And he did. He ran as fast as he could, for what terror and 
adrenaline made seem like hours. Every time he slowed as he lost 
his breath, he would see more cables break out of the walls to hit 
the ceiling above him or the floor beside him, spraying a noxious, 
caustic fluid that burned through his clothes and into the flesh of his 
head and arms and pumping thighs. He felt the electric sting of wires 
as they slashed like whips at his legs and back, every shock forcing 
him harder and faster ahead of the death chasing him. 


His vision narrowed to a thin tunnel ahead of him as he stumbled 
again and again, somehow staying just barely ahead of the web 
behind him. Finally he spotted a glimmer of hope: the open blast 
door of a designated safety bunker. He found a final burst of energy 
and managed to leap into the room, pulling the heavy door shut 
behind him. The tips of a few tendrils were caught and severed in 
the door, falling and twitching slowly until they finally lay still on the 
reinforced concrete floor. 


He stared at them carefully for several minutes more as he slowly 
caught back his breath, heaving gasps that left him coughing from 
exertion. He finally looked up to inspect the chamber, noting the 
racks of janitorial and first-aid supplies, the flickering overhead light, 
the folded up cot against the wall. He unfolded the cot for someplace 
to sit while he collected his thoughts; how could he let the rest of the 
site know that he was trapped by that unholy abomination? 


He stopped thinking, though, when the light fixture exploded and a 
mass of wires burst from the ceiling, several spearing him in the 
chest and head. 


It closed the blast door behind it as it stepped out into the corridor, 
noting the rubble left behind as its tendrils retracted back into the 
walls. It loathed the monstrous flesh it now wore, but it had always 
known how to adapt to changing circumstances. And the current 
circumstances required it to adapt to trick more of the fleshbags into 
its grasp so that it could destroy them all in one fell swoop before 
they could find another way to trap it, like the disgusting filth they 
were. 


Its gait was somewhat staccato and unsteady at first, but it learned 
quickly, especially with its electromagnetic eyes surrounding itself, 
feeding itself the memory of how the filth handled themselves. By 
the time it reached the end of the corridor, it had perfected the 
stressed hunch and hurried gait of what used to wear its new body. 
And under its rapidly healing skin sparkled a stray burst of static 
electricity, as its wire-bound muscles flexed into a grimace, or 
maybe a smile. 


Gears Is Totally Not A Robot Guys 


The following is an O5's (adult?) tale 


“No I’m telling you, there’s no fuckin’ way we’d have a goddamn 
robot in upper management.” 


“But a fucking dog is perfectly acceptable to you?” 


“That’s different! | think if the guy was a goddamn robot we’d know, 
right?” 


“The man walks and talks like a fucking Stalinist clock with no 
friends and mommy issues! He’s as bland as a colorblind librarian 
corpse and more formulaic than my damn calculator! If he’s not a 
robot then the dude is seriously off-kilter.” 


“| think | know how to settle this,” 
“How?” 

“We gotta see his dick.” 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” 


“No no think about it! If he was a robot, why would he have a dick? 
Right?” 


“|... L[guess. But he’s totally a robot. So | guess we gotta see his... 
robot... parts” 


“Fuck you. | know who might be able to help. Karen! Get me Iceberg 
on line one” 


BEEP 


“Hello? Yes, this is O5-6. Have you ever seen his dick? You know 
who. Oh you have! Good! Could you, uh, describe it? That’s an 


order doctor. Yes, go ahead.” 
“What’s he saying?” 


“Shh! What? No not you doctor, I’m talking to three. Go ahea- yes 
he’s here too, get on with it. Wait. What? Three of them? On fire?” 


“Dude what the fuck” 


“Well...uh, thank you Doctor. | guess | never would have guessed 
that Gears would- What?! ALTO? Of fucking course. | was asking 
about Gears, doctor. You know, your direct supervisor? The man 
you share an office with? Not Alto goddamn Clef who is based at a 
site on the opposite side of the fucking country. Sigh No, it’s fine. 
Not his dick then? Great. Well thank you for your time. 


Click 

“No dick news then?” 

“No.” 

“He’s definitely a robot.” 

“No, I’m telling you, there’s no fuckin’ way-“ 


FIN 


Genius Loci 


Agent Sherman walked the length of the covered bridge, like every 
night. Maybe the haunt would show up. Or not. Such a sad little 
specter. With no reason to hate humanity other than having been 
brought into existence by them. The specter most likely didn't even 
know, anyway. Even the egg heads didn't agree on that. What they 
agreed on was the patrols and blocking off the road when needed. 
No-one wanted to clean up another panic-induced car crash on that 
bridge. 


Agent Leroux jogged on the path circling the lake. Tourists 
picnicked, and laughed, and kayaked over the still, round mirror 
nested in the crater. Children sat on the ominous rocks the local 
peasantry had named the Devil's Throne. The bustling, joyful 
atmosphere left no clue as to why it had been the lacus pavens, 
"Terror Lake", to Roman invaders. Decades earlier, skeptic 
scientists had proven its waters no more poisonous than they were 
bottomless. And that was for the best; such dangerous legends were 
unneeded. 

Leroux took a less trodden path off the circular trail. The dark, round 
hole at the end was his last stop for the day. Not the gate to Hell the 
locals once thought it was. It only was an opening in a long cooled 
lava flow, hiding another lake that sat quietly underground, far from 
the eyes of curious visitors. 


Agent Meyer watched the barges lazily going up and down the river. 
He lit a cigarette. Listened intently for a while. Nothing out of the 
ordinary. Wind and traffic and the muffled voices of tourists carried 
on the wind. Too cold to dive today, he thought. But he didn't decide 
the maintenance schedule. He crossed his equipment checklist: 
noise-canceling earphones in a waterproof bag, security card, 
oxygen bottles... And one five grams ingot of fine gold. Who knew 
why? He didn't write the containment procedures either. 


Louise de Chavialle tamped the bowl of her meerschaum pipe. 


Rubbed the smooth, yellowing back of an ivory cat. Flipped through 
a box of records and pulled an old 78-RPM from a crumbling sleeve. 
Amidst crackles and pops, the dark notes of Alkan's music filled the 
laboratory. Her laboratory... When her colleagues had moved on to 
pristine, high-tech whiteness, the place still had the charm of a 
forgotten wunderkammer. The dust of one, too... Few ever came 
knocking at her door. 


The Department of Ethnography once had its heyday. Now it was 
only her. The boys at Memetics, they didn't understand the patterns 
they were weaving. The anomalies that grew out of peoples' belief, 
like delicate crystals, were prone to shatter and fade like dust in the 
wind. Modernity had crushed legends under the jackboot of hard 
science. Post-modernity had made what remained ironic. And either 
way, the monsters the fears and dreams of humanity had bred were 
decaying. All of them languished, just waiting to be reclassified as 
Neutralized, like Tartary lambs to the slaughter. 


Her eyes stopped on a faded postcard of the Loreley rock and her 
mind wandered. She wished she could have seen her in her glory 
days. Before minds turned away from her, and before the Rhine 
turned red. Was she always a whale? Was she always dead? She 
wanted to believe the siren once was beautiful. Even legends grow 
old and fade away, some faster than others. And so many, so many 
that were gone forever, before the Foundation could even learn 
about their existence. 


The Genius Loci protocol was her idea, a flawed idea. It was so 
easy to contain anomalies in situ, to keep the people close to them, 
to bring more, as tourists. The department hid horrors in plain sight 
through vulgarization and bastardization. The Foundation filed fear 
away until only quaint folklore remained. Gone were the incidents, 
but so were the legends. And the material life collective imagination 
had borne them into was ebbing. 

Slowly but surely, the Foundation ended up doing no better than the 
Global Occult Coalition. Anomalous reality, erased. Unless... The 
department wasn't dead yet; she wasn't. What she needed, first and 
foremost, were more ears and eyes. 


GFC 


A cold sweat had been coursing it's way down Dr. Gerald's spine for 
the last 20 minutes as he waited outside Dr. Bright's office. The 
hallway seemed to darken by the second, lights dimming into 
incomprehensible blackness as he stared at the nameplate on the 
door. He was going to die. This was it. The summation of 30 years 
on Earth. Dying because of one stupi- 


"Come in." 


Gerald couldn't help it. He yelped a little, his frayed nerves causing 
him to jump at the sudden noise. He scuttled into the office, the door 
closing behind him with a soft click. 


Jack Bright stood facing the wall, hands clasped behind his back. He 
didn't turn as he spoke. 


"Doctor Gerald, you know why you're here." 
"Ah, Yes. Yessir." 

"Don't cower. | hate it when you cower." 
"Sorry sir." 

"Now. Care to explain what happened?" 


"...Well..." 


Alto Clef was in a good mood. The sun was shining, 173 hadn't 
escaped yet, and the vendor down the street had been selling ice 
cream at half price. As he walked down the corridor of the hospital, 
he glanced at his companion. "What's eating you?" 


"__.Strelnikov. I'm worried. The coma-" 


"Will be ended as soon as we get 590 down here. This is just a visit 
to check on how he's doing in the meantime." 


"Yeah. | guess you're right." 
"Of course | am. Now, put on a happy face! It's a beautiful day!" 


Gerald's burgeoning smile was crushed by the sight of the Russian 
man in the bed. The tubes covering his body made him seem 
smaller than usual. A titan reduced to just a feeble patient. Clef 
strode over and looked down at his friend. "Hey big guy. How's it 
going?" He glanced back at Gerald, noticing his stricken face. "Hey, 
don't worry. He's survived worse than this." 


Gerald sighed. "Yeah. You're right. | mean, compared to Chechnya 
how ba-" His face froze. The sound of creaking tubes echoed like 
gunshots in the suddenly silent room. 


Clef's face contorted. "Motherfu-" 


The hand that reached up to wrap around Clef's throat was worn 
and muscled, and bleeding freely from a tear given by a torn out IV. 
"B3BOQ! K BOLO! MOUNM JYXOB!" 


"OH SHI-" The rest of what Gerald said was drowned out by the 
cracking noise made by Strelnikov snapping Clef's neck. 
".,.And then | ran." 


"| see. Consider yourself on suspension until further notice." 


Ghost 


Agent Enfield surveyed the scene, keeping his opinions to himself. 
Major Whitside brought his horse beside Enfield's and looked 
through his binoculars. 


"Not too many of them,” Enfield muttered, half to himself. 


"Enough to be a hell of a problem,” Whitside replied. "I've ordered 
our troops to begin disarming them." 


"Of course," Enfield said. Whitside called them their troops, believing 
his orders that said that Enfield was a colonel brought in to advise 
on Indian warfare. The Initiative had forged everything; 
correspondences between Whitside and the commanding general, 
credentials from the War Department, fake orders. The American 
Secure Containment Initiative may have worked mostly outside of 
government and military circles, but they were rapidly becoming 
experts in threading their way through bureaucratic channels 
undetected. All that skill, all those lies, all to protect the nation from 
threats nobody else could know about. A noble cause. 


Enfield spat in the ground. He had trouble accepting this as "noble." 


"Do you think they're likely to make a fuss, Colonel?" Whitside 
asked. 


Of course they are, Enfield thought, that's the point. "Not too likely, 
not if they're smart," he lied. "But keep the Hotchkiss guns around 
them just in case." 


"Yes sir," Whitside replied, then rode off down to the encampment. 
Enfield put his binoculars back up to his head and looked again. He 
owed them that. 


Three hundred fifty Lakota Indians. One hundred twenty of them 
men, the rest women and children. Many of them followers of the 


SCP-859: Arachnophobic Orb 


Item #: SCP-859 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-859 is stored in a locked 
container, which is stored in a secure containment chamber at Site 

. SCP-859 must not be removed from its container except with 
express permission from Level 4 personnel, and experimentation on 
SCP-859 must only be performed with Class D personnel. 


Description: SCP-859 is a spherical mass of dark, unidentified 
material approximately 11cm in diameter that appears to be covered 
in multiple layers of spider webbing. SCP-859 is soft to the touch, 
and approximates the stickiness of spider webbing, although the 
strands observed on the object do not come off. 


When any living human places their hand on SCP-859, the subject 
immediately gains an acute arachnophobia as well as severe 
allergic reactions to any kind of spider venom. See Addendum 859-1 
for details. 


SCP-859 was discovered in [DATA EXPUNGED] along with the 
swollen and decayed bodies of 37 individuals who had been [DATA 
EXPUNGED]. Investigation into the origin of SCP-859 as well as the 
exact nature of its effect are inconclusive. 


Addendum 859-1: 
List of personnel exposed to SCP-859: 


Subject: Agent 

Date: / /20 

Exposure Method: Accidental, during containment of SCP-859. 
Subject immediately screamed and dropped SCP-859 after touching 
it with his bare hand. When questioned afterwards, reported that he 


person known to the Institute as Entity 1887-016. If "person" was the 
correct word. The ASCI had only recently begun investigating beings 
like 016, beings capable of changing the world around them, 
capable of twisting and bending nature itself. The ASCI's 
counterpart in the German Empire referred to them as 
"Daseinkrummeren". Existence warpers. He hoped a catchier term 
would catch on eventually. 


Enfield had been hoping there was some other way to detain him. 
He pulled 016's file out of a pocket of his jacket, the file he had 
written. He had compiled all of the information they had gathered on 
him. Then, when his superiors told him what they needed him to do, 
he reread everything, trying to find a loophole. He even tried to find 
a way that the warper might be more powerful than they thought, 
maybe even immortal. But all evidence pointed towards this 
conclusion, this method. Sitting down there in the valley. Enfield 
reread his own words. 


Entity 1887-016 possesses two principal anomalous 
abilities. 016 is capable first of performing a ritual dance, 
identified here as 1887-016A, that renders individuals 
around him increasingly susceptible to suggestion, 
particularly advice and ideas presented by 016. Second, 
E1887-016 gains the ability to cause or prevent the 
motion of inanimate objects, given that he is in close 
proximity to a number of individuals (specific 
requirements unknown at this time) that are 
compromised by his first ability. In short, 016 is capable 
of moving or stopping objects without touching them so 
long as he is surrounded by people who believe he is 
capable of doing so. 


These two abilities feed into one another; people 
convinced of the legitimacy of his "medicine" allow him to 
perform minor parlor tricks, increasing people's faith in 
him and strengthening his abilities. Rumors suggest that 
016 is capable of much more than this, though this is not 
known for certain by ASCI at this time. 


Given the dependence of 016 on his followers, it is 
believed that