She made an odd coughing noise. "The thing you need to 
understand about the people who run the world, Mister Baudin, is 
that escape is a myth. Those artists can flee, hide in the basement 
of a magic house, put up a shield and call themselves rebels. And 
yet they are a part of the great plan, as much as they try to delude 
themselves. They can't escape the world they live in. And this, 
Mister Baudin, this is our world." 


"No..." Adrian started slowly, "this isn't real." 


"And yet here we are." She smoothed out the tablecloth once more, 
and the restaurant around her began to lose focus. "You're here, but 
you're still out there, too, Mister Baudin." 


"And so are the Cool Kids. You said they were... still in the p/an, 
right? They're in the routine. Has this... happened before? What's 
happening now." 


Adrian could feel that he was now standing. The whiteness of the 
tablecloth had spread, like spilled milk, across the material of his 


dream, enveloping the two of them in blank space. 


Her voice reverberated against his ears like a steel drum. "Not like 
this, Mister Baudin. Not with you. We need you to slow down, to 
cooperate. When the time comes, you must act correctly." 


Adrian tried to speak but the air was pushed out of his lungs; he felt 
himself begin to fall and- 


-found himself back on top of his cot, in the basement of the old 
house. He gasped for air, and stale breath filled his chest. He was 
alive. 


He looked over, and Geoff's bed was empty. 


Adrian clambered to his feet, spread flat on the cold concrete. He 
made for the stairs. 


In the cramped kitchen, he found Geoff, who was stirring a bowl of 
oatmeal, sitting at a corner table alone. Adrian sat down across from 
him. 


"Morning, Adrian." Geoff looked up, attempting a smile. 


"Uh... morning," Adrian replied, not meeting his gaze. "Something... 
happened last night." 


Adrian relayed the events of his dream as best he could to Geoff, 
who stopped spooning oatmeal to his mouth. When he had finished, 
Geoff appeared thoughtful. 


After a moment, he spoke. "You're sure it was the woman who came 
to your apartment?" 


Adrian nodded slowly. "Almost certain." 
"And she wasn't... incredibly helpful, was she?" 


The artist shrugged. "I think she had a purpose. She contacted me 
for a reason, right?" 


"To warn you? To direct you on how to survive this?" 
"It's... maybe. | don't... | can't say." 
"Did she mention me?" 


Adrian looked down at the ratty table. The green paint was chipping 
away. 


Geoff frowned. "Oh. I'm just... a blank space, is it? Not even worth 
their address." 


"Look, | can't say... exactly why anything's happening. It's all moving 
too fast." 


"Too fast, but everyone has time for you." 
Adrian's brow furrowed. There was a moment of silence. 


Geoff clicked his tongue. "I'm... sorry, that was harsh. | Know it's not 
your fault. Just... when this all goes down..." He took a deep breath 
in, and then let it out through his fingers. "Do you think I'm going to 
make it out?" 


The artist's face softened. "Oh, no, Geoff, I'm... I'm sure it's..." 
Adrian sighed. "I don't know." 


Geoff closed his eyes, letting his face fall into his hands. Adrian 
couldn't save him. 


Geoff left to be alone in the basement. Adrian spent the rest of the 
day on the porch, watching the outside. 


The blasts against the shield were only minutes apart, now, but 
Adrian still hoped that each one would be the last, before the 
assailants ceded defeat to the house's defenses. But they 
continued. 


His hosts weren't very active today. They had spent most of the day 
pacing about at the barrier, or retreated in the house. Perhaps they 
were planning something. Adrian couldn't care about that now. He 


had to take care of his own. 


Before long, the day was gone, and night had come. The shelling 
continued. Adrian just sat on the porch and watched. The events of 
the day were wearing on him. But he couldn't surrender to sleep, not 
when it was so easily manipulable. 


For a long time, Adrian sat alone and watched the barrier. Through 
it, he could see moving shapes... vague shadows. Like this was alla 
show. Adrian yawned. Some show. 


Adrian shut his eyes for just a moment... and when he opened 
them, he was in a white expanse. Sleep had caught up to him. 


He turned in place, scanning an unseen horizon for any figures. But 
he was alone. 


He took a deep breath. "Hello?" 
No response. 
"Look, |... | need you to talk to me. | need to know what's going on." 


Now, he felt a presence. He turned around, and there she stood, 
clad in dark formalwear. "Hello, Mister Baudin. We're glad you could 
join us." 


Adrian diverted his eyes to somewhere else in the blankness. "This 
has gone on long enough. | need you to answer my questions." 


She made an inviting gesture. "Go on." 
He nodded, and cleared his throat. "Who are the Cool Kids?" 


"Adrian, do you remember, years ago, when the movement began? 
When, for a moment, it seemed like you'd broken the unspoken 
taboo of the world, like the silence had been lifted?" 


She laughed, bitterly. "Do you remember how easily it was shut 
down, when the powers that be realized it was a threat to their 
ordering of the world? How simply they erased it from history, from 
memory? How rare you are to remember it at all?" 


Around Adrian, images danced through the fog. Marches, 
exhibitions, work that touched the soul. "I... | remember." 


"The Cool Kids are no different. They still carry the torch of a 
zeitgeist long rendered nonexistent. They yearn to make themselves 
known. To make the word mean something once more." 


Adrian squeezed his eyes shut. "Then this, all this, has happened 
before?" 


"The Cool Kids live in a bubble, Adrian. They make noise, try to 
break out, to pop the bubble. We apply pressure, and they are gone 
once more." 


He squinted, confused. "You... you let them get away." 
"Some of them, yes. They rebuild, and they try again." 
"But... why? Why let them?" 


"Because they are predictable. They are contained. The exhibition at 
Greenwich was informative. It happened before, and it happened 
again. The rats were culled, as they always have been. As was said 
before, Mister Baudin — they're still a part of the routine." 


"Then who are you?" 
"Mister Baudin... why don't you take a look, and find out?" 


Adrian opened his eyes. The world around him remained white and 
still. He turned his gaze to the woman's face. 


She looked just as she did when she visited his apartment. Her face, 
vaguely Eastern European, rounded, typical of a woman in her late 
thirties. Her dark hair was cut short. 


But her eyes were small and unfocused. She looked through him, 
full of memories of a war without end. A conflict fermented for 
generations. She looked through him as if he wasn't there. After all, 
he wasn‘ there, and neither was she. 


Then her face began to change. She was a young woman, face 


marred by scars. Then she became a elderly man, barely clutching 
to life. She was an artist. An agent. A poor child. A corpse. 


Adrian tried to back away, but his eyes remained transfixed. He 
struggled to process his vision as her metamorphosis only 
intensified in speed. 


She began to speak, and her voice came from everywhere. "What 
do you think happens to the people the artists hurt? What justice do 
you think they deserve?" 


The whiteness that surrounded Adrian began to resolve into a crowd 
of people, arms outstretched towards him. He tried to yell over the 
noise. "You can't... you can't argue that you're fighting for justice. 
You caused this. You /et them do it." 


The voices around him drowned him out, and the woman had 
disappeared into the mass. "And you think you're better than us, that 
you aren't clinging to the ideals of the past?" 


Adrian blinked, and the mass was gone. The many-faced woman 
stood alone before him. "You're no different than them. Your 
magnum opus, your great glimpse into the nature of humanity? It's 
filed away in a containment vault." 


She walked towards him, placing both cold hands on his shoulders. 
"It's not that you're fighting a fight you can't win, Adrian. It's that the 
fight against authority never existed outside your head." 


She stared firmly into his eyes, now. Her face was indescribable. 
"Stop fighting, Mister Baudin. Don't interfere with what is going to 
happen. Then you can take your place in the real world." 


Adrian stopped holing his breath. "What is going to happen?" 


She smiled. "You already know the answer. You should go, now. 
Your friend needs you." 


The many-faced woman began to fade from his sight- 


-as Adrian's ears were filled with the sound of shattering glass. He 


was lying on the floor, just inside the door of the house. Geoff knelt 
over him, shaking him by his shoulders. "Adrian, Adrian, wake up!" 


Adrian rubbed his eyes and shifted to a sitting position. "What's 
wrong, what's going on?" 


Geoff pointed out the door. "The barrier. It's going down." 


Adrian followed his gaze, and saw through the open door that the 
barrier, typically milky-blue, was pulsing red with a furious rhythm. 
With each pulse, a deafening boom came. Adrian saw glass shards. 
The windows had just been broken. 


"Where are the others?" 


Geoff was breathing heavy. "They're in the basement, but | had to- | 
had to get you." 


Adrian started to speak, but was interrupted by a loud buzzing. He 
turned back to the doorway, and he was bathed in red light. 


The barrier was flickering. Glimpses of the blackness of the night 
outside filtered through, an image of a starry night Adrian hadn't 
seen in weeks. 


Seconds later, it was gone. The buzzing cut out, and the silence was 
all-consuming. Beyond where the barrier had once stood, there were 
lines of vans, and squads of people in body armor. 


Adrian stared, wide-eyed. Geoff backed away from him to hide 
behind the doorframe. Both of them noticed at the same time that 
the buzzing had been replaced by the familiar whistle of a mortar. 


Before they could take cover, the blistering projectile crashed 
through the ceiling, streaking flames and blowing splinters into the 
air. It burrowed into the molding floor. The sheer heat leaking from 
the air pushed Adrian back. 


The whistling started again. The two scrambled to their feet and ran 
from the foyer. 


Outside, they heard yelling. On all sides, agents were marching 


towards the house. 


Geoff ran down the hall, Adrian following closely behind. The floors 
creaked uneasily as they sprinted over them. 


A glowing orange sphere came down through the ceiling, striking 
Geoff in the left shoulder. It continued into the floor as Geoff 
collapsed against the wall. 


Adrian knelt, panting quickly. Geoff's face was squinted in pain. His 
shoulder seemed like it'd been burned — the skin was badly 
damaged. Adrian cast a quick look behind him before heaving his 
friend onto his shoulders, wincing under the load. 


He continued now past the kitchen, into the waiting stairwell. 
Climbing down into the basement, he could see the crowd gathered 
around the hole in the wall. The place Adrian had seen their van. 


Adrian set Geoff down on a cot. He was squirming, but alive. Adrian 
turned to the others. "Geoff needs medical attention." 


They didn't respond. 


Adrian yelled. "Is this what we're doing now? We'll just shuffle off, 
send a few people in a van and let the rest die?" 


Adrian took a step towards them. "This is what they want. Don't you 
see that? Is that what you wanted me to see?" 


He rubbed his face. "You wanted me to help. Just... just tell me 
what to do." 


One of the group turned around to face Adrian. It was the man with 
the hawkish face, who had spoken to him days ago. "Adrian..." 


Adrian spread his arms out. "What is it? What can | do?" 


The hawk-man was approaching, hands held out, something in one 
of them. 


Adrian took another step. "Please, just-" 


long after separation from the creature. Subject’s favorite activity is 
tickle-wrestling, often by completely enveloping a person from the 
neck down and tickling them until asked to stop (though it does not 
always comply with this request). 


While the creature will interact with anyone, it seems to have a 
special interest in those who are unhappy or hurt in any way. 
Persons suffering from crippling depression, after interacting with 
SCP-999, have returned completely cured with a very positive 
outlook on life. The possibility of marketing SCP-999’s slime as an 
antidepressant has been discussed. 


In addition to its playful behavior, SCP-999 seems to love all animals 
(especially humans), refusing to eat any meat and even risking its 
own life to save others, on one occasion leaping in front of a person 
to take a bullet fired at them (Subject’s intellect is still up for debate: 
though its behavior is infantile, it seems to understand human 
speech and most modern technology, including guns). The 
creature’s diet consists entirely of candy and sweets, with M&M’s™ 
and Necco™ wafers being its favorites. Its eating methods are 
similar to those of an amoeba. 


Addendum SCP-999-A: The following is a report from an 
experiment in which SCP-682 is exposed to SCP-999 in the hopes 
that it will curb the creature’s omnicidal rage. 


SCP-999 is released into SCP-682’s containment area. 
SCP-999 immediately slithers towards SCP-682. 


999: (elated gurgles) 
682: (unintelligible groans, growling) What is that? 


SCP-999 moves in front of SCP-682, jumping up and 
down in a dog-like manner while calling out in a high- 
pitched squealing noise. 


682: (groans) Disgusting... 


SCP-682 immediately steps on SCP-999, completely 
flattening SCP-999. Observers were about to abort the 


The hawk-man swiftly shoved his knife into Adrian's chest. He barely 
had time to register the hit before the blade slipped through his ribs 
and became hilted in his flesh. 


"N- n-" Adrian couldn't speak, the air was forced from his lungs ina 
sick gasp. He was pushed backwards by the force, and he could see 
the hawk-man's face. Apologetic. 


He said something, but Adrian couldn't hear, he could only see his 
lips move. Stop us. The rest of the Cool Kids had their backs turned. 


Adrian grasped for his chest, and found the knife's hilt. There was a 
schlk as he pulled it free. The blade was glowing, a bright blue, and 
it was not blood that ran from his chest but green sparks. 


He dropped it to the floor. Everything around him became slow. Pain 
enveloped him. He fell to his knees. 


The Cool Kids were filing into the hole in the wall. Towards escape. 
Adrian tried to yell at them but words weren't on his lips. 


Adrian wretched, falling onto his side on the cold concrete floor. He 
could hear boots stomping on the ground above him. 


The hawk-man stepped over him on the way to the tunnel. Over his 
back was Geoff, passed out. He entered the tunnel, and Adrian was 
the only one left in the basement. 


The last image he saw was the rafters above him, streaming with 
neon flames. 
The hive is burned. Paradise lost. 
The Cool Kids were always digging tunnels. 
The barrier doesn't end. Out there, it's all blue mist. 
That isn't a way to live. 


The knock came. 


But there was nobody home. 


Right? 


And when Adrian awoke, he was in the Circle. 


Part | | Part Il: The War and The Many Faces | Part III 


Who Killed Head Researcher Jamison?