It's your problem now, suckers. 


Item: SCP-2599 


Tissue Test Record: 
N/A 


Termination Test Record: 
SCP-2599 was ordered to attack SCP-682 "until it is 200% dead". 


sacred undertaking, the trustee apparently saw no need to take any 
further hand in the running of the library and was content to entrust it 
entirely to Keagan. 


The library, being a restricted area only accessible through good 
behaviour, saw little in the way of traffic and Keagan thus found 
himself with copious free time even during his meager working 
hours. Accordingly, he began browsing the stacks himself, 
rediscovering in the long hours of solitude some spark of the 
enthusiasm he had felt in libraries as a child; the impression that one 
stood inside a temple of the world's knowledge. He had not, he 
realised, read as an adult—he had read and understood bills, 
receipts, and notes from clients at his shop, but had for whatever 
reason evaded study for pleasure or even work, preferring to call 
around his colleagues when he found a problem that stymied him in 
his work rather than look it up. Why, he wondered? Because it was 
easier not to think, because routine becomes a prison cell without 
bars, because knowledge becomes hateful to those who no longer 
consider themselves to have the capacity to enjoy it? He resolved 
then that he would improve himself in that little library and internalise 
whatever information he could find on its shelves. 


Keagan was in the library when the guard—it was Taggart, the 
amiable scruffy one who had filled in for the Warden on his first day 
—told him that Lauren had come to visit him. Keagan realised he 
had not thought of her, or of how their relationship would survive his 
incarceration, if at all, since entering the doors of Wormwood 
Scrubs, and felt a sudden pang of loss. He had assumed, like a child 
yet to grasp permanence, that if he had left the world it had ceased 
to exist; the notion that people out there were still affected by his 
actions was something awkward, foreign to him. 


Lauren was waiting at one of the tables in the visiting room, dressed 
in a dark, sober jacket and skirt. Her hair was pulled back from her 
face with a tortoiseshell comb he didn't remember seeing before and 
her eyes were rimmed red. Keagan sat down across from her, 
unsure what to say. 


"They kept me waiting for forty-five minutes." Her voice was thin, 
dry. 


"I'm sorry," Keagan said. "They only just told me you were here." 


She pursed her lips—perhaps she didn't believe him. "Do you know 
there's only three seats in the waiting room?" 


"| guess most people around here don't have anyone prepared to 
come visit them." He tried to laugh, but it died in his throat and he 
realised the joke had been a mistake. 


"| didn't come before because | thought you needed space," she 
said, as though she had done him a favour. He wanted to say he 
appreciated it, even though it was a lie—had she come earlier, he 
would have been as eager to see her, and perhaps she would not 
have fallen out of his mind the way he realised she had. Instead, he 
said: 


"And | guess you didn't want to be seen with me so soon, right?" 


She coloured—dark flush staining her pale cheeks. "You can't 
accept anything nice people do for you, can you? Look, we need to 
talk." 


"| thought we were," said Keagan, feeling his stomach churning. 


"| mean about us. | didn't know what you thought ... | mean, how far 
you considered this a—new chapter in your life. You didn't call me." 


"| only gained Enhanced status a couple of days ago," protested 
Keagan, "it's not bloody Butlins." 


"You get a free call when you first arrive," said Lauren, coldly. "I read 
it on the website." 


If that was true, no-one had bothered to inform Keagan. Probably a 
victim of Taggart's avuncular welcome. He forced himself to dwell on 
her words and found he resented the effort it took him—had always 
taken him—to divine her likely meaning. 


"A new chapter. Does that mean you want to break up? | mean, 
there's not much | could do if you..." 


"For God's sake," she cut him off. "It's got nothing to do with me. | 


need to hear from you if you can continue this relationship. 
Whatever you decide, | have to consider what I'm going to do." 


Keagan screwed his eyes shut. "Why do you always ask me? Why 
do | always have to decide? | can't decide anything right now." 


"I'm not the one serving two life sentences,” she retorted. "I think it's 
very simple. Do you still love me?" 


Keagan found himself winded. How could she think such boiling 
indecision—questions of logistics, work, family—could be dismissed 
based on a question he considered so unalterably answered? It 
seemed like something out of a fairy story. He spent every day in an 
environment where such wishes were worthless; the outcome would 
be determined when you rotated the key, measured the voltage, 
turned the engine over. What you were really asking for when you 
wanted something to happen regardless of whether the facts 
supported it was for reality to evaporate, for the whole world to 
become lunatic, for the ground under your feet to fall away. 


"Of course | still love you," he said. 


Lauren looked away—he thought she might have preferred another 
answer. 


"Then that's all there is to it, isn't there?" she said, shrugging even 
as she began to pull away. "We just have to make the best of it we 
can. Look, I'm really not comfortable here. We'll talk more another 
time." 


There's another question, he thought, but he did not ask it. 


"Lauren," he said, pleading. She looked back, and for a moment 
looked baffled as to what he could possibly want from her. Then, old 
habits kicked in and she tilted her head towards him, a martyr to the 
jailhouse brute. He kissed her as gently as he could just above her 
hairline, at the front, where she had a natural part. She didn't meet 
his gaze as she moved off and was escorted to the door by the 
guard. 


Keagan returned to his cell in a daze, unsure what to think or 
whether he should think anything at all about the exchange. Creepy 
Bastard had evidently finished drawing for the day and was wrapped 
up in his blankets so when he spoke Keagan was forced to carry on 
a conversation with what seemed to be a heap of rags. 


"Who was that, dear? Someone to lift your spirits?" Keagan often 
couldn't tell whether Creepy Bastard was intending to be creepy or 
whether the persona had so taken him over that he adopted it 
unconsciously. 


"It was my girlfrend," he said, and went to sit over at the writing desk 
to try and clear his head. From there you had a narrow angle on the 
yard—right now no-one seemed interested in exercising, instead 
huddling into groups in an unseasonal chill. 


"Is she black?" asked the top bunk. 
"Excuse me?" 


"| don't mean anything by it, dear. Do you mind if | ask, as it's been 
bugging me for a while—are you supposed to be black? I've been 
wondering." The question didn't enrage Keagan so much as surprise 
him—it had been the first time his race had been brought up since a 
drunk in the police cells had objected to being bunked with Keagan, 
but then had proved unable to decide which of his extensive 
selection of slurs was appropriate for the situation. 


"Dad was from Jamaica, originally," Keagan responded, evenly. "He 
didn't stick around long. Mum was white. Irish. And my girlfriend's 
white, as if it's any of your business." 


"Interesting." 


"What do you mean by that?" Keagan, finally tiring of addressing the 
bed linen, went over and ripped it roughly off his cell mate—Creepy 

Bastard was huddled in a fetal position, knees tucked up to his chin. 
He looked at Keagan with watery eyes. 


"Don't be offended, dear. | just think it's interesting your chosen 
partner more closely resembles than your mother than your father— 


or your primary caregiver rather than the absent parent. Is she 
Irish?" 


"No," said Keagan, feeling more drained than anything—lethargic 
again, like he'd been when he first arrived. He slumped down on the 
lower bunk. "She's Welsh." 


"Celtic stock then. Just think, dear, your children could pass for 
Italian! Then their children could pass for swarthy southern French, 
then..." 


"Shut up, will you. I'm not even interested." 


He lay there for a few minutes, then thought to ask—"Are there 
gangs in here? | mean, black and white?" He didn't remember 
noticing it on the occasions he had been out in the yard, but then, 
maybe he had internalised the images from TV and so expected to 
see the segregation, blanked it. 


"Of course not! This isn't America. Of course, you'd have problems 
whichever you chose if there were, wouldn't you? Not quite light or 
dark enough for either, | imagine. But—rejoice!—here it's just 
language, white or blue collar, and of course, propensity for 
violence. Positively egalitarian." 


Keagan thought this over for a moment, and realised he had almost 
no idea what the actual shape of general population looked like, so 
determined he had been to avoid entering lifer society. He asked: 


"So, who actually runs things around here? Is it the trustees? The 
guards? The lifers? Are there any prisoners | should watch for?" 


Creepy Bastard sounded positively ecstatic when he responded: 
"I've just been waiting for you to ask. I'm surprised you haven't put 
your my foot in it already. Ignore the trustees—they don't have much 
over a regular Enhanced status prisoner. It's not like they send them 
out to the shops or anything, like they do at minimum security 
prisons. They don't rat out other prisoners either, unless you're 
doing something that could result in them losing their privileges. As 
for guards, Taggart is as bent as they come—if you need anything 
from outside, he'll look the other way. Just get someone to cover for 


you in front of the cameras and you can pass anything across, no 
problem. McGage thinks he's a hardass in shining armour—you 
know him when you see him, dear, he looks like a Greek statue." 


"And amongst the lifers?" 


"Dear, | don't get out much. | walk around the cell block a couple of 
times a week. | haven't been out of Basic status for months." 


"Humour me." Keagan folded his hands and used them to further 
support his head on top of the thin pillow. 


"Well, Travis Lemure is in for killing a cop, which gets you a certain 
cachet, | suppose, not that he does anything with it. Unless he's 
been transferred, Cameron Moat is still here. He was a big player in 
Southampton—drugs, | mean. Came to London to expand there, 
and ended up shooting five people. He does a lot of contraband. 
Then there's Hagman, or Marv as he likes to be called. He's been 
here for twenty years already." 


"What did he do?" 


"Nothing much out there, dear—armed robbery, | think. Inside, 
though..." 


"He's killed in prison?" asked Keagan in surprise. 


"In his first few days, if you believe the stories. He's locked down 
twenty-two hours a day but still manages to get his cut of most of the 
drugs and booze coming in here. Amongst the English-languagers, | 
should say. The Poles, Russians and Pakistanis don't have anyone 
comparable, but mostly escape having to pay him tribute—language 
barrier, you see." 


"| didn't realise it was such a problem." Keagan responded. 


"It's a terrible problem," Creepy Bastard continued. "They can't enrol 
on education courses or get work—no foreign language provision, 
you see. So they come out with no qualifications and nothing to live 
on and go straight back to the drugs and extortion rackets. It's 
absolutely criminal." 


Chapter Two: "You Have The Body” 


Spring had begun to give way to Summer. Keagan would rise at six, 
shower, and eat breakfast, still avoiding the other lifers where he 
could. At eight he would arrive at the library and spend his four 
hours a day sweeping the floor with a plastic dustpan and brush 
(someone could snap the edge off that and make something sharp, 
a voice at the edge of his mind said), re-ordering the only parts of 
the library that saw use, to wit, the fantasy and thriller sections, and 
taking down the name and cell number of the prisoners drifting in to 
borrow or return books. At the end of his shift he would underline 
outstanding loans in a red pen and pass them to the librarian, who 
presumably took them to a guard. The next day the unreturned 
books would be in a small pile on the end of the counter, or else a 
little note would advise him to write them off—presumably eaten, or 
smoked, or flushed down the toilet. 


Once his shift was over he would take a seat at one of the dark red 
plastic tables, take a stack of books down from the shelves and 
force himself to read passages from each, meditating on the 
meaning of each before moving on. The law textbooks—with their 
implicit promise to the inmate of finding some loophole leading to 
redemption—always seemed attractive, but their desert-dry, 
labyrinthine style and endless redefinition of words would leave him 
reeling after only a few minutes, and he would have to stop to find 
lighter reading elsewhere. 


On one such occasion Keagan was wearily grappling with the 
concept of promissory estoppel—a concept he'd had some notion 
might be helpful to him but which seemed the more he read to 
become increasingly limited to arcane scenarios such as museum 
donations and billionaire philanthropists—when he heard muffled 
cries from the recessed corner of the library where they kept 
archived copies of newspapers and magazines; chiefly dog-eared 
specimens donated by the staff. Keagan got up slowly, trying to 
gaze around the stacks. Suddenly the shouts, which had previously 
been muffled, rang loud and clear—'He's killing me! Someone—'— 
before being choked off again. 


Keagan had resolved to turn a blind eye to fights he saw in the 


prison, but this was different, this was on his territory, and he 
launched himself around the corner to discover a solidly built man 
with dark hair—not someone he had seen before—straddling an 
older, shorter man, pummelling him around the face and neck as his 
victim weakly held up his forearms in an effort to block the blows, 
twisting his head from side to side to escape the hand clasped over 
his mouth. Keagan had no experience with restraining holds, but his 
improvised solution—a thick forearm thrust under each of the 
attacker's armpits, hands clasped around his chest, together with 
repeated exhortions of 'Get off him, you bastard, come on, stop it 
now' sufficed to induce just enough hesitation in the dark-haired 
man that he could be inched away, still slamming his elbows into 
Keagan's stomach in an effort to get free. The librarian had by this 
time roused himself from The Teeth of the Tiger long enough to 
assist and between them they were able to extricate the man to the 
point where he stormed off, giving Keagan a look of hatred so 
startlingly intense that it seemed he might have been ready to 
assault him instead. 


The librarian-trustee hefted the older man up onto one of the 
ridiculous beanbag chairs (you could melt the plastic beads into a 
spike, thought that part of Keagan's mind again, or slip one into a 
stew and watch someone choke on it) and brought him a tissue. 
Once he had wiped away the best part of the blood on his face— 
feeling gingerly around his prominent and now distinctly broken- 
looking nose—and rearranged his thin grey hair, Keagan recognised 
him as the Judge.