For a second, no one in the heap on the ground moved. The lean 
guard's eyes were wide with disbelief, moving from his comrade to 
the men who had suddenly materialized. The first to come to their 


senses was Juhasz, atop the pile. He quickly found leverage and 
pushed himself forward, lowering a shoulder into the stomach of the 
lean guard and tackling him to the ground. 


A mad scramble ensued, Yuri now kicking and swinging his fists in 
all directions as he tried to free himself from the scrum. He caught 

Stillwell square in the chest, driving the wind out of him and leaving 
him gasping as the burly Russian soldier found his footing. Coogan 
squared to face him. 


Behind Yuri, Juhasz had managed to pin the lean guard to the 
ground, allowing him a free hand to reach into his inner coat pocket. 
He drew a stout, thick-bladed service knife. The guard seized the 
split second of opportunity; one of his hands shot to Juhasz's neck 
in a flash, the other frantically reaching for the knife. The two men 
rolled sideways, struggling for the blade. 


In the confusion, Yuri's gun had been knocked from his hands, 
about a meter away from him. He looked sidelong at it briefly, baiting 
Coogan into rushing him. Yuri tripped him as he moved forward, 
getting him onto the ground and quickly bringing a knee to Coogan's 
throat. Before he could crush the prone operative's larynx, Yuri saw 
Stillwell going for the rifle on the ground. He was on his feet again 
almost instantly, his brawny limbs belying the quickness and 
precision of his movements, moving as though he were made of 
springs and not muscle. A huge fist came barrelling straight for 
Stillwell's face. Stillwell snatched up the gun, and with the AK-47's 
stock deftly nudged the Russian's arm mid-swing, parrying the strike 
and letting the soldier's bone crushing force carry his momentum 
forward. Stillwell met that momentum, slamming his knee into the 
man's midsection as hard as he could. He could feel the telltale 
crack of a rib breaking as he struck. His foe bent over and 
incapacitated momentarily, Stillwell glanced over his shoulder. 


He saw Juhasz and the lean guard, blood covering the two 
combatants as they grappled on the ground, the snow around them 
now a morass of brown, red and white. Juhasz had managed to get 
back on top, both hands on the handle of the knife as he pressed it 
towards the first guard's chest. The soldier was breathing hard, 
almost hyperventilating, as he tried with all his strength to push the 
knife away, his hands wrapped around his attacker's, desperately 


trying to move the blade. It edged closer over his heart. Juhasz was 
trembling with exertion, leaning down onto the pommel of the knife 
with all of his weight. 


Adrenaline sped his thought process, and Stillwell acted, turning 
forward once more. He seized Yuri's lapels and crossed them over 
his throat, tightening them in his fists and pulling the collar into a 
noose. The guard's eyes bulged as his air was cut off, his face 
twisting with pain, hatred and fear. He reached for Stillwell's wrists 
and wrenched violently, trying to free himself from the choke hold. 
Stillwell could feel tendons and ligaments starting to give in his arms 
as the massive Russian squeezed and pulled, the pain slowing time 
to a standstill. Fifteen seconds and then he could help Juhasz. Hold 
out for fifteen seconds. 


The Russian's face was draining of color as the blood supply was 
cut off. Panic made his movements less and less coordinated, and 
Stillwell was now able to force the man onto his knees. He took 
several punches to the ribs as his opponent flailed, the glancing 
blows still hard enough to make him flinch and loosen his grip. 
Finally, with what must have been his last reserves of strength, Yuri 
aimed a blow directly at Stillwell'’s right wrist. The Russian's fist 
caught him at a critical angle, and Stillwell felt a pop in his wrist as it 
broke. His hold on Yuri's left lapel was gone, and the soldier was 
now free. 


Yuri seemed to require no time to collect himself. He prepared to 
hurl himself at the disabled Stillwell, when three whooshing cracks 
sounded in quick succession. The side of Yuri's head collapsed as 
bits of skull, hair and brains were ejected forcefully from the now- 
gaping hole where his right ear was an instant prior. He fell face 
forward into the snow, steam rising from the welter of blood pouring 
out of his head. 


Stillwell took several seconds before he looked over from where the 
shots had been fired. Spinella had pulled himself to his feet and 
gotten to the guard's rifle. Coogan was starting to regain his footing. 
Juhasz. Stillwell cradled his broken wrist and moved to the other 
fight. 


Juhasz had worked the tip of his blade into the lean guard's chest. 


Ragged grunts and shouts came from below him as the soldier 
struggled against the blade with an animal's ferocity, blood 
beginning to well up now from the wound. Spinella trained the rifle 
on the two combatants. 


"Stop!" Stillwell shouted. "You're going to hit both of them!" 


Spinella ignored him, lining up the iron sights, taking careful aim. His 
hands were trembling, slightly. 


The shouts seemed to prick Juhasz's ears. With a spasm of effort, 
he slammed the knife downwards, through the Russian's death grip 
on the blade, burying it in his chest. The lean guard gurgled, then 
gasped, his hands suddenly falling away. Juhasz firmed up his grip 
on the handle, and with a ragged grunt of exertion twisted the knife 
with both hands, sending an arterial spray up from the man's chest, 
the sound of ripping flesh and tearing sinew audible to the men three 
meters away. The ground was sopping with blood, the scene 
resembling the end of some animal's hunt. The lean guard 
shuddered, and then stilled. Spinella lowered the rifle. 


The four Foundation operatives looked to each other. No one spoke. 
Stillwell surveyed the carnage. The portal was now gone, the 
impossible gulf next to the old man disappeared, replaced by the 
wan shadow that nature demanded. Juhasz got to his feet, his suit 
soaked in blood, his mustache sticky and dripping with it. His 
expression was blank. Coogan looked like he was going to be sick. 
The old man chuckled from his wheelchair, untouched by the scene 
that had unfolded around him. 


"Why didn't you just shoot the asshole while you had him stunned?" 
Spinella shouted at Stillwell. 


"No gunfire. Those were the orders." Stillwell looked at his hand. 
The angle of his wrist was wrong. Broken for sure. 


"Fuck orders! Does this look like the mission at this point?" 


"We need to go." Juhasz interrupted as he picked up the lean 
guard's rifle, looking out beyond the checkpoint. "Now." 


Stillwell nodded. His arm was beginning to throb. 


"Where? We're out in the open, they're going to send patrols out any 
minute!" said Coogan. 


Juhasz slung the rifle over his shoulder. He looked at the 
surrounding buildings, narrowing his eyes. 


"That's the Cloth Hall beyond the gate here. | know a place that 
should be good enough to hide from the military police for a while. 
Come." Juhasz broke into a jog, hopping over the gate arm of the 
check point and heading for a low, pale building in the distance, 
surrounded by an arched walkway. 


Stillwell turned to Coogan. "Get the skip." 
Spinella coughed. "You can't be serious. Leave the fucker." 


"We don't leave anything for the Soviets," replied Stillwell. He 
nodded to Coogan. Coogan nodded back and hoisted the old man 
out of the chair, gingerly settling him over one of his shoulders. The 
low chuckling continued unabated. 


The three men followed after Juhasz. Behind them, two bodies 
surrounded by splashes of red snow lay, an empty wheelchair 
standing sentinel over the scene. 


As the Foundation operatives disappeared into the distance, sirens 
began to wail. 


« | Part Three | Matryoshka | Part Five | » 


Matryoshka: Part Five 


Nechayeva emerged from a utility panel in a frozen alleyway after a 
thirty minute trek through the underground service corridors. She 
recognized her surroundings as a nearby power substation. She 
was met by the sound of sirens in the distance. She kept her pistol 
in her hand, low and as out of sight as possible as she made her 
way to the edge of a nearby fence, taking care to step on the 
patches of bare ground between the small drifts of snow. She 
peeked around the corner, searching out the third utility pole on the 
left side of the street. She looked for the white chalk mark. 


It wasn't there. 


Her curse left her lips as a sharp trail of white steam in the cold 
winter air. The drop was compromised. Someone at command had 
made the call to abandon the other part of the operation to secure 
the GRU-P safe house. Were the sirens the aftermath of the 
operation's failure? In any event, there would be no extraction team. 
No place to leave the documents. Nobody waiting to take SCP-1041 
and the fruits of three years of research out of Zherdev's hands. 


A truck sped by, kicking up a trail of dirty slush as ten security 
Officers, rifles at the ready, made their way to whatever had caused 
the disturbance. A disturbance that happened to be in the vicinity of 
the drop point, if the sirens were any indication. She thought back to 
the briefing in Novosibirsk. This sector of Krakow was a restricted 
area, under Red Army jurisdiction. Security protocols would mean 
that at least three other trucks would be en route to an alarm like 
that. Plans B and C looked to be shot as well. 


Several steps back, she retreated into the service corridor. 
Possibilities and permutations of the likely situation shuffled through 
her mind. The planners back home had spun the various intel 
sources into a tapestry of diverging scenes, all with potential to 
occur during the mission. Chernikov and his GRU-P delegation 
would certainly be arriving in person at Site-7, but probably not until 


after her operation was completed. The probability of a direct 
encounter between herself and any hostiles was pegged at 15%. 
The mission would have been scrapped at 20%. 


The Foundation was thought to be too busy cleaning up in America 
to mount any sort of offensive action in Eastern Europe. The 
likelihood of intervention on their part was projected at 25%, set 
higher than the planners ordinarily would because of the desperate 
tone of the intercepted cable from their assets in Warsaw. Rumors, 
however, persisted that GRU-P had a defector last month. A quick 
check-in with the field offices in Washington, London, Beijing and 
Cape Town turned up nothing. Zherdev's defector was likely 
imaginary. Or dead. But if he wasn't either of these, there was only 
one other place he could be. The planners, with much irritation, 
refused to rule out a Foundation mission in Krakow occurring in the 
same window of time as her operation. 


Try as Petrov did to train the planning staff out of the habit, these 
assumptions were based on past mission histories, confirmed 
intelligence, state-of-the-art statistical models, game theory. 
Rationality. Nechayeva and the rest of the KGB field operatives that 
dealt with this sort of thing were well familiar with how fragile these 
assumptions could be. 


Nechayeva stilled herself and listened to the tenor of the sirens of 
the distance, allowed the echoes of the trucks and the bullhorns to 
wash over her perception. The cold air, brisk without biting, 
caressed her face. She inhaled deeply, discerning a faint whiff of 
truck exhaust through the cloying, metallic layer of ozone emanating 
from the tightly wound steel coils of the nearby power station. 
Copper? 


There was no point going back to the Site without an escape plan. 
At this point, even a bad plan would have to do. But she needed to 
know more. Only GRU-P or Foundation would be raising any sort of 
commotion right now. Which would it be; negotiations, or bullets? No 
other answers could come before this one. 


She would have to go to the drop point, regardless. 


She listened again to the sounds of the city blocks around her, 


was crying made 682 perceive it as hostile intent... Guest 
Researcher Dr. W 


Item: One ordinary human child, drugged to cancel extreme 
emotional reaction 


Tissue Test Record: 
N/A 


Termination Test Record: 
Child stood and smiled, giggling at SCP-682 with no sign of fear. 
SCP-682 devoured the subject messily. 


Notes: Hmmm... maybe we can try that again. I'm sure somewhere 
out there there's a kid who'll make friends with it like SCP-053 did... 
Guest Researcher Dr. W 


Item: Guest Researcher Dr. W 


Tissue Test Record: 
N/A 


Termination Test Record: 

Subject screamed in terror and pounded on the door to the test 
facility, begging to be let out. SCP-682 devoured it messily three 
minutes after being introduced. 


Notes: Fucking sadistic asshole. I've got no sympathy for that moron 
whatsoever. Introducing children to this fucking monster? What the 
hell... Assistant Director Clef 


Item: W cutting laser 


Tissue Test Record: 
Tissue sample was successfully bisected 13 times before adopting a 
mirrored finish. 


Termination Test Record: 
After multiple attempts, the main body of SCP-682 was successfully 


empty now except for soldiers. Most of the activity headed away 
from her, but through the faraway clutter, one noise seemed to be 
coming nearer; a high-pitched revving and buzzing. A bike. By the 
sound of it a single one, likely looking for civilian stragglers. It was 
time to act. 


Nechayeva ran to the access gate of the nearby substation. The 
fence surrounding the substation was solid enough, but the door 
was secured by only one deadbolted lock. The deadbolt looked 
solid, likely too much for the picks she had with her. So she counted 
off ten paces away from the gate, then one step to the side. She 
gently set down the briefcase, then drew her pistol, training her 
sights to the lock on the door. With steady hands, she exhaled, then 
squeezed the trigger. 


A sharp report, followed almost instantaneously by a dull thud as the 
slug ricocheted and buried itself in the wall about three meters away. 
Head height. Picking up the briefcase again, she inspected the lock. 
Broken enough. She delivered a sharp kick to the door, flinging it 
open. The motorcycle had stopped in the distance at the sound of 
her pistol, and now the buzzing engine was headed directly for her 
position. About four blocks away, she reckoned. Quickly, she looked 
for the main control panel. The most prominent cluster of boxes and 
lights was next to a large, standing metal coil. The heat from the coil 
had melted a circle in the fallen snow, leaving a prominent, ring- 
shaped drift surrounding it. Nechayeva paused. Then she ripped off 
a length of fabric from her civilian's coat, wrapping it around her right 
hand, tightly clenching her pistol. The motorcycle was almost there. 
She moved quickly. 


The soldier cut the bike's engine. He could barely hear the 
squelched and muted voices from his radio. The district commander 
would be furious when he found out that the perimeter had missed 
this substation. Maybe it had been nothing? His heart sank when he 
saw the broken lock and the footprints. It had been something. Best 
to resolve it quickly. 


There was one set of footprints in the snow, leading into the 
substation's interior. It had definitely been a gunshot. But only one 
person? It might have been one of the men of the platoon, screwing 


around after having too much to drink. In that case, it would be 
whoever he brought in that got the Commissar's rage, and not him 
for missing a civilian in the security cordon. Maybe this wouldn't be 
so bad after all.