"What is it, Father?" Garry said, the tone of his voice lowering to a 
barely audible whisper, just like the constant breeze of the wind. But 
Dylan could hear it nonetheless. Spending his entire life in the cold 
environment of the Sanctuary, learning to hunt and survive had kept 
his hearing intact. 


Attack. Dylan removed the rifle slung around his shoulder and gave 
it to his son. It was the last of its kind that the Clan had, and was 
purely ceremonial. It had lost its use during the generation of Dylan's 
grandfather, when the storage room housing all of the Clan's 
ammunition was blown up by an encounter with a Searwinger, a 
humanoid bird made out of fire. "Keep this safe," Dylan whispered to 
his son, drawing the axe at his hip. "I'll be right back." 


Slowly, Dylan opened the door, holding the sword in his left hand. 


Strange attacks have been on the rise since we arrived at 
Sanctuary, Dylan thought as he journeyed down the corridor. He 
could hear the sound of the door slowly being shut behind him, 
ensuring the safety of his son. Ancestors damn it, why did it have to 
be now, on the most sacred of days? 


He turned a corner, making sure to check the corridor ahead of him. 
He could hear the blood thumping in his ears, reminding him of his 
mission. Keep Garry alive, he thought. Keep Garry alive. 


Just beyond the corner, a creature was hunched over a dead man. 
Dylan estimated it to be around 3 meters tall, with long gangly arms 
and a vaguely humanoid head. 


Never seen this before, Dylan thought, getting ready to take the 
creature by surprise. 


He emerged out into the hallway, getting ready to sprint and quickly 
take the creature down. He gripped the handle of the axe tightly, 
grasping it with both hands. Keep Garry alive, he repeated to 
himself. Keep him alive. 


Dylan stood up, and started running on the concrete floor. His feet 
lightly pit-pattered on the ground, barely making any noise. When he 
was about 5 meters away from the creature, its tiny, humanlike ears 
perked up, but it was already too late. 


Dylan raised the axe, neatly severing the creature's neck in half. 
Blood spurted in all directions from the creature's decapitated stump 
as it fell down on the dead man's body. 


Dylan wiped the sweat from his forehead and returned the axe to its 
sheathe. Keep Garry alive, he thought to himself again. Keep Garry 
alive. 


He ran back to the room where he last left Garry, knocking lightly 
with three taps. 


Slowly, the door opened, and Dylan could see Garry's baby blue 
eyes, a trait he inherited from his mother, peek out from the gap. 


"Father?" He whispered, fear etched into every single syllable. 
"I'm here." Dylan answered, whispering back. "I killed the creature." 


Garry emerged from behind the door, the rifle slung over his 
shoulder. "I'm glad," the boy said, smiling to his father. "Are there 
any more?" 


"None, as far as | could see. | couldn't hear or see anything else." 


"Good." Garry said, walking out into the hallway. "Have you seen 
anyone else, Father?" 


"No," Dylan said, walking down the hallway, sword drawn. "They 
might have all went to the temple, held off the monsters there. It's 
Sanctuary Day, after all.” 


"| don't think they are, Father." 
Dylan stopped immediately, turning around. "What?" 


"We would've heard them fighting or talking. The temple is only a 
few dozen meters from here." 


Realization dawned on Dylan's face. "No," he said, looking at his 
son. "They wouldn't get wiped out like that. Not on Sanctuary Day." 


"I-" Garry stopped himself, hunching his shoulders. "| hope you are 
right, Father." 


"lam right." Dylan said, trying hard to sound sure of himself. "Just 
see." 


They journeyed further down the hallway. An uneasy silence 
permeated the halls, only interrupted by the soft steps of Dylan and 
Garry's winter boots. 


Please don't let them be dead, Dylan thought, his hands shaking 
with dread. What if they were? he thought. What will Garry and | do 
then? 


They came to the large wooden doors that led into the room that 


was the Temple of the Ancestors. Dylan grasped the doorknob with 
his right hand and opened. 


A loud, collective sucking sound greeted Dylan as he opened the 
door. 


A dozen meters away, at the foot of the wooden statues depicting 
the 501 ancestors, lay the dead bodies of hundreds of people. And 
on top of those people were more than half a thousand creatures 
like the one Dylan had killed earlier, all feasting on the bodies of the 
dead. Blood painted the walls and the floors, along with a less 
viscous, pinkish liquid. 


Terror overcame Dylan, keeping him rooted to the spot as he 
watched helplessly as the creatures feasted on those that were once 
his people. The Clan that his ancestors had worked so hard to build. 
Gone in a blink of an eye. 


Behind him, Garry let out a strangled squeak. 


Then, like clockwork, the creatures all turned to look at Dylan. They 
stood up to their full 3 meter height, and with synchronization 
unheard of in the areas surrounding the Sanctuary, they screamed. 


It seemed to deafen Dylan for good, stunning him and sending him 
to the ground. He could feel blood rushing down his ears as the 
creatures screamed, walking towards the pair. 


Then, they stopped, their humanlike mouths all closing at the same 
time. 


They started to run, their unnatural, gangly arms going forward and 
backward as they ran at the speed of no creature they had ever 
seen before. 


They were on Dylan in seconds, sinking their teeth into varying parts 
of his body, eliciting a loud scream from the chief of the Clan that he 
himself could not hear. 


"Run Garry!" He shouted. One creature crawled from on top of the 
stack of his brethren and bit into Dylan's face, eliciting another 
painful scream from him. 


Garry had no reason to stand there and watch his father get eaten 
right before his eyes. His mind surrendered control to his body, and 
he started to run, terrified like nothing he had ever felt. Garry heard 
more steps from behind him, and he knew that the creatures had 
started to give chase. He could imagine the picture of his father 
getting torn apart by the creatures, their bloody teeth digging into his 
skin and tearing flesh from bone. 


He was too terrified to cry. He was too terrified to look back. He was 
too terrified to do anything but run. 


He came across a corridor which he knew led out of the building. A 
door stood beside him which housed the living quarters, though he 
would have to wait for the creatures to pass by if he did. 


Garry could already hear the frenzied steps of the creatures behind 
him. If he wanted to survive, he needed to make a decision. 


Garry threw open the doors to the living quarters, shutting it behind 
the creatures running behind him. 


Garry knew that the creatures would follow him in soon. He 
scrambled under the nearest convenient bed, his small frame snugly 
fitting into the tiny gap between the frame and the floor. 


Two seconds passed. 


With a loud bang, the creatures flooded in through the doorway, 
fanning out across the space of the room. Their gruesome, blood- 
covered feet, a mix of human and chicken, made Garry instinctively 
withdraw deeper into the darkness that was his safe haven. 


Garry was alone in his thoughts. He kept praying to the ancestors 
for guidance and safety, repeating the old prayers his father had 
taught him over and over again. 


Dear ancestors, Garry thought, his eyes clamped tightly shut, guide 
us in the face of death, keep us safe in the face of danger, so that 
we may emerge unhurt from this threat. 


Like a miracle, the creatures hadn't noticed him. Some of them were 
already starting to walk out of the room, their uncanny gait unlike the 


running postures that they had adopted only half a minute before. 


When the last of the creatures walked out the room, Garry carefully 
rose up. 


Then the rifle strapped to his back hit the bedframe, the metallic 
noise echoing down the halls. 


Garry did not need to hear the creatures' loud screams to know that 
he was dead. 


Another Rainy Day 


The sound of heavy rain pattered on the roof of the small bar where 
Toby sat, finishing his drink alone. The bar was empty aside from 
Toby and a few old men sitting a bit ways down from him. They 
called the bartender by name, and spent most of their time telling 
stories of when they were younger while nursing their drinks. Toby 
had been listening for a while, with nothing better to do. He did have 
plans, but not for another hour or so. Besides, the bar was right next 
to where he needed to be. One story in particular did catch his 
attention, though. 


"It was a dark and stormy night, much like tonight, when-" 


"Hold on, wait a second." Said Toby. "Dark and stormy night? 
Doesn't that sound a bit... Redundant?" Toby picked up his glass, 
turning it so the small amount of liquid rotated around the bottom. 


The old man scratched his beard. "Redundant? What are you talking 
about, it's part of the story I'm tryin’ to tell here." 


"Yeah, | know, but what you're basically saying there is that it was a 
dark night. What's your story about, running into Batman? Have you 
ever been outside at night and been like, 'Oh, well shit, it sure is 
dark out tonight’? Of course it's dark, the fucking sun is down, what 
do you expect?" Toby pushed his empty glass to the end of the 
table, nodding his head at the bartender. 


The old man in question squinted his eyes, and planted one arm on 
the bar as if threatening to stand up. "Listen pal, | wasn't talking to 
you, so don't you get all uppity about a couple words | said. Look 
right over there." The old man said, pointing at a football game on 
one of the TV's. "There's a perfectly good game a football going on 
right now, why don't you just keep quiet and watch it." 


Toby smiled as the bartender left a full glass of beer in front of him. 
"Hey now, | didn't mean anything by it. Just ignore me." 


The old man stared at Toby for a minute, before sitting back down 
and clearing his throat. "Well, anyways, what | was going to say 
was..." 


Toby didn't listen to the story. He didn't have all that much time left, 
and needed to start preparing. After finishing his drink, he paid his 
bill and went outside. The rain was heavy, but the weight of the 
water felt good against Toby's trench coat. There was something 
about the rain that always felt relaxing to him, even when he was a 
kid he loved rainy days. 


Toby placed a cigarette in his mouth, covering it with one hand while 
he lit it with the other. He took one long drag before walking down 
the block. He wasn't too far away now. 


What Toby was after was a man named Don Spiegler, a former 
researcher for the Foundation. After years of his career not going in 
the direction he wanted and failing to make any significant 
discoveries like he'd planned, he decided to sell information to 
another group. The dossier didn't specify which one. Not like it really 
mattered to Toby. He was a man who waited for the bottom line. He 
didn't really care why he was killing them, they must have done 
something to deserve it. If they didn't, though, he didn't really want to 
know. He liked his job, and wanted to keep it. 


As Toby walked to where Spiegler was, he wondered why he liked 
his job. It wasn't like he grew up wanting to kill people for a living. He 
wanted to be a paleontologist when he was a kid. Growing up in the 
Midwest, he'd occasionally find some small fossils that looked like 
little sea shells, which he loved. Toby thought that one day, he'd 
lead a team of researchers to discover a giant, new dinosaur fossil. 
Then, he and his team would extract its somehow preserved DNA 
and make a cloned dinosaur, just like in Jurassic Park. 


It didn't happen like that, though. Turns out, he wasn't that smart. 
Toby didn't think he was stupid, but he knew he didn't have the brain 
power for all of the studying and work required to do that. That's why 
he joined the military. 


Toby stopped walking. His cigarette had gone out, completely 
soaked. He hadn't even noticed. The cigarette was almost finished, 


so it wasn't that big of a deal. Toby tossed it, and replaced it with 
another before continuing down the sidewalk. Why was he a hitman 
again? 


Hitman wasn't a term that he particularly liked. Neither was 
assassin. So what was he? Toby never told anyone outside of the 
Foundation what his job was, though, so it wasn't something he put 
too much thought into. Not in his seven years working as one. He 
was picked up straight out of the military, only 22 years old. After a 
few months in training, he began his new life in killing. 


Toby thought hard. He supposed that, if anything, the hours were 
the best part of his job. People like him tended to have a surprising 
amount of free time. He'd get to travel a decent bit, and aside from 
tracking and actually killing them, he had plenty of time to do 
whatever he wanted. Although, he'd usually just hit the closest bar 
until he was ready to go back to wherever he was staying. 


As for the killing part, it never really bothered him. Toby wasn't sure 
why. It should. Maybe he was just a simple kind of person, and 
could rationalize it easily. Maybe it was because he just didn't think 
about it. Whatever the reason, killing affected him the same way that 
doing the laundry did, or cleaning the bathroom. It was just work. In 
this case, the positives outweighed the negatives. 


Toby walked to the end of the sidewalk, and stopped by the corner. 
A bit ways down the other side, a man sat on the ground in a heavy 
coat. Beside him was a tent and a grocery cart full of various items. 
That was Spiegler. He'd been drifting for a few years, and must have 
thought that he'd shook the Foundation off his trail. He'd been in this 
town for a few months, hadn't even tried to leave. Looked like things 
hadn't gone his way. 


It was pretty good weather to die in, Toby thought. The air felt cool, 
and the smell of the wet asphalt was strangely pleasant. The 
melodic sound of the rain hitting the concrete, with thunder 
occasionally interrupting it. It truly was nice. Toby took out his 
weapon from the underside of his trench coat. A pistol with a long 
silencer. He'd wait until he saw lighting, and shoot with the thunder. 


As Toby approached his target, he noticed something. Spiegler was 


logged 5,478 times. 
* Ticket stub for Return of the Jedi. The number 92 is written on 
the back in permanent marker. 


SCP-787a-516 does not display a similar state of decay as the rest 
of SCP-787a specimens. Cause of death is unknown. 


Addendum-03: 06/19/2013 — SCP-787’s flight data recorder has 
been recovered from a compartment underneath the floor of seat 
A13. The device was wrapped in butcher paper with the 
compartment filled with asbestos and dried human blood. Flight data 
recorder contained nothing but the phrase “TO BE SORRY”. 


« SCP-786 | SCP-787 | SCP-788 » 


just staring into the clouds, fascinated by the storm. Toby could have 
just walked up and cut his throat, and the man probably wouldn't 
even pay him any mind. But he didn't. Toby stopped, because it 
reminded him of something. He would look at the storm clouds the 
same way, back when he was younger. His mother would take him 
out into the garage and set up lawn chairs, where they would sit and 
watch the storm from the inside. Toby loved sitting there, watching 
the storm, listening to it. Every once and a while, he'd run out into 
the rain for a moment. His mother would laugh and smile, before 
helping him to a towel to dry up in. Then he would look up into the 
clouds, with a pure smile on his face, just like the one on the face of 
the man he was about to kill.