"Take it, get out of my house. Come back when you're not under 
control." 


Adam's hand grasped the edge of the device. He managed to nod, 
and he felt himself turn, and begin walking out the door. 


"And Adam," Eustace called after him, just before the door shut. 
"Give 'em hell for me." 


Once he was out of sight, Adam felt the geas relinquish control. He 
breathed heavy. 


Three down. Only one thing left to do. 


It was late at night when Adam finished constructing the summoning 
square as dictated by the patent. 


A cube, constructed of paper, decorated with symbols of power. A 
simple way to bridge a notional gate between the overworld and 
Three Portlands. That should be enough. 


On his desk, he had set up his thaumic typewriter to transcribe voice 
commands, a line of communication to the legal entity he was 
inviting to his room. 


Now, he lay down on his bed. 


At this point, it was only a matter of time before Redzone shuffled 
their pocket dimension into storage, and Adam lost any hope of 
connecting to it, of committing metastatic jailoreak of a thousand lost 
consciousnesses. 


There was no more time. He had to act now. 


He felt the presence in the room, the force of a mind alien to his 
own. He clutched a bag of green séance dust in one hand, and in 
the other he cradled the oversized tape recorder. 


He switched the exorcism device on. A disk on its front began to 
spin, slow, like a record player. 


He brought the bag of dust to his lips and inhaled sharply. The 
powder filled his mouth and lungs, filtering him down a few levels of 
consciousness. 


"|... | know you can hear me. The contract is on my desk. Just, 
just... be careful. It's connected to my head." 


A sudden draft washed over him. He was fading out. 


The entity latched on to the piece of paper that defined Adam's 
obligations to Redzone and began to modify. 


Contradictions began to form. The geas was garbled. 
Adam's head stung, his extremities lost feeling. 


His mind was sinking, the dust leading it deep into the ground. His 
brain had a hotline straight to the ideological center of Redzone 
Security. 


Adam lost consciousness to the refrain, NOTWITHSTANDING 
FALSE, ABSTAIN, ABSTAIN, ABSTAIN 


Adam's mind came to in a blank white void. He was standing. 
Somewhere in a motel room, his physical body was experiencing 
the throes of Cuchulainn syndrome. Temporarily, his mind was no 
longer obligated to follow the geas. 


In front of him was a stairway, leading further down than he could 
gauge. From it came a red glow. 


Adam began to descend. Katabasis. He must commune with the 
dead. 


The glow filled his vision. It was only a few steps before he was 
unable to ascertain what was in front of him. He continued. 


The light faded, giving way to a pulsing violet. There was a door 
in front of him. He pushed it open. 


He no longer skimmed the surface of another world, but was 
entirely immersed. 


There was no air here, for it was too dense with the vacuous 
bodies of the dead. Anything else would be pushed out, into the 
nothing between somethings. 


Some faces he saw contorted in frozen moments of great 
emotion. A laugh, a scream. Others followed him with empty, 
suspicious eyes as he waded among them. 


Their arms gripped around him, weak at first, but it soon became 
that he could not see, and he could not move. Death all the way 
up. Death all the way down. 


Direction lost meaning in the sea of corpses. People burned of 
faces and histories and choice, filled with information and trusted 
to tell no tales. 


And Adam was in the thick of things, wedged in the center of 
knowledge mortals could not know, tidbits shoved in by Redzone 
personnel. 


Do they even know what they're doing? Do they know what this is 


like? 


The grip on Adam's body cements further. He has not gone 
unnoticed, and the friction against his body is drawing heat. 


No, no, it's not drawing heat. The heat has always been here. 
The souls are just getting Adam acquainted with the broiling. 


There was no sight or sound, no smell, or taste. There was just 
the pressure and heat of a thousand souls on every square inch 
of Adam's body. The mass had become conscious, perceptive of 
the mortal among them. 


The temperature increased, and Adam's body was filled with fire. 
He felt tension at his arms and legs; they were being pulled away 
from his torso. He was being assimilated. 


He clutched his limbs close to his body, away from the grabbing 
arms. 


He is Adam Rowe. Not one of a mass. 


In his left hand there was a rectangular device with a disc on the 
front, like a record player, a symbol of the forces that drive away 
a consciousness. 


On Earth, it was a tool. In here, it was an idea. And ideas are 
indivisible. 


He pressed the button beneath his thumb, and the dimension was 
filled with ceaseless noise, a vibration that began in his body and 
spread to fill the entire space. 


The bodies were pushed away, a sphere of cavitation forming 
around him. Each soul exited the dimension like air escaping a 
balloon, flowing to wherever they belonged, like a ripple across 
the multiverse. 


The redness slowed. The fire dissipated. The pocket dimension 
was empty save for Adam, Redzone's information lost forever. 


Adam released his grip on the exorcism device. It stayed where it 


was, floating in space, a ward. This place was now closed. 
Redzone couldn't send any more souls here. 


The dust was wearing off, and Adam found himself drifting 
upwards again. The last thing he saw was a suffusion of blue. 


December 9th, 2023 


His eyes were crusted over and he felt the sting of sunlight. When 
he forced them open, he found himself back in his motel room. It 
was morning. 


He checked his desk, where his contract lay, changed back to its 
original form. Like nothing ever happened. Untraceable. 


He inhaled deeply, but his breath was cut short by a slamming on 
the door. Someone was beating it in. 


He glanced around for something to defend himself with, but there 
wasn't enough time. Each knock on the door shook free splinters as 
a gash formed in the cheap wood. 


Moments later, the door fell inwards with a mighty crack. 


Standing in the doorway was the imposing Redzone agent he had 
seen at the coffee shop, still wearing sunglasses. Peeking out 
behind them was Samantha, eyes orbs of fire as she pushed her 
way to the front. 


"Adam. What did you do?" she spat. 


Instinctively, he raised his hands in the air. "Nothing. | couldn't... | 
couldn't do anything." 


"We know you did, you must have. You must have done something." 
She nodded to herself. "You really fucked things up, Adam." 


"| don't know what you're talking about." The geas still had a few 
hours left, and it led his tongue. 


Her mouth formed a thin line as she curled her fingers towards him, 


beckoning the larger agent, who stepped forward. They removed 
their sunglasses to reveal two scarred craters where their eyes 
would be. 


They approached him and reached out their hands for his neck but- 
"Stop, stop!" Adam yelled. "Stop." And the hands paused. 


He took a breath. "You think, if you take me, if you kill me, my father 
won't know? He won't tell people it was you?" 


Adam started to lower his hands. "He knows... he knows a lot of 
people. They trust him. How would your reputation fare if people 
knew you murdered employees who were under geas? Unable to do 
what you accuse them of? You said that trust was everything. You 
know you can't risk that." 


Samantha cocked her head at him. After a moment her flat 
expression twisted into a wicked smile. 


"You know, you should really watch your back, Adam. Not everyone 
in this town is as /ax as we are." She turned out, and strode down 
the hallway, the large agent trailing. 


Adam took a deep breath, smoothing his clothes with his hands. His 
door was still broken. He couldn't stay in this motel for much longer. 
He sat back on his bed, head resting in his hands. 


A moment later, he felt a warm hand on his back. His head turned to 
the left and he could see, sitting on the edge of his bed, the 
transparent, blue form of a woman. 


He watched her, and she wordlessly stared back. Her hand patted 
gently on his shoulder, and she gave a silent nod. Then she was 
gone, vanished into the hanging clouds of Three Portlands. 


The air was quiet, and full of dust. His room was a mess, splinters of 
wood scattered across the floor. 


But he would make it to tomorrow. And for now, that would have to 
be enough. 


uniforms. Also, the nuclear device we recovered wasn't a 
missile or torpedo warhead, it was a demolition charge. 
Does that make any sense? After all those clues, | had to 
come forward. Why the directorate didn't is something | 
can't fully explain. 


SCP Researcher: Wait - the sub was sent out 
unmanned? But if so... 


Agent: (/nterrupting) No, not unmanned. There were no 
bodies, but personal effects were everywhere, along with 
uniforms. There was some blood - human, before you 
ask - on one of the torpedoes and a bit of skin, where 
somebody probably crushed his hand loading the thing. 
Just, no bodies left. When | first looked into all this, | had 
no clue what the hell had gone on down there, but | 
started putting things together. 


SCP Researcher: A Soviet weapons program? Some 
kind of biological agent, after what you said about [DATA 
EXPUNGED] 


Agent: (Shakes head) No, no, it wasn't that. | thought 
maybe it could have been, so | dialed up some of my 
contacts at Biopreparat - us spies end up owing each 
other favors after a while - and they denied it. 
Vehemently. Not your usual cover-up horseshit, either, 
they clearly stated that whatever the fuck was 
carrying, it wasn't theirs and they wanted no part of it. 
Sounded like he was gonna puke when | mentioned 
[REDACTED]. And Doctor, do you have any idea what it 
takes to make a bioweapons researcher sick? 


SCP Researcher: | can guess. 


Agent: Now, that wasn't what really bugged me, though. 
What really kept me awake at night was the KGB files 
that fell into our hands. They mentioned a covert op by 
the Soviet military against an internal, unnamed faction, 
to get rid of "terrifying weapons" that "even the Soviet 
Union can't safely control". They wanted to lose it, 


Footnotes 

1. Pronounced as a sudden inhalation of air through closed teeth, a 
vague approximation of the sound most people make when they 
hear the words "ambient soviet factorypunk" 


Those Twisted Pines Hub 


Those Twisted Pines 


Prologue: 


A nobody stood under an awning in a largely deserted street in 
Portland. Occasionally a car would pass. The headlights illuminated 
the puddles that had collected from the ongoing rain. She pulled her 
heavy jacket close, and took a drag on a cigarette before looking 
over a few collected notes. 


While Sloth's Pit is one of the more animated 
Nexuses in the United States, greatly distorting 
the Anomaly Occurrence Value of the entire 
Midwest, Wisconsin is only the second-most 
anomalous state. Thanks to the existence of 
Roadkill County in Oregon, the Pacific 


Northwest is, from a purely quantitative 
standpoint, the most anomalous area of the 
United States. 


Dr. Philip Verhoten 
The Crossroads: A Study of Urban Anomalous 
Nexuses in the United States. 


Good morning, everyone. 


We have a lot of ground to cover today with all 
the orientations so I'm going to keep this brief. 
I'm Director Edgar Holman. Welcome to 
Site-64. 


For those of you who are just starting out with 
the Foundation, glad we could be your first. 
Site-64 is large enough that things don't stay 
stagnant here, while small enough we avoid 
the logistical and staffing problems of the 
larger sites, like 19. It's a good place to get 
your feet wet. A lot of you will be working with 
contacts within the FBI's Unusual Incident's 
Unit. Some of you will be interacting with 
members of the local anart crowd. Others of 
you will be chasing robots. 


Notice | said interacting with, and not 
‘containing.’ That's because the Veil Protocol is 
enacted a little differently here. Three 
Portlands is, in a loose sense of the term, a 
massive containment cell. We keep the whole 
place quiet, sure, but we aren't about to storm 
the city. We'd only be making our job harder 
than it needs to be. 


And let's be honest, this job doesn't need to be 
any harder. We see still see our fair share of 
ghosts, goblins, monsters, and whatever else it 
is that goes bump in the night. But hey, at least 
we aren't under a goddamn lake. 


Anyway, we're about to do our first set of 
breakout sessions. Welcome aboard, 
everyone. Godspeed. 


Director Edgar Holman 


Site-64 New Employee Orientation, May 2nd, 
2012 


Some of you have been with the Unit for a 
while. You've all seen some pretty weird shit, 
otherwise you wouldn't be here. Maybe you've 
done a stint in the Backdoor and think you've 
got a handle on this kind of thing. Well, you've 
never seen anything like Three Ports. | can 
guarantee it. 


This city is fucking weird. 


The City of Three Portlands is the largest 
paranormal enclave in the United States — or 
within our jurisdiction, at least. I'm still not 
super clear on the semantics of this multiverse 
stuff. But what that means is that you're going 
to see things you've never seen before — 
things you never thought possible before. 
Anartists and wizards are just the tip of the 
iceberg. We've got cyborgs, talking dogs, 
demigods, ghosts, psychics, shapeshifters, 
faeries, and gods know what else in this town. 
Most of them are human, or humanish. Some 
of them aren't. So try to keep an open mind. 
We're the outsiders here. 


Three Portlands is also autonomous. 
Independent. A self-sufficient city-state with its 
own city council and mayor — although 
nobody's ever seen the latter. We're not on US 
soil here. Our authority and jurisdiction only 
come from the Hoover Mandate — that is, 
because we Say so. That said, we don't have 
the manpower or the firepower to fight the 


entire city, and we aren't gonna be winning any 
popularity contests here, so play nice — city 
police handle most local crime, and you should 
always try to deescalate back to them if you 
can. They've got riot golems, after all. 


Our job is to keep a lid on all this weirdness. 
Keep it contained, if you want to use the 
skippers' term. There's no Doorman here, and 
there are more Ways in and out than you can 
count. Trust me, I've tried. This place is a 
haven for paracrime — smuggling and 
trafficking are near the top of the list, but I've 
seen everything from conceptual arson to 
temporal trading fraud. Like | said, this city is 
fucking weird. Don't be surprised if some goon 
running demonarcotics for the Lighthouse 
Mafia pulls a Soviet plasma projector on you, 
because that'll get you killed. Surprise is a 
luxury we can't afford. 


The good news is that we've got some 
weirdness of our own. Most of our irregular 
agents are assigned here; odds are good you'll 
be partnered with at least one of them — listen 
to them, they know this world better than you. 
If you need to call in the big guns, the amount 
of Ways mean that MOOT can be here in 
minutes. And if things go really wrong, the 
Foundation's always looking for an excuse to 
get involved. Try not to give them that excuse if 
you can avoid it, skippers always manage to 
fuck things up for us. 


When in doubt, act like a Boy Scout: helpful, 
courteous, and prepared for the end of the 
world. 


Special Agent Kenneth Spencer 
Orientation for Incoming Agents of the UIU's 
Three Portlands Field Office, 2016 


Do you dream of experiencing what Three 
Portlands has to offer? Are you just too 
milquetoast to grab destiny by the horns and 
force adventure into existence? Try these all- 
new tourism opportunities! 


The Arts: