The door wouldn't open. 


| tried, | hit it as hard as | could, and kept hitting it, but it wouldn't 
open. There was nothing left. | was stuck here, forever. 


As least | have him. He has such kind eyes. 


His Name 


The second he opened his eyes, his heart sank. 


His mouth was slick with a thin film that tasted like peppermint and 
batteries. His sinuses felt greasy and his eyes felt cold and small. 


Amnestics. 


Something had clearly gone wrong, but the fact that he even knew 
what amnestics were was a sign that everything hadn't gone 
completely sideways. With eyes that felt brittle, he surveyed his 
surroundings: Foundation dormitory, not a Quarantine Unit. Good. 
Not a room he recognized, but in this situation that didn’t mean 
much. No other personnel. No obvious danger. No apparent injuries. 
The only sound the lazy buzz of an air filtration unit in the ceiling. 


He sat up and the taste briefly intensified. Images flitted through his 
head like frightened birds, the sound of alarms and a panicked 
babble of voices, but nothing he could hold onto. Whoever had 
mixed his dose had done so carelessly. 


“Or in a damned hurry,” he muttered. He ran a hand down his face. 
“Well, let's see the damage. Not much happening here. All right, J... 


“ 


A sharp ribbon of pain arced from his jaw to his temple, but it was 
peripheral to the panic that suddenly bloomed in his chest. In times 
of stress, he knew it was his habit to talk to himself in the third 
person, to give himself playful orders out loud to lessen the tension. 
Not this time, though. Oh no. The anxiety of the situation had just 
gone sailing merrily into the stratosphere. 


He could not remember his name. 


From a great distance, he heard the tight hiss of his breath as terror 
coiled itself around his heart. A very tempting idea unfolded in his 


indicated that residents had become aware of the existence of SCP- 

, which had been recovered from that location three years 
previously; investigation revealed that the village and some outlying 
areas had been infected with SCP-868. Because AMN-868 had not 
been created at this point, it was necessary to neutralize the village 
under the pretense of a flood. Under interrogation, both personnel 
admitted to releasing SCP-868. See Incident Report 868-7 for 
details. 


Addendum 868-2: In November 2008, Foundation researchers 
developed a Class-B3 amnestic, AMN-868, that was capable of 
reversing the effects of SCP-868 and preventing spread of the 
infection. In 70% of cases, AMN-868 will only cause mild side 
effects, specifically severe headaches, with an estimated 10% of 
those at risk of developing early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. In the 
remaining 30%, AMN-868 will function, but will also cause self- 
destructive tendencies and prolonged antisocial behavior. See 
[REDACTED] for details. 


Footnotes 

1. Repeated testing has shown that the content, tone, and language 
of the conversation is irrelevant; it is hypothesized that SCP-868 
alters the subject's behavior in a manner that is too subtle to detect 
with current methods. 

2. At this point in time, SCP-868 was classified as Safe, and its 
containment procedures were minimal. 

3. Class-A and -C versions are currently under development 


« SCP-867 | SCP-868 | SCP-869 » 


mind. He should just get up and run. It didn’t matter where. It was 
time to flee. It was time to dig a den, put his back to a wall, bare his 
teeth, and hide forever. His temples throbbed the word: Hide. Hide. 
Hide. 


Mercifully, training kicked in. BACE: Breathe. Assess. Calculate. 
Execute. He clamped his eyes shut and inhaled as deeply as he 
could, exhaled till it hurt. Again, his lungs swelled in his chest. His 
body began to belong to him again. Exhale, the rabbit hammer of his 
pulse dulled. He sat and breathed for what felt like a very long time, 
and then he made himself breathe some more. He pushed down the 
desire for empty action. After what felt like an hour but was truly only 
four minutes, he let his eyelids, now soft and relaxed, slowly slide 
open. 


Assess. He stood up, his movements intentionally slow, measured. 
He walked to the far end of the room and pressed his back against 
the wall. Assess. Starting at the left of the room, he drew his gaze 
rightward, forcing his eyes to halt on each object and truly see it, to 
receive the information each individual datum could offer him about 
his current situation. He fought the instinct to scan, and discussed 
with himself each thing he saw. He assessed. 


- White wall. Blank. No photos. No personality. Not a personal dorm. 
Clearly general purpose. 

- End table. Wooden. No drawer. Purple inhaler on top. Aerosol 
amnestics delivery system. Trigger warning on the front showing 
black. Already been used. 


“Self administered,” he muttered, unaware he’d spoken out loud. 
Rightward. 


- The bed. Standard Foundation gray. Still made. He’d been lying on 
top of the blanket. His indentation was still visible. Red smudges. 
Still tacky judging from the shine. Blood. 


His discipline broke and he looked down at himself. He was dressed 
in a black button up shirt and gray slacks. His clothes were stiff with 
drying blood. His hands were tainted with traces of red. He must 
have washed his hands in too much of a hurry to worry about 


fingernails and creases. He checked himself for scratches, cuts, any 
sort of injury. Nothing. Whoever had done the bleeding, it hadn't 
been him, but they had been close enough to share. 


On the far right wall was a mirror and a sink. He shot over to it. 
Water drops in the white basin offered a hint of pink. He looked in 
the mirror. The face was familiar, thank God, but the maroon smears 
from his hands still made him look a crazed stranger. He stared into 
his own eyes, searching for an answer he knew he didn’t possess. 


“| really hope you didn’t hurt anyone,” he said to his reflection, 
holding the eye contact. The face looking back at him was harried. 
Exhausted. He’d always grown facial hair slowly, but his stubble had 
grown long enough to go from prickly to the beginnings of a beard. 


“Assessment,” he said. “You, my friend, have a had a shitty couple 
of days.” He held his own gaze a bit longer, but the blood stained 
face didn’t seem to have anything further to add to the matter. He 
turned his back to the mirror and leaned against the sink. 


“Calculate,” he said to the empty room, addressing the four beds as 
a professor to a class. “It is my calculation that | have been affected 
by some type of anomalous bullshit and gone and injured someone. 
| also calculate that since | am not in a cell or restrained, that | am in 
for several less than ideal surprises on the other side of that door.” 
He turned and looked in the direction of the room’s only exit and saw 
the note. 


don’t read the report 

don’t look around 

dangerous 

go straight to red phone call MTF 


He immediately recognized his own handwriting. 


He had taken amnestics once before. He had volunteered 
apparently. When it’s your decision to forget something, they let you 
record a message for yourself for when you wake up. That time he 
had woken to a medic who calmly explained his situation and had 
left him in the company of his recorded self. It had been weird to 
watch. His pre-amnestic self had looked like some essential element 


been ripped from his spirit. He had been sitting in a chair, but his 
whole demeanor felt hunched. His affect was as flat as a steel plate, 
but somehow his calm words felt like sobs, his unblinking stare, a 
wince. He had said that the amnestics were necessary. His post- 
amnestics self believed him one hundred percent and had never 
been too curious about what had broken that other version of 
himself so deeply. He had moved on easily. 


This was different. This felt like theft. He was still in the middle of 
whatever needed to be forgotten. Whatever trauma he had suffered 
before, he’d shed like a jacket on a warm day. Just let it drop to the 
sidewalk and walked away from it. This was more like a tangle, a 
maze he didn’t know why he’d wandered into. Every time he 
encountered something that had happened in the hole in his 
memory, he felt like a stranger inhabiting his own body. The 
inconsistency of his knowledge inspired a dread that was a low hum 
all around him. How could he know his face and his handwriting, but 
not his name? How could he be certain what else he had forgotten? 
How could he ever know what he’d forgotten to know he’d forgotten. 


“And why in God’s name was | cryptic with myself? Jesus Chri...” 


His hand shot to his temple as a lightning bolt of blinding agony 
screamed from his right shoulder to the top of his head. His legs 
surrendered and he fell bonelessly to the floor, shrieking. The pain 
was terrifying, but also infuriating. Is this what he needed?! Some 
sort of insane skull cramp on top of all this confusion and fear. As 
fast as he’d fallen he leapt up, grabbing the sink and pulling himself 
in front of the mirror, and locked eyes with himself. The mirror 
shattered, his fist pounding it four times before he even realized he’d 
moved his arm. 


Glass had found purchase in his knuckles, and rather than enrage 
him further, he suddenly found himself numb, stunned at what just 
happened. A single jagged blade of the mirror had survived his 
assault and hung like an icicle in its metal frame. He met his own 
eyes in it. 


His voice was empty, toneless, like the voice he had heard on that 
recording all those years ago. 


“Assess. There is something very wrong with me.” 


He spent the next few minutes pulling slivers of glass from his 
knuckles. His numbness had given way to morosity and dread. He 
knew his self-maintenance was procrastination. He knew that 
whatever that outburst had been, it was what put him here. He could 
remember enough about his life to know that he wasn’t prone to 
rage. Something had happened to him. 


He pulled the last splinter of glass from his hand with a hiss. He 
wrapped his hand as best he could with one of the gray pillow cases 
and surveyed the room one last time, his unwounded hand on the 
door knob. His tantrum had sent glass, twinkling and red, well 
across the room. He considered it a moment, and then collected the 
largest shard he could find. 


"Execute," he muttered. He wrapped the pillow case around the 
duller end of the shard and, so armed, left the room. 


The hallway was chaos. 


The emergency lights were flashing, but someone must have 
disabled the klaxon. Several storage lockers had been flung to the 
ground and lay on their faces like fallen soldiers. Scattered papers 
littered the corridor, the occasional drop or smear of red punctuating 
them under the strobing lights. He stood in the doorway, listening for 
the sounds of destruction or violence that one would expect to 
accompany such a scene, but all he could hear was the air system 
and the rush of his own blood. 


He did not recognize this place. 


Nor could he remember the last project of which he was a member. 
The last thing he could recall was lunch with... a man. Some man. 
No name for him either, it seemed. He sighed and stepped out into 
the hall. His room was at the corner of an L-junction. He turned right, 
heading away from the lockers, papers, and hectic lighting. This way 
was marked with a red line on the wall labeled, “Command.” This 
would be his best bet to avoid any breached Containment Units and 
other personnel. He would follow his own advice and call in a Mobile 
Task Force. The fact that they required calling and weren’t already 


on their way meant someone had tampered with the automated 
system. 


“Wouldn’t be so hard,” he muttered. “ All you’d have to do is reroute 
power from communication to the perimeter defense grid and no one 
would...” His jaw tightened. It wasn’t exactly a good sign that he was 
so well informed on the matter. 


The red line led him through several turns. Sites were typically 
designed to be confusing to those without training, especially if it 
housed human Skips. Breaches were easier to deal with if escapees 
were lost and confused. He, however, moved with the confidence of 
someone who knew where he was. Whatever information his mind 
might be missing, his muscles remembered. He barely noticed the 
red line as he moved towards Command. As he walked, he was met 
by silence. The place felt deserted. There were no papers or objects 
strewn about, but every emergency light had been smashed. The 
fluorescents above had been safe in their steel cages, but halos of 
yellow glass twinkled every twenty meters below each warning unit, 
the crunch of glass marking a slow beat as he walked. 


He turned another corner and the ghost taste of amnestics 
whispered up his throat. The murmur of voices drifted through his 
head, this time with a woman’s voice in front, panicked, saying, 
“That’s impossible. | thought it was only with a K.” His vision doubled 
and he swayed, the heel of his bloody hand pressed against his 
forehead. When he steadied, he looked around with a deeper déja 
vu than he knew could exist. He knew this place. He must have 
been here a hundred times. A thousand. He knew this place was his 
as sure as - 


“As sure as | know my own name,” he chuckled. 


The door was labeled Room 2841 and was the first he’d 
encountered so far that was open, even if only slightly. A dented 
folding chair was partially jammed under it, giving him only a narrow 
view to the interior of this his room, but it was brightly lit. Inviting. In 
the terrible tangle that his life had become since waking, this was 
the first familiar thing that didn’t fill him with dread. A thought of the 
note that his former self had written flickered through his mind 
before he dismissed it with an unconscious frown. Danger or no, this 


was safe territory. He would briefly investigate, arm and bandage 
himself properly, and find a phone to call a MTF to come save him 
from this nightmare. At that moment, he knew for certain that there 
was a red phone right next to the stapler on his desk. With a minute 
nod, he stepped over the chair and forced open the door. 


There was a lot of blood. Most of it was pooled around the head of 
the man lying on his side in the corner. The white lab coat was 
pristine where it wasn’t sprinkled with blood so red that it all but 
glowed. Beside his head, face-down, was small sculpture of a 
sphere on an oak base. He didn’t have to turn it over to know there 
was a plaque on the front, engraved with the phrase “The Worst 
Ones Are Spheres,” a gift from this dead man on the ground in front 
of him. He had died surprised, a look of confused alarm frozen 
forever on his face, slightly distorted his newly concave forehead. 
He slowly approached the body and crouched down in front of it. He 
was certain of two things: This man was his friend and he had killed 
him. 


But he didn’t know his name. 


There was nothing left to do. He stood up and walked to the red 
phone. He reached for it, but as his eyes lit on the open amnestics 
cabinet, his hand drifted to a halt. The deja vu was back. She had 
opened it. She... She had said that he was infected and she had run 
for the cabinet... and... and she... 


Like a man asleep, he walked towards the purple, metal container. 
Purple was the color of all amnestics related equipment, but the 
color of the stuff was actually clear. All the worst ones are clear, his 
mind babbled as he opened the cabinet all the way and looked 
inside. Two of the holders were empty: one self admin, one 
weaponized. He had used the inhaler in the dorm. Who had used 
the other? He stood, staring into the shelves, not seeing them, 
groping in the darkness of his mind.