"So lucky," the voice repeated, the air in the room seeming to 
circulate faster around the old man. "How lucky are you now? Think 
you're so smart. Hunting. Think you're such a good hunter. Think 
you're all such good hunters. Worthless. God, so worthless." The old 
man did not rise; rather, the chair he sat in seemed to melt into the 
air, the table rolled forward without effort, and the old man suddenly 
was standing at his full height. 


"Think you caught God. You caught a drifter, fool. Think you're 
studying God. God studies you, you fool. You child. | study you. 
Every cruelty. Every injustice. Think you can catch me." 


"Wh....what are..." Castile croaked. 


"Forget it," the old man's voice said, and Castile forgot. The notes he 
had written disappeared, graphite pulling off of the page and 
reforming on the pencil. Another chair materialized behind the old 
man, and the old man's form sat within. Castile felt something... 
missing, felt something leaving him. Felt something gone. 


The feeling lasted only a moment, then he began. Nothing unusual 
here for Castile; just another SCP, another containment test. Just a 
moment of discomfort, nothing more. Foundation researchers felt 
that uneasy feeling all the time. Nothing unusual here. 


"Okay, beginning interaction with SCP-343," Castile said, looking at 
the smirk on SCP-343's face. The smirk that was always there. 


The headache returned as Josephine returned to her body. Stupid 
girl, she thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Almost gave it all away. 
Almost let them find you. She forced herself to focus on the 
headache, make it stronger. You deserve this. Stupid girl. 


Throbbing, blinding pain drilled through her head. Stupid. Stupid. 
Stupid. 


She was floating fully in the air now, and the pain in her head 
bloomed brighter until she screamed. A bright flash of light. She 
opened her eyes and looked around. Her anger faded into shame. 
She reconstituted some clothing around herself and disappeared. 


MEMORANDUM 
LEVEL 5 CLEARANCE ONLY 
CODEWORD: "GREEN KING" 


FROM: OPERATIVE AMBER 
TO: OPERATIVE MAGNUS 


TWO MORE EVENTS DISCOVERED. INTERVIEW 
BETWEEN SITE 17 RESEARCHER AND SCP-343. 
VIDEO ATTACHED. RESEARCHER WAS 
COMPLETELY AMNESTIZED BEYOND ANY KNOWN 
CHEMICAL METHODS; MRI SUGGESTED CHEMICAL 
PATHWAYS AND NEURAL DEVELOPMENT OF 
MEMORIES WAS LITERALLY REVERSED AND 
ELIMINATED. COVERT VIDEO SURVEILLANCE OF 
SCP-343 AS PER "GREEN KING" PROJECT 
ALLOWED FOR RECOVERY. INTERVIEW ENDED AT 
1523 HOURS ON 11/02/13. 


KEYHOLE SATELLITES DETECTED AN ENERGY 
SURGE IN AN ISOLATED AREA OF SONORA 
DESERT AT 1525 HOURS. RESULTING CRATER 
RESEMBLED THERMOBARIC WARHEAD 
DETONATION SITE. 


ANALYSIS ONGOING. 
AMBER 


Duty 


Dr. Herrero walked slowly along the empty white corridor, like a 
condemned to the scaffold. His footsteps echoed on the cold walls, 
while several cameras observed him from the ceiling. He knew that 
he was being analyzed by the most sophisticated surveillance 
devices ever invented by man. If those cameras at any moment 
found anything abnormal, the security system would have activated 
the alarm in the whole building and the automatic sentry machine 
guns stationed near the door at the end of the corridor, capable of 
tearing any intruder into pieces in a few seconds, would have blown 
him away. 


Hilarious, he thought. The defenses would do nothing against the 
one they're actually afraid of. 


Nothing happened. Dr. Herrero arrived in front of the massive steel 
door resembling a monolithic tombstone. He said, with a calm and 
determined tone that didn’t show the storm of emotions weighing in 
his heart, "Dr. Robert Herrero, Clearance Level 5, Access Code 
09-42-8695." The microphone above his head registered his words, 
and the sentry turrets, which hadn’t stopped pointing at him since 
when he arrived there, immediately disengaged themselves and 
started guarding the corridor again. He pressed his hand on the 
digital fingerprint sensor and the enormous door opened without a 
sound. 


It. It. They always called her "it". Like an animal. Like an object. Like 
something worthless. 


Robert entered the elevator, as empty as the rest of the facility, and 
the door closed behind him. Even there, he was constantly 
monitored by video cameras. He didn’t pay them any attention, and, 
as he had done many other times, pressed the single, big grey 
button on the wall of the lift, which started descending into the 
darkness. Dr. Herrero crossed his arms and waited, giving an 


absent look to his reflection in the elevator’s mirror. Time had not 
been gentle with him. He was still good looking for his age, but his 
face was marked by wrinkles, his hair grey and his right cheek 
crossed by a long, thin scar. He touched it gently, thinking that, 
maybe, the end of that story was finally near. 


Am | ready? | know what they'll ask me. Am | ready? 


The elevator reached the floor, 400 metres under the Italian surface. 
The secret bunker didn't have a name; it was built to host the most 
important meetings of the Foundation, and the Foundation wasn't in 
the habit of giving a place a name if it didn’t officially exist. As the 
door opened, Dr. Herrero was greeted by two men in black uniforms. 
Robert knew one of them, the German, Captain Strauss. He was 
rapidly making a career for himself, and his presence there made 
Herrero think about his son, Martin. Made him think about how much 
Martin hated him. What hurt Robert the most was that Martin hada 
good reason to hate him. 


Strauss saluted him. "Greetings, Dr. Herrero," he said in awkward 
English. "| have been ordered to inform you that the assembly is 
about to begin. Your presence is required as soon as possible." 
Robert nodded and walked down the gently sloping hallway, 
heading to the conference room. All his confusion disappeared 
during that walk, supplanted by a sense of urge and anxiety. After 
all, he was a member of the Foundation, and he had made vows to 
it. Most of the researchers laughed at those vows, laughed at the old 
words. Secure, contain, protect. Robert lost a lot for those vows, and 
they were all he had left. He had lost his wife. He had lost his sons. 
The words were what he hadn't lost. 


Arriving in front of the room, Dr. Herrero stopped, revised mentally 
the information he had, breathed deeply to calm himself, and 
opened the door. 


The room was occupied by a large, round mahogany table. Around it 
there were almost two dozen people, speaking in a low tone. There 
were members from every secret department of the Foundation, 
though oddly not a single member of the Senior Staff. Robert noted 
in particular three figures, two men and a woman, in black business 
suits. He had never seen them before. As soon as he walked into 


the room, Dr. Jonathan Redwood, the American presiding over the 
meeting, welcomed him. “Hello, Robert. We were waiting for you. 
Please, have a seat.” Robert walked to the nearest empty chair and 
glanced at his colleagues; most looked nervous and stressed. This 
probably feels awkward for them, Robert thought. Redwood stood 


up. 


"Gentlemen’, said Redwood. "Before we begin, I’d like to remind 
you all that this meeting is classified Level 5-Black, as per protocol 
GK-09-Black, and what we are going to discuss today is classified 
for all individuals without level 5, O5, or GK-X clearance. Our orders 
come from the director of Project Green King, and to him and him 
alone do we report our actions.” He looked at the people around 
him. "Is that clear?” Everyone nodded. 


"Good. In that case, we can begin." he said, clearing his throat. “As 
you have been informed, Project Green King is focused on the 
containment of an entity considered one of the most powerful beings 
the Foundation has ever faced. This being is a reality bender 
identified as Entity HL-49, or by its original codename, 'Green King.’ 
This entity may have existed for years, maybe decades, before its 
interactions with the organizations predating the Foundation. At 
some point after this "discovery", it began to investigate us. Our best 
psychological profile—" 


"Guess," one of the dark-suited men said, his Krakow accent 
showing. "Your best guess." 


Dr. Redwood cleared his throat, looked around nervously. "Our 
profile suggests that it was scared. It knew that, if we captured it, 
we’d eventually find a way to keep it contained forever.” Redwood 
stopped, drank a sip of water and began talking again. "To obtain 
the information it needed to escape us, the Green King resorted to 
an ingenious strategy, as Operative Magnus will now explain you. 
Magnus?” 


The dark-suited heckler from before stood up. “Thank you, Dr. 
Redwood. Green King, thanks to its abilities, managed somehow to 
create a reality bender under its control using only an ordinary man. 
This person, contained by us, is SCP-343. His infiltration was total, 
and after him came others, but for a long time we didn't suspect 


anything. And this gave the Green King enough time to spy us...spy 
on us.” Magnus shook his head at the English phrase. 


"Today, we have uncovered three different entities within the 
Foundation that worked for the Green King," Magnus continued. 
"And we would have never discovered we were being spied upon at 
all were it not for the Green King’s difficulties in controlling its 
puppets.” Magnus stopped for a second, then resumed talking: "It 
made a mistake. During an attempt to gather information, the entity 
appears to have suffered some sort of episode or break; during this, 
its puppet, a young Palauan girl, was freed from its control and 
began confessing to us that it had been "possessed," as she put it, 
by a being that was giving it anomalous abilities and monitoring its 
interactions with Foundation personnel. In combination with the 
already extant evidence of the Green King's existence that the 
Foundation had, we were able to deduce this particular entity's 
involvement. That was the beginning of our problems. It became 
more careful, more shrewd, it found methods to prevent us from 
finding it. We continued looking for it, winning some battles, losing 
others. The situation, however, remained somewhat stable. Back 
then, the Green King was a powerful reality bender, but still a reality 
bender like many others, simply trying to escape from us.” 


Magnus lowered his voice. "Operative Amber will continue the 
briefing from this point." He sat, and the black-suited woman sitting 
beside him stood up. 


"On 11 February 1974, during our sole offensive measure to date, 
two unnamed mobile task forces launched a direct assault upon a 
suburban home in eastern Pennsylvania where it was believed the 
Green King was basing its operations at that time." 


"Its base was in a populated town?" one of the other, unnamed 
researchers asked. 


"This is not a press conference," Operative Magnus said. "Please 
remain silent throughout the briefing, Taurus." He turned to the 
woman. "Please continue." 


"During the attack," Amber continued, "two civilians were killed. 
Judging from radio transmissions from operating agents in the field, 


the civilians were between the ages of eight and fifteen years of age, 
both male. Entity HL-49 was engaged moments thereafter, the entity 
apparently having discovered the deaths of the two civilians in the 
house. A screaming was heard over the radio just before contact 
with the assault force was lost entirely. Moments afterward, an 
explosion was registered within the on-site fission reactor of Site 86, 
from which the assault was launched. The Site was lost with all 
hands." 


The room sat in silence while the assembled individuals absorbed 
this information. Operative Amber continued moments later. 


"Event E-GK-04 was one of the largest attacks against the 
Foundation ever recorded in our history. Perhaps most frighteningly, 
our psychological analysis of the Entity suggests that its restraint 
came primarily out of a lack of thorough intelligence gathering." 


"Restraint?" a voice in the room said. 


Operative Amber paused, looked at the speaker. "The Entity's 
restraint in not killing every man and woman working for the 
Foundation was due to ignorance. It didn't take the time to track us 
all down, then burned down one of its best leads; one of its 
operatives was working out of that Site. The annihilation of Site 86 
was, in the end, just a self-defence act, and the Green King kept 
running away without any actively hostile action against us, but it 
was Starting to break down mentally. It might have lost its mind 
entirely. Then, it..." Amber paused a moment, cleared her throat. 
She briefly made eye contact with Herrero, looked down at her 
notes. "Several years later—" 


"I can tell the story from here out," Herrero said. Robert stood up, 
slowly, while the people in the room looked at him. His blue eyes 
seemed like trying to incinerate Amber. He knew she knew the story; 
at least, her version of it, but he was nevertheless raging. It wasn't 
her place. "Sit down," he said to Amber. "Now.” The wrath in his 
voice made the woman turn pale slightly, and she sat. 


"| was twenty-seven when | met her, my wife." Herrero continued. 
"We met in a park one night, late at night, later than either of us 
should have been out. We were both running away from something, 


wandering, hoping to find something better, and we found each 
other. She told me about her first love, the breakup. | told her about 
mine. | told her a little bit about the Foundation, some of it a cover 
story, some of it... maybe more than | should have. She told me 
about her job, how much she hated it, how much she—" 


"I'm sorry, | don't understand how this is relevant—" 


"You can wait a goddamned minute, Jeff. Yeah, | Know I'm not 
supposed to call you by your names. But you dragged me in here, 
and you know what you're asking me to do, and | know what you're 
asking me to do, so you can sit through my little pity party." Herrero 
sighed. "It was a quick courtship, a quick...it was just all so fast. | fell 
in love with her. We were happy, for the first time in our lives. That 
was all | knew." 


"One morning, right around four o'clock, we were asleep. | was 
restless, | got up and went to the kitchen. Right at that moment, 
there was an explosion. Explosions. An attack. | was a desk worker, 
| had no experience with what was happening. | was knocked 
unconscious by some force. When | woke up, | was blindfolded, tied 
to a chair. A voice kept asking me questions, random questions. 
Pain happened. | blacked out." 


"The Green King used torture? Can't it—" The black-suited man 
stopped, seeing the look Magnus gave him. Robert couldn't see that 
look, but he was sure the operative wouldn't be interrupting again. 


"No," Robert said. "Two mobile task forces swarmed our house, took 
me into custody. She had left already, had known what was coming. 
The Foundation had figured it out somehow. It was just another 
operation for them." Robert looked up at the ceiling. "She knew | 
worked for the Foundation. It was infiltration for her, at least at the 
beginning. Maybe the whole time. | lost my wife, and I'll never know 
if she felt anything for me or not or if she used me to get to the 
Foundation. I'll never know if she thinks | set her up. I'll never have 
an answer to that | can believe. Ever." 


The room was silent as the implications set in. 


Redwood stood up and coughed, embarrassed. Then he spoke: