then said: "Alba teaches us good words." 


"Right, right, that's very good-" 


"She also tells us to be strong. To not allow to be hit, nor to do what 
we do not want to." 


That shocked Frank a little more. "That's definitely good, too. Words 
to live by, sure," he ended up saying. 


"She tells us to ask for help." 


He winced slightly. "Do you-do you need help? | can call for 
someone else-" His heart was still racing. Damn anxiety issues and 
damn timing and damn- 


"Why do not-", the girl hesitated and tried again: "why do you not ask 
for help? You look bad. Sick." 


That certainly shocked Frank. 


He was perfectly aware he did not have a satisfactory answer. A 
moment later, he said, as calmly as he could: "I'll be fine, it's 
nothing, just nerves. You know, tired. It's fine, really." 


The younger child said something even faster than before, and the 
other one answered her, this time in Somali. They were smiling. 
Everything was alright. 


Both waved goodbye as they left him to pass the rest of his crisis. 
To Frank's delight, it was slightly shorter than usual.