The money came trickling in, or perhaps ‘trickle’ was the wrong 
word. Keagan quickly asked the Judge to direct it to an account on 
the outside, after which Keagan would see the cash for only a few 
seconds before Wesley stuffed it in a new envelope made out to 'Mr 
Greengoss QC’, presumably Mr Sackshaw's equally fictitious 
partner-in-crime Silk. Verifying that he was not himself being 
scammed proved harder than Keagan had anticipated—receiving 
statements from the bank in question independently of the Judge's 
lawyer was liable to raise red flags, for all prisoner's mail is opened 


and vetted, and the sight of a lifer making thousands a week, even 
labelled as he was assured it was as ‘severance pay' from a job 
completed before his incarceration, was sure to arouse suspicion. 
Nor would phone or email banking via the official channels be 
immune to interception. 


In the end Keagan decided that without telling the Judge he would 
approach Travis Lemure, who despite his reputation proved affable 
and open to the proposal Keagan made. Keagan would borrow the 
mobile Travis clearly no longer owned and use it in his presence to 
check his account, paying him a pound a minute for the privilege 
(which sum he asked from the Judge as a fiver's change from his 
pay packet, ostensibly to buy cigarettes, which he saw no reason to 
mention he did not smoke). The Judge was true to his word—every 
Friday, a few hours after the solicitor left, Keagan would see £4,995 
deposited into his account, and he began to think not of some grey 
life on parole, decades from now, but of Keagan the millionaire, 
emerging with great expectations, still under fifty and with an outside 
chance of being able to start a family. 


Lauren came to visit twice more in the ensuing weeks, each time 
colder and more silent than the last. Then nothing. Keagan agonised 
over whether to phone her for days, trying to force himself to 
simulate her in his mind the way he always used to when he had to 
decide how she would react to anything he did or so. But the oracle 
was weak and shimmering, attenuated through time and distance, 
and vanished before it could deliver a verdict. At length he 
committed himself to the time and expense of using the prison 
phone system, calling the same wrong number twice before he 
finally remembered the last digit of the landline for the flat he had 
lived in for two years. 


It rang for a long time and he stood staring at the digital clock on the 
telephone, which proclaimed it to to be 1900. The man behind him in 
the queue for the phone coughed meaningfully. The answerphone 
kicked in—she'd replaced the joint message they'd recorded, 
requiring eight takes before they could stop giggling long enough to 
come in together when they said 'Keagan and Lauren’. Now it was 
just 'Lauren Vale's residence’. Keagan sighed as the beep sounded 
and was about to ring off when someone picked up the phone. 


"020 5640 7864. Who's calling?” It was a man's voice, mid-register. 
Keagan didn't answer for a second. 


"Who is this?" the voice asked again, and Keagan had to realise it 
wasn't his own voice asking the same question. 


"This is Keagan," he said at length, mouth dry. "Keagan O'Neill. Is 
Lauren around?" 


"She's busy," said the voice, noticeably harder than before. 


"Oh." Keagan said. "Do you know when she'll be available? | need 
to talk to her." 


"No you don't," said the man on the other end of the line. "She 
doesn't want to talk to you. You can write, if you have anything 
important to say." 


Keagan gritted his teeth and leaned hard against the dark, hollow 
wings of the phone booth. 


"Who the hell are you then?" he said, and he realised from the 
suddenly subdued conversations around him that he must have 
shouted it. 


"Not important, mate," said the voice, now equally truculent, "and if 
you call here again I'll see to it the Warden hears about it. I'm 
hanging up now." 


"You fucking—!" Keagan screamed at the phone, feeling for a 
moment so utterly hollow and cast-out that nothing made sense 
except the rage at the voice on the other end of the line. It was too 
late in any case—the voice had already dissolved into a dialtone. 


A guard came over, brow furrowed. "You mind telling me what that 
was about? You're disrupting other prisoners’ calls." 


"Nothing," said Keagan, putting the phone back on the hook and 
turning into the corner of the room so no-one could see his face, 
"nothing at all. The person | wanted doesn't live there anymore." 


"Maybe next time you'll be a little more civil," said the guard archly. 


"| don't expect they appreciated a bolshy call from a convict either." 


"| guess not," said Keagan, between sucking breaths of air. He 
stumbled away, yielding up his place to the prisoner behind him. 


On his way back to his cell Keagan noticed one of the bunks in a cell 
near him was vacant—a neatly apportioned single-person job, now 
with the sheets folded and stacked with military precision (certainly 
no room for a Creepy Bastard to hide underneath them, the little 
voice said). 


"Who used to be here?" he asked the other occupant of the cell, an 
ageing Pakistani gentleman with patchy hair and a stump for a ring 
finger on his right hand which he wrung obsessively with his left. 


"That use to be Mister Cam'ron Moat," he said, haltingly. "For ten 
year." 


"Was he transferred out?" asked Keagan, remembering the Judge 
had said something of the sort. 


"No, he is just gone,” said the Pakistani cryptically, waving his 
truncated digit. He didn't seem to happy about the prospect of a new 
cellmate—but then, maybe the devil you know. 


Keagan wondered idly as he returned to his cell if Moat might have 
been killed, but in the next day or so he heard nothing further from 
the guards and decided he must have simply been moved between 
cell blocks—either that or his cellmate had simply failed to 
understand Keagan's enquiry—and thought no more of the matter. 


One of the effects of Keagan accepting the role of Wesley Kellogg's 
guardian angel was to get him out of his cell and force him into the 
areas the Judge frequented—the rec room, the visiting room, and 
the yard, where the Judge, apparently shocked by his encounter 
with Patrick Goettsch, had evidently decided to get in shape and 
would put in ten wheezy, gasping circuits a day, after which he 
would stop by the weight machines and sit, hands on his knees, to 
regain his composure. 


Keagan would generally remain on the sidelines as the Judge 
jogged, whispered to his lawyer and continued to hold court over the 
inmates of Wormwood Scrubs—Keagan would read a light thriller, 
keeping one eye on his charge and wandering over casually if there 
seemed to be objections to the Judge's ruling or if other lifers 
seemed to be encroaching on the Judge's space in the yard. Thus 
far there had been no overt aggression, for which Keagan was 
grateful. 


Today, Keagan watched as the Judge completed his ninth lap and 
started on the tenth, face red and hair sweat-tousled. Keagan had 
checked his balance yesterday on Travis's mobile for the first time in 
a fortnight and had been concerned to see no further payments 
where there should have been two on the books. He had first 
wondered whether the mobile browser had somehow cached the 
page, interrogating Travis over whether he had tried to spy on his 
business. Travis had denied it easily, and though he knew better 
than to trust a cop-killer and a known prison thief, he found no 
further evidence thumbing through the options that he was viewing 
anything other than an up-to-date version of his account. The next 
step, of course, was to confront the Judge, which would mean 
revealing that he had been checking up on the account. 


Keagan had thought about the possible scenarios. That the Judge 
was wilfully robbing him; unlikely—why transfer over £30k thus far if 
you do not believe your mark is capable of checking up on what 
you've paid? Furthermore, why risk antagonising a physically 
stronger inmate to whom you have additionally confessed your 
involvement in a serious crime? That the Judge had himself become 
the victim of an opportunistic solicitor who was skimming from the 
Judge's intake—or perhaps just taking the lot for himself—again, 
unlikely. That level of involvement in what was clearly a criminal 
enterprise was enough to trigger a disciplinary hearing before the 
Solicitors' Regulatory Authority. Keagan could not believe the Judge 
did not have his own means of checking what his co-conspirator was 
stashing away on his behalf; and why would the solicitor wish to 
make an enemy of an ex-judge with knowledge of his own part in the 
affair? He could not cut the Judge off from communication with the 
outside—Wesley Kellogg was by all accounts being actively 
consulted by prosecutors and could simply decide to appoint 


different legal counsel. No—far more likely that there had been a 
simple oversight, some direct debit left to expire which the Judge 
had no power to view nor his solicitor time to notice. He would 
therefore raise the issue with the Judge and ask the payments to be 
restored. 


"You did what?" The Judge spat—it was hard to judge whether he 
was apoplectic with rage or simply taking longer than normal to 
recover from his workout. His chest rose and fell and he waved 
weakly for help to reach a secluded bench where they could speak 
freely. After the Judge had eased his trembling legs, Keagan 
explained again that he had borrowed Travis Lemure's phone to 
check that the payments were being made and the precautions he 
had taken, including clearing the browser history after each use. 


"And what did you tell him—’” retorted the Judge—"you just wanted 
to check your account to make sure some regular payments were 
coming in? Travis Lemure, of all people! And don't you realise 
mobile phone traffic will be routed through the prison mast?" 


Keagan kept silent. The notion that the prison could intercept mobile 
phone traffic within its walls hadn't occured to him at all—he'd 
foolishly assumed that the signals flew straight up to some orbiting 
satellite, free of surveillance by HMP Wormwood Scrubs. 


"What a stupid risk! If you didn't trust me, we could have worked 
something out, some notarial instrument assuring you of what you 
had coming to you. You're lucky we haven't both been pulled up 
before the Warden." 


At length Keagan said, quietly, "| don't know the law. How could | 
ever know any promise | got from you was binding? You'll excuse 
me for being suspicious of the guy who told me he was running a 
scam from his prison cell. But here's the thing. You weren't alarmed 
when | told you my money hadn't come through—only when | told 
you I'd checked up on it myself. That means you knew you'd 
stopped paying me. What's going on, Judge?" 


The Judge had the good grace to break eye contact and look down. 
"To be honest, | didn't think you would notice. | was planning to 
make it up later. I've been in contact with this guy—he's a big fish, 


<1/22/ , 1640> SCP-682 uncovers its 'ears' and begins 
pacing the test chamber. 


<1/23/ , 1640> SCP-682 continues pacing. 
<1/24/ , 1640> SCP-682 continues pacing. 
<1/25/ , 1640> SCP-682 continues pacing. 


<1/26/ , 1640> Mass amounts of aerosolized sedatives 
and tranquilizers introduced to containment chamber via 
ventilation. 


<1/26/ , 1645> SCP-682 loses consciousness. 
<1/26/ , 1646> SCP-682 begins sleepwalking. 


<1/26/ , 1647> SCP-682 breaches containment. 
Hallucinations of a pale, thin, large clawed entity 
resembling SCP-682 stalking the containment site were 
reportedly experienced by all present site personnel. 
Security footage shows no such entity on site. Due to 
mass hysteria, security teams were unable to reestablish 
containment of SCP-682 and are seen on footage firing 
repeatedly at walls before being dismembered by thin 
air. 


<1/26/ , 1800> Mobile Task Force Eta-10 ("See No 
Evil") is deployed, equipped with HUD video enabled 
enclosed helmets. SCP-682 is located in SCP-513’s 
containment cell, still unconscious, curled around 
SCP-513’s gelatin containment cube. 


<1/26/ , 1830> SCP-682 returned to containment and 
awoken via high pressure HCI spray. SCP-682 
complains that it was having a ‘such a lovely dream’. 


<End Log> 


Persistent monitoring and separate testing of both SCP-513 and 
SCP-682 since the experiment has shown no lasting effects on 
either object. 


my boy. Most of my respondents are stupid, when they're not using 
their real names they're writing on company stationery. This guy was 
careful, which made me think he had something to hide. | went slow, 
made Jacky promise just enough to keep him interested. He's a 
politician, Keagan, probably in government. Maybe even a Cabinet 
Minister. | figured, this is the big one—I can hit him up for a million or 
more, easy. So I've been shutting down the other marks, letting 
them down gently or putting them on ice." 


"To reduce the risk of them getting together and figuring out who's 
behind the letters" said Keagan. 


"Exactly. To be honest, this scares the shit out of me. The guy's a 
bona fide nutcase, but he's clever. | don't think he entirely buys into 
the notion that Jacky is who he says he is, which means I'm going to 
have to go hard with him—straight blackmail—which I'd have to do 
to get that much cash out of him anyway." 


Keagan thought for a moment. "A million quid?" 


"A one-off payment. | don't want to try and bleed this guy. You'll get 
20%, same as normal. | just need a couple of weeks focusing on this 


guy." 


"Okay," said Keagan. "But you won't be doing this all the time, will 
you? Writing letters. You promised you would help me put together 
that thing you said. A writ of habeas corpum." 


The Judge, face returning to its hue, screwed up his eyes and 
stretched. "Okay, okay. To be honest I'm happy to take my mind off 
this thing anyway. And it's habeas corpus. It means 'you have the 
body'." 


Thereafter, Keagan and the Judge would work in the library after 
hours; Keagan studying legal texts and books of case law from the 
shelves and the Judge's own stash while the Judge suggested 
topics for study, dissecting the nuances of his case. 


"Look!" exclaimed Keagan happily, rising from his seat to show the 
older man a passage in Smith and Keenan's English Law. "Beckford 


vs R, 1988. 'A man about to be attacked does not have to wait for 
his assailant to strike the first blow or fire the first shot; 
circumstances may justify a pre-emptive strike.'. And R vs Owino 
says the force must be objectively reasonable in the circumstances 
you subjectively believe them to be. Slick—” ("Who?" asked the 
Judge, baffled) "I mean, Theo Megali, | was sure had a knife. My 
piece-of-crap solicitor told me R v. Hatton applied to all cases of 
self-defence, and said it meant the defendant can't rely on an honest 
belief they are about to be attacked, but it only affects beliefs caused 
by voluntary intoxication. In other words, if you voluntarily get blind 
drunk and kill someone, you can't say that the drink made you 
paranoid." The Judge nodded, approvingly. 


"He even said | couldn't claim self-defence because | knew they 
were coming and could have left my shop. But that's bull. Under 
English law there's no obligation to retreat. | was only able to talk to 
the fucker half an hour tops before court; it's incredible the amount 
of crap he managed to cram in." 


Kellogg fanned his fingers. "I'm glad to see you make such an able 
pupil." 


Keagan blinked. "You mean you knew all that?" 
"| wouldn't be a very good judge if | didn't." 


"Great. So | wasted how many weeks learning all this crap, and you 
could have just told me." Keagan groaned audibly.