"Pardon me, my good man, but do you suppose we could have 
something different for luncheon tomorrow? | grow weary of these 
scraps. Perhaps some sausages, or a bit of roast?" 


It was Uncle Teddy's voice, clear as day! | couldn't hear who he was 
talking to, but | could hear him. | craned my neck all around looking 
for the spot it could be coming from. Not above me, not behind me... 
| heard him again as | spun around and realized his voice was 
coming from below, echoing out of a sewer grate. The prison was 
underground! Perfect place to hide in a city like this. But how to get 
in? Was there a secret elevator in one of the nearby buildings? | sat 
back, surveying the area around me for any hint. | saw a man walk 


up to an old restored blue police box on a corner. | hadn't thought 
much of it before - | figured it was either a historical monument or 
some sort of promo for Doctor Who. | watched him unlock the door, 
step in, and close it behind him. A minute passed and he didn't 
come out. Then five. Then ten. Then half an hour. Could this be it? A 
hidden entrance, in plain sight? 


| waited until after nightfall before | got up and walked over to the 
box myself. | took the skeleton key out of my pocket and held it up to 
the lock - and just like that, the lock turned, the door opened, and | 
discovered an elevator box on the other side, waiting. Taking a deep 
breath, | stepped in, closed the door, and pressed the only button | 
saw as the elevator began to slide downward. In less than ten 
seconds, | was in. 


There were armed guards at the front and a secretary at a desk. | 
walked right past them and none of them said a word. Following the 
hand-drawn map on the back of Uncle Teddy's letter, | made my 
way through a maze of corridors, past doors with cryptic warnings 
on them - "LEVEL 4 ACCESS REQUIRED", "COGNITOHAZARD", 
"D-CLASS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT". There was barely anyone 
around, and | did my best to avoid the few people | saw. Soon | 
found myself alone facing a door that had been marked on the map 
with an X. A small plaque read "SCP-1867 CONTAINMENT AREA". 
| wondered if that was what they were calling Uncle Teddy - like he 
was just a number or something. The skeleton key opened the locks 
on the door, | opened it, and there he was. 


Lying on a cot in one corner of a bare and tiny cell, his finery 
replaced with an orange jumpsuit, his hands folded over his beard 
on his chest. His eyes were wide with disbelief as he turned to look 
at me. "Charlie?" he sputtered. "What in blazes are you doing here? 
Don't tell me you've become part of this vile order!" 


"I'm here to get you out, Uncle Teddy!" | responded. "Come on. 
They won't notice me as long as I've got your badge on. If they ask, 
I'll say I'm moving you to another cell." 


| had never seen Uncle Teddy so utterly confused as | saw him then, 
as he slowly came to his feet and made his way to the door. "My 
badge..." he muttered as he reached out and ran his fingers over it. 


"And you have my gun, too?" 


"In the cave, just like you said," | reassured him. "We can talk once 
you're out of here! Let's go!" 


"This is impossible!" he protested. "How did you find me here? How 
did you know about the cave?" 


"It was in the letter you sent me." 
"| sent you no letter!" 


"What do you mean? | have it right here." | pulled it out of my pocket 
and handed it to him. 


"Oh, my dear boy," Uncle Teddy moaned as he pointed to the first 
sentence. "An Englishman always spells 'succour' with a U." 


No sooner did | realize what he meant than an alarm klaxon started 
sounding. The letter was a forgery - meant to lure me to this place 
and capture me as well! What they wanted with me, | had no time to 
wonder about as a harsh, synthesized voice sounded over the 
loudspeakers: "INTRUDER ALERT. SCP-1867 HAS BREACHED 
CONTAINMENT." 


"What now?" | asked as | looked to Uncle Teddy. 
"What else, boy? We run!" 


| took off down the hallway, Uncle Teddy following me. Two soldiers, 
dressed in the same black body armor as the ones at the manor 
house, came around a corner brandishing their guns. | leveled the 
gun and fired. It nearly knocked me off my feet, but it sent the two 
men flying. Uncle Teddy pulled me off in another direction, urging 
me to make for the stairs rather than the "lift". Men with guns 
seemed to pop up from behind every corner. At his insistence | had 
it on the lowest setting, merely stunning the men in our way. The 
stairs were heavily guarded, but with a couple more volleys from the 
gun (and a little help from a flashbang Uncle Teddy had picked off 
one of the soldiers), the way was clear. We bounded up the steps 
two at a time, up to a door to one of the London Underground's 
service tunnels. If we were where | thought we were, it was only half 


a block to the nearest station - and from there, freedom for Uncle 
Teddy. | unlocked the door with the key and swung it wide to find 
dozens of soldiers, gathered around the door in a semicircle. | raised 
my gun as they raised theirs, flicking the little switch by the trigger 
from its lowest setting to its highest. 


"Stand down!" shouted an American voice from behind the group. 
The soldiers lowered their rifles as a man in a lab coat pushed his 
way to the front of the crowd. He made his way toward me. | aimed 
the gun right at him and he stopped in his tracks. "There, there, don't 
do anything foolish. I'm not here to hurt you or SCP-1867." He 
looked at the badge | was wearing. "Intriguing piece of jewelry 
you've been dragging around. Must be a variant form of SCP-13339. | 
assume you got it from that cave we were never able to break into. 
Thanks for opening it, by the way. Tell me, what's your name?" 


"My name is Charlie Blackwood," | said as | did my best to suppress 
the rage in my voice, "and you'd better all get out of my way. I've just 
set this thing to kill, and I'm not leaving here without my Uncle 
Teddy." 


| don't know why what he said next made me drop the gun and 
surrender. | don't know why they set such an elaborate trap to 
capture anyone related to Uncle Teddy. | don't know why they're 
interested in me, or what they want from me. | don't know if my wife 
and kids are safe, but so help me I'm not saying a word about them 
until | get some answers. It's just... those nine words that that 
strange scientist said to me there. They don't make any sense, and 
yet every time | hear one of the guards or one of the interrogators 
repeat them, | feel paralyzed as if by some sudden realization, like 
some missing piece of a puzzle has fallen into place and a mystery 
has been solved. And yet, it doesn't answer any questions. It's 
nonsense, it's a playground taunt. It's... 


"You do realize that you're a sea slug, right?" 


Under a Baleful Sky 


Welcome to 
AUGUSTVILLE, MONTANA 


Population: 750 


Good living under God's law. 


Dhole sat in the crook of a tree in some unknown place, surrounded 
by a vast field of strange plants, overwhelmed by the calls of unseen 
animals, and utterly oppressed by the alien sky. Clear, blue, and 
ominous, it hung far too low for her liking. It revealed the terrible face 
of this place’s sun with too much honesty, and bared everything to 
the attentive stars beyond. It was not a familiar place, and certainly 
not a good one. 


"Getting fresh air for once is nice, isn’t it?" chirped Egret. Dhole’s 
partner was sitting on a different branch, smiling crookedly as short 
strands of her mud-brown hair drifted in the wind. She toyed with a 
small black device as she spoke, flicking its plastic lid back with a 
loud pop, then forcing it back into place with a louder click. 


"Assuredly,” said Dhole, turning her masked head back to the long 
straight road stretching out near their perch. In truth, only peasants 
would prefer dirtied winds. The air had an unpleasant quality to it, 
even when breathed through her wooden mask. It felt like fingernails 
dragged from her nostrils to her brain. 


"Are there places like this where you’re from?" 


"The lands are hale, and the waters teeming. Want is an exile." Hard 
gray earth was all that surrounded the Howling Pillar for a great 
many leagues. All the succor that could be wrung from the earth was 
served at the tables of the city curled around the great edifice’s 
base. Dhole sometimes saw the withered forms of peasants 


wandering the streets outside her family’s bookstore, but they were 
always swiftly whisked away. 


"Sounds nice. | grew up on a farm, you know." 
"In truth?" 
"Probably. Saying it feels right." 


The pair sat in near-silence as they watched a tractor roll slowly 
down the dirt road, over a long line of freshly filled holes dug into its 
center. The steady rhythm of clicks and pops ran together with the 
chattering of small, furry creatures, and the low whisper of the wind. 
Dhole adjusted her dog mask, savoring its smooth texture in her 
hands, and sighed. 


"Yeah, I’m bored too," said Egret, sounding entirely too cheerful for 
that to possibly be the case. "What about family? Do you have any 
of them running around? Do you all wear the same masks?" 


"A great catastrophe snatched them up in its jaws." Her relatives 
teemed in greater numbers than Dhole cared to guess at, all running 
their city’s many bookstores. They wore the faces of sheep, as she 
once did, to show their great skill at making money from nothing. To 
be milked, to be sheared, to be butchered, no creature was better 
suited to the quest for wealth. 


"It’s like that sometimes,” said Egret, as though she was not herself 
a catastrophe. 


A dented blue car spend down the road, bouncing slightly and 
kicking up a long plume of dust behind it. It’s shadow flickered out 
across the greenery as it passed. Transient, thin, and insubstantial, 
it was not the kind of shadow that would be cast by their victim. 
Even so, Dhole could not imagine its owner would be live long 
regardless. 


She looked up at the sky again, and regretted it immediately. It was 
a terrible thing, cruel and unyielding, and nothing like distant gray 
clouds that she was used to. The exarchs of her homeland would be 
well suited to this place, as would the slugs that surely engulfed their 


hearts. 
"And your own brood?" asked Dhole, curious in spite of herself. 


"My family? Who knows. They’re dead, or ran away, or something 
like that. There’s a record of it all, somewhere. The Overseers have 
records of everything.” 


Dhole cocked her head to one side. "You permit yourself such 
ignorance?" 


"It’s not a big deal, | just don’t remember them all. I’m sure there 
was a good reason to forget." 


She turned her head the other way. "Is that state not unbearable to 
you?" 


"No. It's not." 
"To be without council, or comfort, or —" 


"But, hey, what about that one that was with you before? Were they 
related to you?" 


Dhole gritted her teeth under her mask, face twisted a perfect 
imitation of its snarl. Disgusting. Egret was disgusting, and her 
master was worse for binding her into this situation with a contract 
worded tighter than the proclamations of God. Trading life for 
service had seemed reasonable, before Dhole realized who she 
would serve alongside. She might wear the aspect of a dog now, but 
such was her partner's nature in truth. 


"He was nothing. The sheep has been slaughtered, as by nature." 
"That’s all?" 


"It is as | said! Cease your whimpering. Stuff your maw with rocks if 
you must." 


Egret’s laugh was less cruel than it should have been by any right, 
more songbird than carrion-eater. Dhole growled, fought against the 
urge to say any more, and picked at her bandaged hands instead. 


Exiting 1875 must be done by climbing back through SCP-982 from 
the outside; attempts to access SCP-982 from within the offices of 

reveal only an ordinary window. Exploration teams are advised 
that the Chicago Police in 1875 react with hostility towards the use 
of grappling guns and rope ladders to re-enter SCP-982; since all 
changes are eliminated at the reset, the use of lethal force is fully 
sanctioned with no risk to the timeline. 


Addendum: As a result of incident 982-215/74, an altercation with 
Chicago Police Officers and, SCP-982 has been found to 
be bulletproof on the 1875 side. 


Note: The use of SCP-982 as a source of D-class personnel is 
deprecated due to the possibility of cross-SCP contamination. 


Addendum: Thus far, all attempts to locate , either alive or 
dead, have failed. Other occupants of the building report last seeing 

in the afternoon of Thursday, March 25, 1875. Beggars and 
street vendors report not having noticed him leave the premises. His 
neighbors did not see him return to his home on the evening of the 
25th, nor did they see him leave his home on the morning of the 
26th. 


His secretary reports that the last client of the day on Thursday was 
"a peculiar unwashed man with some odd accent that sounded 
Polack", but is unable to provide a more detailed description; the 
client had arrived without an appointment or a visiting card. 


Exploration missions which begin after SCP-982's internal 
chronology has reached Friday evening report that does not 
show up for work on Friday, nor does he return to his home. 


« SCP-981 | SCP-982 | SCP-983 » 


She would not mourn a dear friend in the presence of a killer. She 
would not expose herself so easily. 


Another car came from the opposite direction as the last, dark green 
with mirrored windows. Its shadow was thick and oily, sliding across 
the ground like a living creature. It was heavier than any of the 
others she had seen in their weeks out at the end of the world. 


"It’s that one," said Dhole quietly. The lid of Egret’s device popped 
once more. The car sped across the distant spot across from their 
perch, passing over the mounds of freshly turned dirt. A loud click 
sounded beside her, and the road underneath the car erupted. 
Billowing plumes of orange and black bore it into the air with a roar, 
casting the vehicle up into a slow cartwheel that dared gravity to 
drag it back down. 


Dhole winced as the car hit the ground. Whoever was inside could 
not be safe, not by any sane definition of the word. Their wounds 
were her doing. Their pain was her fault. Their death would be... 
She shook her head and struggled to unwind the knot inside her gut. 
Whatever minor role she played, it was nothing compared to Egret’s. 
It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t enjoy it. She didn’t want any of this. 
Dhole took a deep breath, shook her head once more, and felt 
assured that she had not yet become a monster. 


The true monster was already stalking through the ankle-high 
greenery, pistol in hand. It had been a tremendous misstep to ever 
assume Egret was a knight of any sort, let alone a warrior with a 
single drop of chivalry in her being. She did not ride forth to do battle 
with the long figure struggling out of the smoking wreck before her, 
but to swing her cleaver against the butcher’s block. 


Dhole’s ears were not so keen as to hear the conversation between 
Egret and the dark-haired man bleeding from a hundred cuts and a 
missing foot. Her partner gestured vividly with her free hand, 
weapon firm in the other. It was a familiar situation, and it was 
obvious what would happen. Dhole had seen it before, more often in 
her time here than she would have ever imagined before. All the 
same, she could not manage to look away. Their shared victim said 
something of his own, a single world that made the around them 
tense and tremble. Egret shot him three times.