He lifted the paper, breathing it in, imagining he could smell that 
cold, crisp air and behind it, the acrid venom of the marvellous 
beast. His eyes strayed for a moment back to the more mundane 
papers on his desk and his spirits immediately sank again. It 
seemed an eternity since his last infusion of green tea—he longed to 
call Matthew, to beg for an advance on the afternoon's sachet... No, 
he thought, there must be discipline, there must be sharpness of 
mind. He closed his eyes, muttered the words of the Heart Sutra, but 
the buzzing of the intercom distracted him. So much for serenity. 


"Sir Malcolm, there's someone to see you at reception. A Mr Keagan 
O'Neill. He says it's about your subsidence problem. There's 
someone else with him. Shall | have them arrange an appointment?" 


Subsidence? Sir Malcolm had received no trouble from his lovely 
little domicile on Eaton Square and didn't recall calling any 
workmen. No, no, he realised, there was more to it than that, it was 
a crude attempt at wordplay. Subsidence was what, a weakness in 
the bedrock underneath a house? A disturbance in the Foundations. 
Now he came to think about it he vaguely recalled meeting the man. 
Hadn't Schaeffer said something about him recently? He flicked 
back through the letters from the Commodore and found the line he 
recalled reading: 


The engineer you sent, Keagan O'Neill, has been a most 
excellent addition to the team after some earlier unease 
with the Project, and can be credited with bringing our 
vehicle fleet up to full efficiency and contributing a most 
novel and effective solution after a failure of the 
windbreaks which averted major damage to Foundation 
property with minimal expenditure of workers. 


Maybe this was communication from the Project, then! Although, he 
thought, he had failed to use any of the known codewords. A 
meeting about the Foundation should have been arranged with 


reference to ‘fundamental matters’, the Project with reference to 
‘greenfield projects’. And who was the second person? Perhaps the 
Linton boy... Had it been Linton? Bedford, Rendon... He thumbed 
the intercomm greedily. 


"That's no trouble, Samantha. Please send them up." 


He put the letters back inside his drawer and waited for the security 
staff to show the visitors up. 


Keagan entered first, and Sir Malcolm recognised him—a dark- 
complexioned chap with a slightly disagreeable way of not exactly 
meeting your eyes. His companion was, he realised with 
disappointment, not the delightful young man who had accompanied 
him last but a somewhat androgynous female, short blonde hair 
cropped around a freckled face and a brown pant suit. Her nametag 
made her out to be 'Samantha Deloitte’. He resolved to differentiate 
her from his receptionist by the use of the masculine diminutive. 


"Keagan," he said warmly, "and Sam. Please do come in, sit down. 
Can | offer you anything?" 


"No thanks," Keagan said, and there was something in his tone that 
made Sir Malcolm hesitate. 


"Do you bring word from the Commodore?" he asked, seeing no 
reason not to get right to business in the face of such brusqueness. 


"Not really. | think Schaeffer is going to have his hands busy for a 
while. You're a piece of work, you know that?" 


"Excuse me?" 


"I'm amazed you managed to find people to go along with your 
lunacy. Well, it's not going to happen. | made sure of that. Now it's 
your turn. | don't think | introduced you to Sam here." 


Sir Malcolm bridled at this piece of affrontery but still shifted a wary 
gaze onto the woman, who smiled quite prettily and said: 


"Pleased to meet you, Sir Malcolm. I'm Sam Deloitte, from the 
Brixton Herald. I've been told quite a story about you and I'd love to 


SCP-3922's connections with SCP-2922-C. 


Item: SCP-3519 


Tissue Test Record: 
Tissue sample has no observable reaction to exposure to 
SCP-3519. 


Termination Test Record: 

(T-8) 02/25/19: Acid levels were lowered by 232 cm and SCP-682's 
head was allowed to regenerate. SCP-682 was exposed to 
SCP-3519. SCP-682 presented no evidence of suicidal ideation and 
was observed to laugh continuously for 193 seconds while the acid 
levels were restored. 


(T-3) 02/29/19: Warning! Keter Class Containment Integrity 
Compromised — SCP-682. Warning! 


(T+7) 03/12/19: SCP-682 containment personnel are presumed 
deceased. Remote sensors (25% operational) indicate a probable 
breach. SCP-682 should be assumed to be at-large. — O5-6 


(T+886) 08/12/21: Probable encounter with SCP-682. Crossing 
Colorado River on Hwy. 163 N. of Laughlin ruins (35.17, -114.60). 
SCP-2490 caught up with me again on bridge, teleporting within 8m. 
Before strike, large fast-moving reptilian emerged from river and bit 
it in half. As reptile sank back in water | think it spoke (fairly sure not 
auditory hallucination): 


SCP-682 (probable): We are alike now, meat. Killing 
you would only end suffering. 


— 05-6 


Item: SCP-1056 


Tissue Test Record: Tissue was resized to a smaller size without 
incident. 


Termination Test Record: 


get a quote." 


Sir Malcolm fell silent for a moment. Every politician, of course, had 
to carefully choose his words in the presence of the press at least 
once during his career. That this particular situation involved 
someone with presumably extensive knowledge of the Project and 
the Foundation more generally, and of Sir Malcolm's part in it, with 
no way of knowing exactly how much he had communicated to this 
local hack, further complicated the situation. 


"I see," he said slowly. "Exactly what story—no, wait, first I'd like to 
hear more from Keagan about what exactly he's done to 
inconvenience my good friend Commodore Schaeffer." 


"| ended the Project," Keagan said. "What you were doing in 
Greenland was insane. The Commodore was a sociopathic bastard 
and he got exactly what he deserved. Anyway, it's over. No more 
Project. The camp is gone, the mineshafts collapsed." 


The words stabbed Sir Malcolm to the heart though he knew from 
the Commodore's last letter they were a grotesque exaggeration, his 
only consolation that Sam Deloitte seemed utterly baffled by this 
exchange. If not the Project, what exactly does she think she's 
uncovered, he thought? Some petty scandal, perhaps, some tax 
return with the i's left undotted and t's left uncrossed... 


Sir Malcolm allowed himself a low chuckle. "Oh, that was you, was 
it?" His lips cracked open, teeth gleaming. "You have a very high 
estimation of yourself. Last | heard, the Commodore estimated he 
had been set back a week, at most. One death—was that by your 
hand? The Project is far too large to be defeated by one man." 


He watched with glee as Keagan visibly crumpled in his seat, face 
going grey with the shock of defeat. 


"The poisonous snake becomes still before it can strike against the 
designs of the Buddha. Don't feel bad. You're on the wrong side of 
history. Now, you've deserted your post, forsaken the Foundation, 
and come to me with the intent of doing me harm. What exactly do 
you imagine you can do to me?" 


"Keagan, what's all this he's talking about?" Sam asked. The 
reporter, Sir Malcolm noted, had become particularly agitated at the 
mention of the death in the Commodore's camp. This Keagan fellow 
had been with the reactionaries, hadn't he—ah, Sir Malcolm, you've 
been a poor judge of character, you should have known that those 
rats never jump ship, not even the ones due for extermination. He 
had been D-Class, D for Dalit, untouchable, untrustworthy. That was 
a secret, which meant it was a weapon. He would use it now, shake 
this silly little female's confidence in what she no doubt considered 
her informant. He's a convicted killer, perhaps a rapist! What do you 
know about him, what... 


"It doesn't matter," Keagan said, cutting off Sir Malcolm's train of 
thought quite adeptly. "What matters is a correspondence between 
yourself and someone called Jacky, who you believed to be a 15 
year old boy in Medway STC. A quite intimate correspondence." 


Sir Malcolm stopped moving. A block of ice had appeared in his 
brain, freezing his thoughts to sluggishness as surely as if he had 
been transported in that moment to the glacier, buried in it like 
Mucalinda. How... how... This wasn't possible. It simply wasn't 
possible. He had forgotten all about it, that piece of final stupidity he 
had allowed himself before, as he saw it, the world ended and he 
ruled over a new age. He had seen the classified ad, the beautiful 
face, the cheekily knowing words. No-one would find out, he had 
thought. He had used aliases, printed everything rather than risk his 
handwriting giving him away, travelled miles out of his way to post 
the letters from letterboxes in Kingston upon Thames. Then the 
letter from ‘Jan’, Jan Crucnik, the supposed conman who had turned 
out to be another phantom, the front for some seedy old ex-judge 
who had killed his wife and now thought to prey on his betters from 
behind bars. The blackmail. But hadn't it been taken care of? Hadn't 
absolutely everyone—everyone—who could have known been tidied 
away? 


"Who are you?" Sir Malcolm snarled. "How is—this?!" He saw to his 
dismay the woman's manner had changed again, leaning forward 
intently, pen resting on the accursed journalist's pad that had ruined 
so many Members of Parliament. 


"| think | might just be the man who wasn't there," Keagan said. "You 


might know me as—Mr Greengoss. QC." 


Sir Malcolm's eyes widened. Mr Greengoss. After the messy part 
had been taken care of, Sir Malcolm had been forced to look into the 
mechanism of the scam—Wesley Kellogg had worked in partnership 
with a solicitor, who had operated under the alias of Mr Sackshaw. 
But there had been another party—£7,500 a month of Kellogg's ill- 
gotten gains were posted off in envelopes bearing the name of the 
distinguished Mr Greengoss QC. Except he didn't exist either and 
the trail went nowhere. The money, as far as Sir Malcolm's agent 
had determined, had been taken into a bank every week and 
deposited—nowhere. No name. No account. Nothing. He had some 
vague notion that a cashier might have been involved, but that had 
gone nowhere. At last he had dismissed the matter—with the 
principal actors dead, there seemed no way his letters could be 
traced back to him. How clear it now seemed. Keagan O'Neill—Mr 
Greengoss—had been the judge's confidant in prison. He had 
disappeared when he had entered the reactionaries’ accursed D- 
Class programme then, somehow, miraculously, re-emerged without 
even the courtesy of getting himself gassed, to haunt him. If not for 
his incompetence and Schaeffer's unquestioned loyalty and 
efficiency, who knew how much damage he could have done? 


"You cheap little thug," Sir Malcolm whispered. "You've walked into 
the Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom to threaten a 
government minister. | could have you arrested right now." His finger 
hovered over the intercom. 


"For what, exactly?" Keagan asked brightly. "Because I'm 
reasonably certain you can't admit to carrying out what looks a lot 
like covert military operations on foreign soil. Or, for that matter, 
being blackmailed by a guy who subsequently got stabbed to death 
in prison." 


Calm, calm. Why is he here? Why bring this low-level, trash- 
publication reporter—probably the only one who would believe you 
—to watch your reaction, get a quote? Because he has nothing. 
Change, change your face, your manner. You're not threatened. 
This is local colour, the lighter side of the job. Something to tell your 
daughter about in the evenings. Well, some of it. 


"Ha. Ha ha ha. No, Mr O'Neil, | won't have you arrested. You're too 
much fun. You're a conspiracy theorist, a loon. Ms Deloitte, there will 
be no ‘quote’. You have no story, only the ramblings of a convicted 
murderer—” he watched for the impact of that nuclear blast but 
disappointingly it seemed to fall flat. Oh, so you're only concerned 
about murders he commits after incarceration. Who says the Fourth 
Estate is in decline? “—and no reputable paper will print it. | have a 
little something for you, though, if you want." he leaned over the 
table towards the reporter, "Owen Paterson, the Minister for the 
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, took a trip to Turkmenistan 
before the end of the Cold War. What passed between him and later 
President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov—I can say no more. Look 
into it. Could be your ticket to the big world of journalism." 


Sam shifted position in her seat, making shorthand scratches on her 
pad. "Actually, Sir Malcolm, I'm much more interested in you. Why, 

exactly, did you start up the correspondence with Wesley Kellogg to 
begin with? Is it standard practice for Cabinet Ministers to exchange 
letters with people who represent themselves as teenage convicts?" 


Ah, the bull-terrier type. You wouldn't think it to look at her. Well, 
thought Sir Malcolm, that's fine. 


"Ms Deloitte, if you leave the building in the next five minutes, you 
may find you receive a pay rise or promotion before you quality for 
retirement. No more than one, mind you," he spat the words, "you've 
already offended me, and that comes at a cost. You may find you 
can publish stories. You may find you can find accommodation 
anywhere in Greater London, drive unharassed by traffic police, live 
out your life without fear or pain..." his voice rose to a peak. "You 
see, | can play hardball too." 


"Don't be stupid," Keagan said bluntly. Then, in a strange, dreamy 
tone, "You play hardball with a baseball bat. Om mani..." 


Sir Malcolm's baffled expression was equalled by that of his 
companion. Keagan seemed to be looking a long way into the 
distance, then he snapped back into focus, and for the first time his 
brown eyes met Sir Malcolm's directly. 


"What's your connection to 1447, Sir Malcolm? The man in the metal 


box. 


Another strange, icy moment. Who was this man, this extraordinary 
pest? 


"How do you know anything about that?" 
Keagan's gaze was beginning to become disquietening. 


"Because | think he's right here, looking at you. | think he can hear 
you.” 


"| find that unlikely. What you're talking about is in 'containment' by 
the reactionaries, in Sheffield. A fascinating experiment, but 
ultimately flawed." 


"| don't think it's contained. | think it chooses to stay where it is. It 
makes a show of trying to get out, but when it really wants to, | don't 
think anything in the world can stop it." 


Sam Deloitte had resumed her look of utter confusion. Very well, 
then, thought Sir Malcolm, let's let that be her last memory of this 
conversation. Two men talking about things that she doesn't 
understand and which sound utterly nonsensical. The little recorder 
in the vase in his window wasn't on—a shame. It would be 
wonderful to have this on tape, so the whole 'confrontation’ about 
Wesley Kellogg could be set in its proper context—a bizarre 
exchange about secret bases in Greenland and monsters 
manifested through thought. 


"That's very interesting, but ultimately irrelevant," he sneered. "1447 
is just a tulpa. Anyone can make them, with the right mental training. 
The only thing special about it is that it can meditate on its own 
existence, allowing it to sustain itself. My own tulpa can't, just yet. It 
can say the words, but it still needs to come back to me for a top-up. 
When it can do what 1447 does, it will outlive me. | will never die— 
some version of me will always exist. And yet it's the simplest, most 
basic thing | can do. I'm not afraid of you or 1447, Mr O'Neill." To 
hell with it, he thought. Soon none of this will matter! Wouldn't it be 
better if this stupid little woman and her treacherous informant went 
away with something that showed them exactly what they were 


dealing with? He jabbed his finger on the telecom.