The effect was immediate. Rupert's eyes rolled back in their sockets 
and he fell onto his back, juddering. Before he could wonder 
whether the man was having some sort of fit in response to the 
copious blood loss, his eyes were drawn by a much more unusual 
sight. Aries' body was transforming, her face melting and pooling 
into a different structure, breasts receding and stomach pudging out. 
As greying hairs sprouted from her upper lip, he realised what was 
happening - Aries was becoming Rupert. God, as if wearing Via's 
face wasn't bad enough. 


Rupert (Aries?) stood up and dusted himself (herself?) off. 


"Fuuuuck me," said Aries, scratching at her new-formed facial hair. 
"Do you know how much that takes out of me?" She attempted to 
stretch, popping her joints loudly. "This will only last five or six 
minutes, so let's make the most of it.” 


She leaned down, groaning as her back clicked in complaint, and 
grabbed the walkie-talkie. 


"False alarm, uh, me laddies.”" she said, her voice two octaves too 
high. "Sure don't mind what | say, me mind's going down the pisser. 
Uh, Copy." 


There was a long silence, the walkie talkie faintly crackling as Aries 
waited for a response. 


"Do you think we got away with it, or-" 


The unmistakable sound of a bullet pinging off the side of the truck 
cut her off and all three of them threw themselves to the ground. 


"Apparently not!" Dominic yelled, as more bullets pinged against the 
van and thumped into the ground around them, sending up little 
explosions of gravel. He glared at Aries. "How did they see through 
our foolproof ruse?!" 


She flipped Dominic the bird. Behind her, Fenton stood, removing 
his glasses to reveal the sparkling voids where his eyes should be. 


"Don't matter." he said, a slight grin on his face as bullets whizzed 
past him. "They have no idea what they're up against." 


Dominic's vision swam as he pushed himself up onto his knees. A 
quick check to confirm he still had all his fingers and toes, and he 
allowed himself a moment to breathe a sigh of relief. They'd made it. 
What the fuck had Fenton done? Nothing had made sense for about 
five minutes, their bodies and minds separate, screaming through 
the security guards, and then they'd been at the door of the facility. 


Dominic stood, looking around to check how the others were doing. 
Fenton was helping Emmy up, wrapping an arm around her waist to 
support her on a broken leg. Ok, not good. Aries was already up and 
exploring, staring up quizzically at the opposite wall. Bouche was 
gone. 


Aries turned to look at him. 


"Do you have any idea what it is?" 


He looked up at where she'd been staring, at the huge sign on the 
wall. Above the words "WHITEBOX 5" was a logo - a circle with 
three arrows pointing inwards, surrounded by a bubble outline. 
Nothing he'd seen anywhere in their briefing document on Marshall, 
Carter and Dark.. It felt... wrong. A thing that didn't belong, that was 
at odds with reality. The longer he stared, the more wrong it felt, a 
buzzing emptiness just behind his eyes. 


He pulled his gaze away from it. 


"Careful, feels weird. Might be some visual cognitohazard, last line 
of defense." He pulled himself up, ignoring complaints from his 
joints. 


Aries considered, then nodded, turning to face away from it and 
down the hallway, where the hum of giant computer banks could be 
heard. This place was for more than storage of items, then. What 
kind of information was valuable enough to store it outside of reality? 


Dominic tapped his earpiece. 
"Willow? We're in the facility now, advise on how to proceed." 


There was no response. They were cut off, either outside the range 
or just entirely disconnected. 


"W-we should investigate the o-object storage, | guess," Emmy said, 
"Follow the symbols?" 


Dominic glanced at Fenton, but the man seemed as mystified as he 
was at this. 


"What symbols?" said Dominic. 


"The- the ones all over. Can't you see them? The walls are c- 
covered." Emmy coughed hard, and Fenton's grip at her waist 
tightened as he looked around. His expression remained confused, 
and as Dominic looked around, he could see why - the walls were 
spotless, nothing on them but the circle and arrows sign. 


Seeing that none of them had any idea what she was talking about, 
Emmy slipped out of Fenton's grip and hobbled toward the wall. 
With a ripping sound, she pulled pieces of paper off the blank wall 
and stalked back over to the others with them. Dominic looked at the 
paper she'd seemed to conjure out of thin air, and squinted, 
struggling to read a perfectly legible handwritten journal entry, dated 
to 1999. 


The thing isn't doing this by accident. There's reason and 
rhyme to it, just not any | understand. If we're to have 
any hope of stopping this virus, if the concept spear 
doesn't work, this might be our last hope. 


| can feel its pull on me. It wants the part it recognises, 
the eye lobe. 


Dominic dropped the paper as a spike of pain stabbed through his 
head. Something was very very wrong here. 


"Get up, idiot." said Aries, lightly kicking him in the leg, and he 
realised he'd dropped to the floor too. 


"How is this not affecting you?" he said, twisting to try to get up 
again. 


"It is, I'm just not a baby about it." she said, pulling him up one- 
handed. She squinted at him, cocking her head. "Your right eye is 
bloodshot. Wasn't before." 


He shrugged her off, following after Emmy and Fenton as they 
slowly followed the paper trail. 


"Hey!" she barked, dashing to get in front of him again. "Look at 
me!" 


He opened his mouth to retort and, before he could say anything, 
she spat in it. He recoiled, disgusted, and grabbed her by the collar, 
not sure what he was going to do. She kicked him in the shin, hard, 
and he dropped her, holding his arms out to stay upright as his leg 
buckled. 


Then he felt it. The buzzing spike of pain receded - not quite gone, 


but numbed, enough that he could bear it. He looked up and saw 
Aries scowling at him, awaiting her apology. She swayed slightly, 
and Dominic realised she hadn't warded him to the effects - she was 
simply taking on the pain for him. 


He walked around her and wordlessly started toward the object 
storage room. 


Object storage was huge - he was reminded of an IKEA storeroom, 
with shelves stretching all the way up to the ceiling dozens of metres 
up. The shelves were covered in numbers and codes, and again that 
symbol, the circle with the arrows. What had once been an insistent 
buzzing behind his eyes was now a dull hum as he frowned at the 
symbol. It was right at the tip of his... 


The tip of his what? 


He panicked as he felt an unfamiliar presence in his mouth, a slimy 
mass pushing softly against his teeth. A few feet down the stacks of 
shelves, Aries recoiled, a hand shooting to her face. He opened his 
mouth to shout something to the others and the mass moved, 
curling upward to rub against his upper teeth. He clamped down 
hard and felt an explosion of pain from somewhere inside his mouth. 
Was it biting him back? 


Aries clattered into the shelves, toppling carefully arranged objects. 
Ahead of her, Emmy's head whipped around in Fenton's arms. 
Fenton seemed too preoccupied to pay attention, preusmably also 
affected. Dominic realised too late the thing's hot blood was flooding 
his mouth, and when he gasped for air it rushed down his windpipe, 
drowning him. 


"Iss attassed hoo my mouh." said Aries, pulling a razor blade out of 
her pocket. Emmy stumbled out of Fenton's distracted grip, lunging 
wide-eyed for the witch. 


Dominic's vision swam as Aries and Emmy grappled. His legs 
weakening, he fell to his knees and let a spasming cough rack his 
body. Something was lodged in his throat now, a chunk of the thing 


'M. And from what lve seen, LUCAS doesnt do 
anything bad to your save. 


Rogric , 9:55 
Lucas makes the game easymodo, anyone 
who uses him is a scrub 


ReGGie , 9:58 
>Not using lucas 
Casual detected 


Lizalfos , 10:01 

...| think Lucas just talked to me. My mom 
called me downstairs and | said I'd be down in 
a minute, and the game popped up with 
something like "Are you leaving already?". 
Creepy. 


Wetualo , 10:05 
Probably just a coincidence 


Anonymoose , 10:10 

Wetualo is correct. LUCAS was supposed to 
be a monster in the game that was cut out 
early (as you could probably guess from its 
odd name compared to the other monsters in 
the game), and using it pulls data from the 
game in odd places. Chances are if you get a 
random popup when using LUCAS, it's the 
game assuming you're doing something that 
you're not. 


Lizalfos , 10:13 
@Anonymoose How do you know that? 


Wetualo , 10:13 
@Anonymoose Neat 


Anonymoose » 10:15 
@Lizalfos I've been working on a ROM hack of 
PRotMK, so I've seen this system firsthand. :) 


he'd bitten through, and his breathing was totally stopped now. He 
was face to face with one of the objects, a broken glass eye that 
stared quietly at him. Beside it, a folded cardboard sign designated it 
SCP-4113-2. 


The blurry shape of Fenton was between Emmy and Aries, trying to 
push them apart, his eyes bright pinpricks in Dominic's ever- 
darkening vision. Emmy was yelling, something about tonnes? 
Tungs? His head was buzzing, trying to figure out what Emmy was 
talking about, why the letters and numbers on that sign seemed so 
familiar, how to fucking breathe. 


The two women toppled into Dominic, and he passed out. 


Dominic awoke face down on the ground, face pressed 
uncomfortably into the dirty tile floor. The first thing he became 
aware of as he surface was a roaring ache in his mouth, as if he'd 
bitten straight through his tongue. 


Right through his... 
Oh, shit. 


Dominic tried to push himself up and was almost immediately 
countered, a confident strength that was unmistakably Fenton's 
pushing down between his shoulder blades firmly. 


"Hey, Alvares?" Emmy's voice said softly, somewhere above and 
behind him. "| need you to stay real still for like three more minutes, 
ok? There's a Mark 2 Schulman device embedded in your lower 
spine right now, and if you move too much you could paralyse 
yourself." 


Things were shifting in his head, changing. His tongue, his fucking 
tongue, how had he forgotten that? Had there been a Lethe event 
here? Could there even be one, if this place was truly outside of 
reality? 


Dominic wanted to ask why there was a fucking machine in his 
spine, but a more pressing question came to mind first. 


"Why didn't it affect you?" he said, twisting his head to try to look at 
her. His tongue burned as he talked, and it was hard to form the 
words. "All of us, we were freaking out, or whatever Fenton's version 
of freaking out is. But you were fine. How can we trust you're not 
somehow involved in this?" 


Emmy moved around him so he could just about see her face, 
staring seriously into his eyes as she hunkered down into his line of 
sight. 


"Willow told you, back in that locker room." Emmy said "I'm here to 
help you remember the things you forget. It's my job to remember 
things." She lightly tapped the small weight on his lower back. "And 
to do what it takes to help trigger your memory too." 


It wasn't an answer, not really, but he was physically unable to focus 
on that. His brain was still rearranging, reminding him of things he'd 
been physically unable to recall moments ago. Tuna! Delicious 
fucking awful fish! He could pinpoint when he'd lost the memory, too, 
taking a pee break during a long stakeout of some magic kids who 
were pissing the Foundation off with a giant sentient paperclip they'd 
set loose on the streets of Brooklyn, giving unsolicited advice on 
how to guard against various anomalies. That was months ago, 
when Nettle had defected, betraying the others when the kids had 
covertly disabled their explosive necklace. 


"How long til | can get up?" he said, put out by the memory. He'd 
thought he'd got close to Nettle in the time they'd spent together as 
a team, and the betrayal had, well... it had stung. 


"Just another minute, probably." said Emmy, biting her lip. "Depends 
on the person. Just let me know when you see the- when you see 
it." 


"See what?" he said, but even as he asked he could feel the biggest 
roadblocks dissolving in his mind and he felt his brain working 
overtime as his vision changed without changing, suddenly seeing 
the thin grey-pink tendrils that covered every surface of the place, 
lightly pulsing and waving, the tips of the tendrils reaching away 
from the surface they ran along to feel at their surroundings. It 
wasn't just his vision that was changing but his sense of touch, 


feeling the tendrils exploring every inch of him lying on the ground, 
sneaking into his mouth and nostrils, wriggling beneath his torso. He 
yelled and wrenched his head away, and the tendrils slid out of his 
face easily, no fight whatsoever in them. 


"See that" said Emmy, smiling, and she set about removing the 
device. 


A series of bips told Dominic she was entering something into some 
sort of keypad, then he felt the very odd numbed sensation of a 
needle sliding out of his spine, the dull pressure turning into a 
pinprick of pain. With it removed, he rolled over gingerly to look up at 
Emmy and Fenton, standing over him with concern. 


"Normally," said Emmy, "I'd tell you to stay still for a couple hours to 
heal after a spinal tap. Unfortunately, | don't think we have that." 


Wordlessly, Fenton handed him a small notepad, open on a page 
with a list of words. Dominic read them out. 


tongue 

Oklahoma 

tuna 

the name 'Dick' 
squash (sport) 

4:4 rhythm 
combustion engines 
Korea 

tendrils everywhere 


"Tongue, Oklahoma, squash, 4:4, combustion engines, tendrils" 
Fenton repeated back briskly. The man seemed tense, his arms 
crossed tightly over his chest and his mouth a hard line. 


"He wrote those down as he was surfacing," explained Emmy, 
"things he'd forgotten that he was starting to remember. But now... 


"Now you're forgetting again" said Dominic, gazing up at Fenton. 
"How long do we have?" 


"Not sure." Emmy said, shrugging one shoulder. "Twenty, thirty 


minutes before you start losing thing again. I'd estimate maybe an 
hour and a half before you go back to biting chunks out of your 
tongue." 


Dominic nodded and started pushing himself up slowly, taking 
Emmy's offered hand to get to his feet. 


"One last question," he said, "where's Aries?" 


They found Aries on their return trip to the atrium, sitting cross- 
legged by a pile of papers she'd ripped from the wall. Dominic had 
realised as they'd made their way out of object storage that he could 
see them now, the scribbled words and symbols that covered 
everything, obscured only by the creeping tendrils that covered 
every surface. 


A few of the symbols he recognised, symbols meant for instant 
transfer of information into the brain, like magic QR codes. The 
majority, though, was just words and phrases - "Don't forget" and 
"Read the pages" mostly, though a handful of times he'd noticed the 
much more specific "Daisy Glover has been missing for two days", 
written in different materials and different handwriting. Weird. 


Aries jumped a little as they turned the corner, then settled as she 
saw who they were. She had a long clean gash along the side of her 
mouth, slicing her cheek into a lopsided grin. Emmy evidently hand't 
been totally successful in stopping her from cutting her tongue out, 
then. The cut was held together with rough stitches, the kind he 
knew Aries had done herself without much care to how it would look 
when it healed.