As if sensing his thoughts despite having her back turned to him, 
Seven continued, "I hardly believe it myself, Mr. Harper, but as you 
no doubt realize, we cannot dismiss the possibility of such a turn of 
events out of hand simply because it is unlikely or unpleasant. After 
all, this organization deals with the impossible and the unthinkable 
every day. The Council decided to hold an emergency meeting 
where Director McDonnell could present the documents personally. 
Unfortunately, this is no longer possible. Last night, Overseer Five 
and his bodyguard, Counterintelligence Director McDonnell, and two 
American intelligence officers who have assisted our Middle Eastern 
operations were killed when an on-board explosion brought down 
Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland. McDonnell had the original copies 
of the seized documents in a diplomatic pouch. Moments later, a 
Foundation document repository in Manchester was bombed. That 
document repository held the only existing copies of the seized 
documents. Our recovery teams report no evidence that either 
version of the documents survived." 


"Which both lends credence to the reality of this penetration's threat, 
and suggests the plotters were responsible for the attacks," Harper 


observed. He felt like someone had punched him in the gut - 
McDonnell had been an old friend, someone he could trust in a 
business where trust was the scarcest of commodities, but there 
would be time for grieving later. 


"The surviving members of the Council drew the same conclusion, 
Mr. Harper," Seven nodded, finally turning to face him. Her 
narrowed eyes flashed dangerously over high cheekbones. To call 
the Overseer angry would have been no small understatement. "We 
have already taken measures to ensure our personal protection. The 
other Overseers believe this will be sufficient; | disagree. | have 
convinced them we need to investigate this apparent conspiracy, 
fully but also quietly. If the conspirators believe they are about to be 
discovered, it is not at all unreasonable for them to either go to 
ground and disappear, or decide to cut their losses and attempt 
even more direct action. Right now, the Council has no idea what 
the ultimate goal of the conspirators is. This makes them even more 
dangerous in the Council's eyes. And while you and | both have 
enough experience in the intelligence hall of mirrors to take that in 
stride, most of my fellow Overseers are scared. They are mainly 
former scientists and uncomfortable when dealing with the 
uncertainties of political intrigue." Seven moved to the conference 
table separating them. She slid a folder across the table to him. 
"This is everything we know about the security breach, the two direct 
attacks, and the conspiracy as a whole," she observed. This was 
less than encouraging: it amounted to perhaps a half dozen sheets 
of paper. "You will be conducting the investigation. The Council has 
voted to temporarily grant you Level 5 clearance," she declared, 
handing him a new black identification card, "and you will report to 
me personally. Keep the cards close to the vest on this one - 
potentially anyone could be involved." 


"Moscow Rule number three, ma'am," Harper observed with a wry 
smile. Everyone is potentially under opposition control. "If | may, 
why are you trusting me with this? / know I'm not a conspirator, but 
you don't." 


"You're one of the best see-eye guys we have, Mr. Harper, and you 
have been cleared for the highest security clearance known to 
mankind. The possibility that you are involved is remote, and in any 


case | expect regular and detailed reports of all your findings. If | find 
out you're withholding things from me, | will bring the full force of the 
resources at my disposal upon you. You will soend the remainder of 
your days in the deepest, darkest, least pleasant hole | can find," the 
Foundation Overseer stated calmly. Then she flashed a smile that 
was Clearly meant to be disarming but instead made the hair on 
Harper's neck stand on end. "But | don't expect that to be a problem, 
Mr. Harper." 


"No, ma'am," Harper said. 


"Excellent! If there is anything you need, let me know," Seven 
beamed. "You may brief in Mr. Muir and Ms. Daniel if you believe 
their assistance would be helpful, but do keep the cards close to the 
vest." 


"Of course," Harper replied. 


"Thank you. That will be all," she said. Harper wasted no time 
leaving the room. 


"That's all we have," Harper finished the run-down, putting the folder 
down on his desk and looking across at Muir and Monica. 


"Hm," Muir grunted. "For a moment there, Tim, | thought we were 
going to have trouble with this one." He pulled out his reading 
glasses and started thumbing through the folder. 


Monica failed at hiding her alarm. "Do we always have so little to go 
on?" she asked. "How do we even know where to start?" 


Harper started thinking aloud. "Let's start with something simple. 
What organizations did McDonnell's preliminary report suggest were 
penetrated?" 


Monica read off the relevant sheet of paper, "Looks like the Army of 
the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution; Baasch Engineering 
Corporation; the Chaos Insurgency; the Church of the Broken God; 
the Factory; the Foundation; the Global Occult Coalition; Huntington 
Arms, Inc.; Marshall, Carter, and Dark; Prometheus Labs; the 


Serpent's Hand; Saito Mining Industries; Wallace Security 
Enterprises; Dr. Wondertainment; and various branches of the 
American, British, Chinese, French, German, and Soviet 
governments. That's all based on documents recovered in the 
warehouse raid." She looked up, "How the hell did someone 
manage to penetrate essentially all the major commercial, political, 
and paranormal groups without somebody noticing? How is this the 
first we've heard of it?" 


Harper lit a cigarette. "Well," he said thoughtfully, "just because they 
had documents - even top level documents - related to all those 
organizations doesn't mean they managed have moles in all of 
them. And even if they do have moles with access to such sensitive 
materials, that doesn't mean the moles are in a position to do much 
beyond steal documents. Monica, what's your security clearance?" 


The graduate student blinked, "Foundation, or US government?" 
"Both," replied Harper, taking a puff on his cigarette. 


"Level 3 and TS," she replied, looking slightly confused. "But I'm just 
an intern." 


"And yet you have access to some truly sensitive information,” Muir 
observed, not taking his eyes off the document he was reading. 
"Such as this investigation." 


"Precisely," Harper continued. "These are, for the most part, groups 
employing hundreds to tens of thousands of people. It only takes 
one traitor." 


"So how do we know what the opposition wants?" asked Monica. 


Harper smiled, "We don't - yet. But one does not simply invest the 
resources necessary to penetrate so many powerful organizations 
on a whim. We shall find out soon enough." 


Monica frowned. "This still doesn't give us a starting point." 


"Perhaps this does," Muir said. He began quoting the page he was 
reading: "'According to Foundation personnel embedded within the 
Scottish constabulary, the explosion is consistent with detonation of 


a small but powerful explosive device. Preliminary chemical testing 
of explosive residue suggests the use of pentaerythritol tetranitrate 
(PETN) and cyclotrimethylene trinitramine (RDX), two of the primary 
ingredients in Semtex-H. However, the size and location of the 
original explosion relative to the quantities of PETN and RDX found, 
coupled with the complete incineration of both the diplomatic pouch 
carried by Robert McDonnell and McDonnell himself, suggests 
Semtex was not, in fact, the explosive used. It is recommended 
Foundation investigative staff examine the possibility of SCP objects 
or other as-yet uncontained anomalies as the source of the 
explosion." 


"Just what we needed, Troy," Harper said. "Monica, go down to 
Central Records and have them pull all the files on anomalous 
objects and entities capable of causing explosions. Be sure to 
include the ones presently in containment; we can't rule out a theft." 


"On it," she said, leaving. 


Harper turned to Muir, "Any indications on the explosion in 
Manchester?" 


Muir nodded, "Looks like that actually was Semtex. The police have 
linked it chemically to several attacks by the Irish Republican Army." 


"The IRA? Could it really just be a coincidence?" Harper frowned, 
lighting a fresh cigarette. 


Muir shook his head. "No way," he said. "The match was far too 
easy - it was an older batch with a composition more useful for 
demolition than killing. Great if you want to destroy papers in a safe, 
but not as useful for inflicting human casualties. It also doesn't 
match their usual MO, since Carnegie was prominently Catholic. | 
suspect we were just meant to believe they did it." 


"Interesting," Harper said, taking a long blow on his cigarette. "Very 
interesting.” 


« Prologue | HUB | Part Il » 


Conspiracy, Part II 


Leads 


Foundation Commana-02, Washington, D.C. 
Thursday, 22 December 1988, 1158 hours local time 


As it turned out, the Foundation contained rather a lot of different 
objects which could explode or ignite. Exploding cacti, exploding ink, 
an exploding eyeball - the stack of files Monica had carried up from 
Central Records took the three of them most of the morning to read. 
The tiny room, always cramped and cluttered, quickly became 
nearly impossible to move about in as they sifted through the 
towering heaps of papers. 


Just before lunch, Monica found something. "Hey, listen to this: a 
chest of coins, each capable of detonating with the force of five 
megajoules. They're linked to an atlas which can be used to 
detonate the coins." 


Muir and Harper got up and looked over her shoulder. "Does the 
report have a chemical analysis?" Harper asked. 


“For analysis of explosive residue signature, see Addendum 5'," 
Monica quoted. "Where did that - ah! Here we go." She snatched up 
the relevant page. 


Muir laid it alongside the forensic report from the plane bombing. 
"Looks like a rough match to me," he said. "The file's analysis dates 
back to the fifties, so even if this is a perfect match it might not line 
up perfectly." 


Harper nodded, "Definitely the best option so far. Good catch, 
Monica." The intern beamed. He continued, "So, where is this thing 
contained?" 


"That's a problem, Tim," Muir said, reading the Special Containment 
Procedures. 


"Oh, Troy?" Harper asked. 


"Yeah. We don't have it," Muir said. "It was stored in the Trinidad 
site back in fifty-nine." Harper swore under his breath. 


"What happened to the Trinidad site in fifty-nine?" Monica asked. 


"In a word,” Muir explained, "Castro. He nationalized the 
Foundation's research site in Trinidad. The staff resisted and were 
executed - save one researcher who managed to get away by sheer 
dumb luck. Ended up heading back to the Soviet Union to work as a 
mole in KGB's Thirteenth Chief Directorate somewhere in Central 
Asia, | think." 


"And we let Castro get away with this?!" Monica asked. She had no 
illusions about the Foundation's track record when it came to 
ruthlessness. 


"Of course not," Harper said. "Ever heard of the Bay of Pigs 
invasion?" 


"That failed," Monica countered, frowning. 


Muir shook his head, "You're assuming what made it to the history 
books is what actually happened. We'd originally planned to attack 
Trinidad directly. American State Department didn't want to play ball, 
so the invasion landing site had to be moved. We still sent 
Foundation forces to Trinidad. Didn't manage to retrieve anything, 
but both Castro and Marshall, Carter, and Dark got the message." 


Monica was confused, "MC&D was involved?" 


"Castro tried to sell them the contents of the Trinidad site," Harper 
explained. "They absconded with the items without paying Castro 
after Foundation forces crashed the party." 


"He was pissed," Muir observed. "We still get reports of Cuban 
troops in Soviet-backed states killing people associated with the 
club." 


"Between the combined fury of the Foundation and Castro, it 
actually drove MC&D to ground for over a decade," Harper finished. 
"So the Foundation decided the whole mess was a 'successful 
failure.” 


"So, do we know where this chest of coins is now?" Monica asked. 


"Not exactly," Muir said. "Marshall, Carter, and Dark isn't exactly on 
good terms with the Foundation, and we've not ever been able to 
get a good source on the inside. I've heard the GOC has had a little 
more success, but | don't know for certain. | could put out feelers 
with some of my contacts at the GOC, but they'll want something in 
return.” The world of intelligence was a strange place: despite the 
generally frosty relationship between the GOC and the Foundation, 
both organization's intelligence branches occasionally shared 
information about mutual threats. Neither side trusted the other, of 
course, but the quid pro quo of intelligence-sharing had proven 
helpful to both sides on numerous occasions. 


"You do that, Troy," Harper said. "In the mean time, Monica, keep 
digging through things here. I'm going to track down the surviving 
researcher from Trinidad." 


Smithsonian Natural History Museum, Washington, D.C. 
Thursday, 22 December 1988, 1730 hours local time 


The only physically remarkable thing about him was his limp and 
cane. These, of course, were unavoidable for a man whose right leg 
was artificial from his knee down. Beyond that, he was of 
intermediate height, had thinning brown hair, and brown eyes. He 
was the sort of man that you'd forget having seen five minutes later, 
if not for his limp and cane. He missed the fieldwork, but he was too 
easy to identify now. 


Muir hobbled into the Smithsonian Natural History Museum's 
National Gem Collection. It was a good meeting spot, and he never 
got tired of looking at the gemstones. He was standing before a 
beautiful piece of amethyst several feet in height when he heard a 
low voice behind him, "Nice shade of purple, isn't it?" 


SCP-608: Fractal Tinsel 


Item #: SCP-608 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-608 is to be held ina 
vacuum chamber at all times while not the subject of active 
research. Magnetic levitation is to be used to suspend the object in 
the center of the chamber. In the event of either of these measures 
failing, a class-3 evacuation of non-essential personnel is to be 
undertaken, and containment measures are to be restored as soon 
as possible. If containment failure persists for more than one hour, a 
class-4 evacuation of personnel not actively involved in the 
containment of the item is to be undertaken. In the event of 
superpressurization for whatever reason, a class-5 evacuation and 
cleanup must be performed immediately. 


Description: SCP-608 appears to be a length of silver tinsel with an 
unusually furry appearance, although depending on environment the 
item may be surrounded by a ‘halo’ of decaying particles. Any object 
coming into contact with it disintegrates slowly, the process being 
halted the instant that it is removed. At the same time, the halo 
increases in intensity. Microscope examination, radar, sonar, MRI, 
and all other known examination techniques are unable to provide 
insight beyond the fact that the object appears ‘fuzzy’, with no 
readily defined border. Rather, it appears to dissipate into the 
surroundings. This, combined with the disintegration property, led to 
the SCP's earlier misclassification as Euclid.