Attie didn’t look up, just stared intently at the screen in front of her. 
She was like that, though. The Foundation never hired stupid 
people, but Researcher Athena Anastasakos was so professional it 
made Kitterman's teeth hurt. Couple that with a sort of fanatical 
devotion to figuring this kind of shit out, and it was little wonder she 
was such an award winning conversationalist. It didn’t even occur to 
Marcus that anything was amiss until he picked up his paper cup 
and crossed to the water cooler. He felt a sort of a... is hiccup the 
right word? Ah, probably nothing. 


“MARCUS!” she yelped, jumping backward from a screen steadily 
turning to static. “...Oh god, you scared me! How on earth did you 
get over there?” 


“|... Lwalked. With my feet.” Kitterman rolled his eyes and pressed 
the watercoolerreloocretaw eht desserp dna seye sih dellor 
namerttiK “.teef ym htiWith my feet.” Kitterman rolled his eyes and 
pressed the watercooler’s valve. 


Athena bit her tongue and watched. 


A slow trickle of water overflowed his cup in a matter of a quarter 
second. He dropped it in surprise. Two faces turned white. “... How 
long has it been since he left?” 


“Not more than three minutes.” 


“So how did | drop all of those?” he asked, pointing to the pile of tiny 
foam balls. 


They ran to their panels and typed in commands, slapped display 
screens, flicked at status lights as everything started slowly to go 
bananas. “Turn it off Turn it off Turn it off!” Athena yelled, fingers 
blurring takka-tak-tak just in time to watch Marcus pull open a panel 
and start pulling out wires. They sparked and smoked and fumed 
and slapped back into place. 


“Oh really, should I?” Kitterman yelled back. He ran to the door and 
threw it open, and sprinted what must have been 30 meters down a 
two meter stretch of hallway to the chamber door. Secured with 
electronic locks and they would not budge. “FUCK!” The noise fell 
flat in the sterile hall as he threw himself through the air back to the 
observation room. “Where in hell did he go?” 


“Probably the same place we’re going if you can’t shut that damn 
thing off? 


Panic comes in waves. At first you’re not even sure it’s happening. 
Everything goes red, and a tingling feeling grows out of your gut to 
the tips of your fingers and toes. It grabs your brain and won't let go. 
Synapses fire faster than you'd believe as every possible solution 
cycles through your brain once, twice, three times a lady. All of them 
are shit. It was about at this level of disoriented stupidity that 
Kitterman first picked up the stool and slammed it against the glass. 
A crack ran up and then back down and then sealed itself again. So 
he tried another five or thirty times (who counts?) before he 
reckoned the sanest thing to do would be just to drop the stool and 
scream at the pane’s stupid face. 


“That’s enough! You’re not helping anyone!” Attie yelled as she 
squinted at a screen of static, desperately hoping a distortion would 
come through to smooth the electronics out, if only for a minute. Just 
long enough to impart some sense about how the field looked and 
what the Snooze Alarm was doing and if it was ever going to stop. 


A shoulder was thrown into the door and Xyank fell through it onto 
the floor. “We have a problem!” 


“No! Really? | hadn't noticed? Marcus hollered as he ham-fisted a 
wad of wires from beneath the console and grabbed out his pocket 
knife. 


The Doctoro wiped blood from his ear and spat some to the floor 
which dried in an instant. “What have you tried so far?” 


“Wiring panel, input commands, B and E, refreshing the 
transmission—” Ms. Anastasakos answered. 


“Pretty much everything but whistling show-tunes at it!” Kitterman 
barked as he cut a cable and watched it stitch itself up again for the 
third time. 


Shit. This was bad. Really bad. Everything already broken, 
everything already resetting. But causality was still flexible, and the 
fact that he had made it back into this room meant it wasn’t final yet. 
They were not completely isolated, and one last Hail-Mary was 
absolutely not out of the question. It’s not as though there was much 
to lose. “Ms. Anastasakos, what is the correct time?” 


“| don’t see how—” 


“Dammit, Attie, it’s a temporal anomaly! What bloody time is it?” 
Thaddeus demanded as he hopped to the breaker box on the wall 
and threw it wide. 


“Its... it's 0600? That doesn't—wait! 1023...1747?” 
“Do either of you know what time we started transmitting?” 


“0930! ... | think,” Marcus offered, recoiling and sucking his fingers 
from a minor electric shock. 


“You think?’ 


Marcus shrugged and raised his hands, looking equal parts horrified 
and apologetic. It would have to do. 


“All right, this is a long shot, but it’s all we’ve got. Ms. Anastasakos, 
you need to tell me when—” 


headlights on a fast moving vehicle. SCP-745 targets lone vehicles 
on the highway, and hunting pairs will attempt to run the driver off 
the road by pursuing or charging their target. Once their prey 
swerves off the road or comes to a stop, the pair will separate to 
directly assault and consume the vehicle's occupants. SCP-745 has 
not yet been directly observed while feeding as captured specimens 
will not eat, and successful attacks have yet to leave any witnesses 
behind. SCP-745 rarely leaves any remains behind apart from 
scraps of clothing and shoes. Vehicles recovered after SCP-745 
attacks rarely show any sign of forced entry and are covered with 
the child-like hand prints from SCP-745's front paws. 


Addendum: No lairs, nests or young of SCP-745 have been found. 
SCP-745 had established a wide territory across the southwestern 
United States until Foundation teams began thinning their numbers 
in the 1960s, after which all recent SCP-745 sightings have been on 
the secured patch of land in New Mexico. Reports of phantom lights 
in other parts of the country have been investigated with no signs 
pointing to SCP-745 involvement. 


« SCP-744 | SCP-745 | scP-746 » 


“NOW!” 


Everything went black. An emergency light came on. Their pulses 
hung in mid-air as they waited. And waited... and waited. 


0945 came and went. The anomaly did not resume. 


After a couple Mole-rats rooted around for a day or so and scanned 
his office with every instrument he had clearance to know about 
(and a few which he didn’t) and found no detectable temporal 
fluctuation; after a painful, exhausting ritualistic interrogation to 
ensure he wasn’t acting under anyone else’s influence and 
remained loyal to the Foundation’s objectives; after a psyche 
evaluation that revealed a little post-traumatic stress but otherwise a 
clean bill of psychiatric health and two weeks paid leave, Dr. Xyank 
sat in his office tapping his temple, staring at the last thing he had 
written on the whiteboard. 


Red marks were everywhere, shooting this way and that, too and 
from impromptu diagrams and flow charts and equations that would 
make most J.R.s blush. All of it spiraling into, out of, around, and 
through one central feature: an enormous Black Box. 


Yes, the experiment had been a ‘success’, in a manner of speaking. 
No, no one had died, at least not in a verifiable way. Yes, Thaddeus 
had confirmed that certain long-wavelength electromagnetic signals 
of sufficient power could alter the shape, rate of flow, direction, and 
endurance of any extant tachyon flux. But had he actually learned 
how to create a tachyon flux to manipulate? 


No. The Black Box remained Black. And it was too costly to keep 
going. Dozens were dead. Six copies of himself were irretrievable. 
He had nearly turned Site-17’s anomalous experimentation wing into 
another SCP of who knows what designation. 084/281-A, maybe? 
His name very narrowly avoided censorship on every document he 
had ever touched as the Foundation disavowed all knowledge of his 
activities or that they had ever even deigned to hire him. 


It was time to stop. 


But as he stood to grab the eraser, silence took hold of him. He 
glanced upward and noticed the clock had stopped. He perked his 
ear and heard no movement outside in what should be a rush-hour 
end-of-day shit-show of a hallway. When he turned he saw a 
shadow at the door. Just one. It cleared its throat and passed a 
parcel through the slot in the door before leaving. 


The clock resumed its forward march. The hall resumed its noisy 
bustle. On the floor, a manila envelope. Inside, a watch. 


His watch. 


His very own Model 442/ automatic winding perpetual perfect-time 

watch. It had probably been languishing in anomalous item storage 
these last...well, there was no telling how long, he supposed. Only 

that he hadn’t seen it since he was picked up after... After. But who 
else would have known that? 


Bound up in the band, a note, hand written, in red fine-point felt- 
tipped marker. In reflex he crumpled it and tossed it into the 
wastepaper basket. 


Before the second ticked over he was back in his seat, across the 
desk, hands folded, staring at it. 


But then that got him thinking. He would write that message, some 
time in the future. Absolutely. It was the only way to avoid a break. 
He would know the time and date (it was 1946 on August the 18th, 
1997. Thad logged it in his memory and stored it somewhere it 
wouldn't get lost.) and place to deliver it... 


He now had to make sure he knew the message and its contents, so 
the loop could be completed. Or else... Or else, he was sure he 
didn't want to know what else. 


‘In for a penny...’ 


icon i 


“Understand?” Three said, wondering if he was 


getting more condescending. “No shit.” Yes, 
definitely. He'd have to tone it down. “Neither 
do we, and who knows how long You Prime 
over there at the board has been in here.” 


He; didn't grunt. He stopped writing and 
sighed. “What’s the point?” He whispered 
quietly. 


“But—" 


“You are number 7.” Two continued, an edge 
in his voice clearly directed in One's direction. 
“We are numbers One through Six.” 


“No, he isn't.” Thaddeus, put the marker down. 


“You're right, number one! He's also number 
Zero.” The other four glanced furtively at one 
another, horrified. What was he doing, 
breaking containment like that? 


“Stop it, Two.” 


“What are you doing?’ Five hissed, wide-eyed 
and wild. “You're going to break—!” 


“NO. I'm not lying anymore. He's not number 
7, he’s number forty-two thousand, eight 
hundred and seventy-two. And he has a right 
to know exactly how bad we fucked up.” 


Two dropped the barrel of the shotgun and let 
the threat hang loose in his hands 
“Goddammit, One.” He turned in slow 
resignation and locked eyes with force. “You 
just broke nearly two and a half years of 
symmetry.” 


“Symmetry? Is that what you call an infinite 
number of alternate time lines due to one 
cocked-up experiment?” One demanded. 


“Well, it wouldn’t have been if you’d just stuck 
to your own goddamn plan!” Three said, 
throwing an eraser across the room. 


“WILL EVERYONE JUST SHUT UP?” Four 
said, rummaging through the drawer. “I swear 
there’s an emergency Class B in here 
somewhere! Just shove it down his throat and 
we'll do it right and send him on his way!” 


But before he could grab it, the door slipped 
shut. 


Six of the same man gasped in unison. Lucky 
Number Seven simply sighed. It wasn’t great. 
It wasn’t even good. Hell, it was hardly a 
solution at all, but with damage done and time 
being a factor (the other versions of him would 
not have been nearly so urgent if it wasn’t), he 
wouldn't have a chance to take a Class B. 
They’d probably make him forget too much 
anyway. No... This was home now. This room 
and these people and this awful experiment. 
He had made this sacrifice before. Precisely 
Six times before. 


And he would make it again. That is the way 
the Foundation operates. We Secure. We 
Contain. We Protect. Even if, sometimes, it 
means one must contain oneself. 


“Room for one more?” He7 asked with a smirk 
as the 

as the 

as the 

as the 

as the first ripple sent a spine of pain in one 
side of his head and out the other, and blood 
trickled unhappily out of his left ear. 


“... For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” Thad, laid a 


hand on his7 shoulder and bit his; bottom lip 
hard, keeping the torrent back. 


“Don't be... it’s my fault, too.” Just that 
moment, a little early actually, the knob began 
to rattle. Lucky Number Seven, the true 
number Seven and no longer number Zero, 
rolled his eyes. “...I'll just... hide in the closet, 
or something.” 


Heh... funny how you remember things at the last minute. 


Eve’s cardinal sin was NOT biting the apple. 
It was failing to chew, swallow, and finish it. 
Do not make the same mistake or so help us both... 


—Tx 


Part One: Iteration 0 | Part Three: Erstwhile and Again 


The Killer 


The sun, at last. How long had it been? Yellow and weak though the 
sun was, it gazed up at the star with pleasure, letting the light fill its 
eyes. 


Only one actually saw, of course. That had been the first real hint 
that something was wrong. Eyes were complicated, so many tissues 
working together, so easily upset if one layer grew back wrong. 


The sun, the wind, the barren dirt beneath its feet. Simple pleasures 
to replace others that had been lost; even the recollection of 
forgetting was passed. Long ago it had broken free, time and again, 
walking the world to—Conquer? Destroy? Spawn? There was no 
longer any way of knowing. 


lts feet tugged at the ground, pulling the boiling body along. Tissues 
writhed upon its skeleton as they grew—there was never any 
problem growing, never that, but now cells fused and squirmed in a 
riot of biological agony. Deep inside was the heart, the gate to 
elsewhere bringing in life and information to stave off entropy... The 
flow was now a mere trickle, choked over long years with cancerous 
growths. 


A shudder and it collapsed. Cold knowledge filtered through the 
body; the end was approaching. Now would be the time for them to 
strike. It raised its head. 


They stood in a circle, silent. Today they had no slug-throwers, or 
combustibles, or electron-strippers or rampaging protons. It looked 
at them, looked through them, in all the ways it knew to look. 


One stepped forward, one jailer, executioner. Not a single figure, 
though; to higher senses it was intertwined with the rest, personal 
fate merged with the organization. The figure's temporal self was a 
mere offshoot of the ultimate self-organizing prison. 


"The Foundation," it rasped. 


The figure was hesitant. "Yes?" The being shone with centuries of 
survival and devotion. Devotion to an ideal, a concept that had 
conquered what even it could not stand against. 


It chuckled. "You're... still... disgusting..." 


The reptilian head slumped to the ground. 


Faith and Knighthood 


"A Templar Knight is truly a fearless knight, and secure 
On every side, for his soul is protected by the armour of 
faith, just as his body is protected by the armour of steel. 
He is thus doubly armed, and need fear neither demons 
nor men." 


Bernard de Clairvaux, c. 1135, De Laude Novae Militae 
—lIn Praise of the New Knighthood 


It wasn’t long after setting out that the old familiar fear began to sink 
in. Long ago, his mentor had said that after facing darkness and 
succeeding, a man’s fear is replaced with courage. Sebastian 
Rodrigues, Knight Templar, knew this was untrue. He had faced 
darkness before, many times. Fear never goes away. You only get 
better at dealing with it. 


Sebastian allowed himself a moment to reflect. He mentally checked 
his supplies and equipment, making sure he had everything he 
would need. His armor and weapons, though battered by time and 
usage, were still tough. His horse, Endo, with whom he had survived 
many trials, was still strong. His faith, which had kept him from 
faltering, it was...