As they moved through the corridors with the blue-caps at their 
sides, Keagan caught glimpses of other staff moving around—blue- 
caps, white coats, the occasional black-helmet, and also the flicker 
of orange jumpsuits. We're not the only 'shift' of prisoners at this 
facility then, Keagan thought. Which makes sense—it takes time to 
train any individual to carry out a task to the expected standard; you 
can't go from a fully-trained shift of prison labour one day to a team 
of complete novices the next. They must overlap—if there are 20 
convicts on any shift, then they must go through 18 shifts a year if 
the court reporter, Deloitte's, information was correct. Likely, of 
course, that this is not their only facility—which means the longer 
you wait, the more likely it is that Patrick Goettsch will quietly 
disappear again. 


They were led through into a wider area with a raised platform—a 
conference area from which the chairs had been removed. Blue Hat 
stepped up onto the platform and spoke a few words to a white-coat, 
who smiled. 


"Thank you, Agent Howard," said the white coat. He was about 50, 
with thin, vaguely rattish features and light grey hair in an 
incongruously youthful style. "My name is Dr Randolph Skinner, and 
I've recently gained full responsibility for D-Class personnel 
supervision and liaison at this facility." He sounded particularly 
pleased with himself. "D-Class, of course, is what you are. That's the 
lowest clearance level, which means, fortunately for me, that | would 
be in breach of security if | now provided a full history and 


explanation of the goals of this organisation. That's classified. This is 
what | can tell you, so listen up if you're even interested. This is a 
research facility that exists outside the normal civilian and military 
channels. Officially, it does not exist." 


Someone coughed, and the cough was then taken up by numerous 
other inmates, some no doubt the pawns of their mirror neurons, 
others simply imitating their peers out of the same mindset they had 
held in primary school and which had never developed further. Dr 
Skinner cleared his throat himself and waited for quiet. 


"Now, you're here because one of our agents approached each and 
every one of you and gave you an offer; participate in our 
programme for the duration of one month and you will receive a full 
pardon for any and all crimes you have committed. What? Yes, I'm 
sure some of you have wondered about the logistics of that. I'm 
going to be perfectly and totally frank with you, gentlemen. We don't 
use university students for a reason. You want to know what the 'D' 
stands for in D-Class? Disposable. The experiments we conduct 
here are highly dangerous, and some of you will not survive." 


This provoked a round of consternation from the inmates, and the 
guards packed into the corners of the room began to shuffle forward. 


"Now—our agents would have made this perfectly clear to you at the 
time you agreed to participate ... What? Go back to prison? No, I'm 
afraid it's far too late for that. Now you're here, you will be expected 
to follow our instructions exactly. To the letter. The penalty for acting 
out? Well, let's put it this way. There's no justice system here. Any 
infractions will be dealt with immediately at the discretion of security 
personnel—their prerogative. So, some ground rules; you may have 
noticed some other D-Class personnel roaming around the facility. 
Forget about them. Contact with D-Class outside your shift—Shift B 
—is forbidden, and subject to the strictest penalties ... No, we don't 
feel the need to provide any identifiers. Memorise the faces of the 
people in this room, or the serial numbers on their lapel tags if you're 
a prosopagnosiac. Don't talk to anyone else unless instructed to do 
so. It's as simple as that. After that the following should go without 
saying, but here goes: the objects and material you will be working 
with here are highly sensitive. That means no communication with 
the outside world whatsoever. Possession of any contraband that 


could enable outside communication will, you've guessed it, be 
subject to the strictest penalties possible. Blam. Can | say that?" 


Dr Skinner looked at Agent Howard, who made a non-committal 
gesture. He continued: 


"You should also memorise the number on your own lapel. That's 
you. At the end of this orientation you will be directed down the hall 
to our medical wing, where that number will be tattooed on your 
wrist and chest. ... Yes, yes, we are quite aware of the historical 
precedents; Godwin would be proud. What you should be asking is 
—why the chest? Well, that's quite simple. In the event, say, of an 
explosion, we need to be able to rapidly identify the deceased, and 
quite frankly a torso is fairly conclusive. If you feel particularly 
strongly about it you can have it removed at the end of your time 
with us. Tattoo removal is a routine procedure these days, and quite 
painless." 


"Your one month term of service is thirty consecutive days, starting 
today ... yes, today ... excuse me ... yes, | am quite aware some of 
you have been here over a week while some of you have only just 
arrived. Have you never heard of the Parable of the Labourers in the 
Vineyard?" Twenty blank stares including Keagan's. "Of course not. 
Well, we never said your month of service started as soon as you 
entered the facility, but then, | imagine most of you wouldn't be here 
if you had mastered reading comprehension. What you are asked to 
do may vary dramatically from day to day—it might include light 
janitorial duties or assignment to one of several Special 
Containment Procedures observed in this facility. Ah, | see some of 
you are nodding your heads knowledgeably when | used those 
initials, as though I've delivered some sort of revelation. As a matter 
of fact, you're wrong, but | don't intend to get into that now. These 
Special Containment Procedures, or 'skips', are programmes under 
an individual researcher focusing around a particular object or 
phenomenon. Depending on the needs of the individual researcher 
you will take part in day-to-day procedures relating to that skip or 
participate in experiments into the object or phenomenon being 
studied." 


"As D-Class personnel you are on call whenever we need you, for 
as long as we need you. My advice to you—don't complain, don't 


once again appearing highly pleased with itself. 
Containment breach of SCP-682 averted after minimal 
fatalities of containment staff.] 


<End Log> 


Item: SCP-682 instance transplanted from alternate dimension 


Tissue Test Record: 
Denied by O5- 


Termination Test Record: 
Testing denied by O5- 


Notes: A potentially permanent stalemate between instances would 
solve containment, however, transporting an instance to our 
dimension would be unnecessarily dangerous, not even to speak of 
containing another one, or the consequences of if they chose to co- 
operate. Denied. 


ltem: @0|\O@0000/00\0 


Tissue Test Record: 
Tissue taken without incident 


Termination Test Record: 

SCP-682 was restrained in chamber 145-B and the laser was 
introduced. Laser began cutting into SCP-682's back; command 
room emergency shutter was closed. 


<Begin Log> 
<9 seconds> SCP-682: What are you doing? 


<13 seconds> Laser begins carving infohazardous data 
onto SCP-682's hide, SCP-682 emits a loud roar 


<14 seconds> command room emergency shutter closes 


<2 minutes, 4 seconds> Laser finishes cutting 


talk back. Eyes on the prize, gentlemen. Stay smart—well, as smart 
as you can be—and do what you're told, and you'll make it to the 
end of the month. And then, freedom. As to that, the more astute 
amongst you may have realised that it's not as simple as just 
dropping you off on the street. Society at large probably wouldn't 
accept people like you—no offence—turned back into the wild on 
the say-so of an organisation that doesn't exist for services which 
are classified seven levels above Top Secret. Instead you'll be 
enrolled at a series of minimum security institutions, substance 
abuse clinics and halfway houses—all owned and operated by us— 
under different names, with increasing autonomy. Contact with your 
former acquaintances will be tightly controlled until we are 
persuaded you are not a security threat. When you entered this 
programme you signed a declaration that you understand and 
accept the Official Secrets Acts 1911 to 1989—tbut just in case that 
isn't adequate persuasion, we reserve the right to monitor you and 
your dealings, forever. We don't care what you get up to, but we will 
preserve the secrecy and security of this organisation. Is that clear?" 


Some half-hearted murmurs by inmates who probably intended to 
go right back to what they were doing before and which had got 
them put away in the first place. Cancer's already crumpled face 
sagged further—he looked crushed by the notion that even if he 
survived the next month he could spend the rest of his remaining life 
being shuffled between low-security institutions. Keagan listened to 
the explanation and recognised the effort that had gone into making 
it plausible—just the right amount of real-world unglamorousness 
and disappointment to give it the ring of truth. But no secret this 
large, with this many people sworn to silence, could last long, even 
with abseiling strike teams ready to take out anyone who called the 
press. The question, then, the question that held such terrible 
implications, was this: how long has this been going on? 


Dr Skinner continued: "You'll spend any free time you are not 
required to undertake duties for this Foundation in your dormitory, D- 
Block Alpha-2..." 


A voice began shouting from the crowd—"! want a separate cell! It's 
not safe for me in there, there's a guy who wants me dead...". 


Keagan turned, but the owner of the voice was hidden in the crush. 


He realised he had never heard Patrick Goettsch talk normally, but 
felt sure he was the speaker. 


"I'm afraid that won't be possible,” said Dr Skinner with a thin smile. 
"And that goes for any other personal requests. You'll just have to 
rub along as best you can. Rest assured, however, you'll be under 
constant video surveillance." Some inmates didn't seem to find that 
reassuring at all. "Eyes on the prize, gentlemen, eyes on the prize. 
Agent Howard, stick a fork in them, they're done. Take them for their 
concentration camp tattoos ... Oh, you're Jewish? That one doesn't 
find it funny because he's Jewish, Agent Howard, which probably 
explains the swastika on his forearm. And | very much hope he likes 
tonight's stew, which | know for a fact contains some very choice 
reconstituted pork." 


The inmates were herded up again and led back down the corridor. 
The medical wing was almost painfully bright, light shining off 
brilliant white surfaces. The inmates stood and watched as each in 
turn was stripped to the waist and a tiny, bald white-coated man with 
thick spectacles used a tattoo machine mounted on a mechanical 
arm to inscribe their number on their flesh. Keagan was one of the 
first to be led up—it prickled, hot and somewhat painful as it branded 
'‘D-8671' across his right pectoral and the inside of his left wrist, 
black letters on coffee-coloured skin, the area around the letters red 
and raised. He instinctively rubbed his chest and immediately 
snatched his hand away as the pressure caused jolts of pain to 
ripple through the underlying muscle. He watched as the other 
inmates submitted with various degrees of good grace to the 
procedure. Cancer—like Keagan formerly tattoo-free—barely 
seemed to notice what was happening to him, while Marv made a 
show of grinning the whole time, though Keagan noticed his teeth 
were clenched tight. The tattooist had a tough time with Cameron 
Moat—a wiry, vaguely Latin-looking young man with full tattooed 
‘sleeves’ depicting naked women wrapped in grape vines, shifting 
into a spiralling tribal design across his chest. Eventually they settled 
for marking his ribcage and a young lady's mostly light-coloured 
back, this latter addition drawing protests from Mr Moat. The twitchy 
youth—Keagan now knew his name was Ronny Feldspar because 
he kept shouting it in various permutations, such as 'Ronny of the 
family Feldspar' and 'Ronny Colon Feldspar Full Stop'—refused the 


tattoo and had to be held down by two of the blue-hats. When he 
had been turned loose—his tattoos jagged and distorted by his 
writhing, he looked at them with watering eyes then pulled his 
jumpsuit over them, tucking his hand within the sleeve as though he 
could amputate it by this motion. 


Once each member of Shift B had received their identification 
tattoos, they were gathered up and led back to their dormitory. As 
they walked back through the facility, following the orange line to the 
D-Class accommodation, Keagan heard a faint noise that it took him 
a second or so to realise was a scream, male and human, muffled 
by distance and steel doors. 


"Keep moving," advised a blue-hat, and Keagan walked on. Back in 
the dormitory, he looked up at the faded grey walls with their 
scrawled graffiti and the yellow watermarks on the ceiling, and 
thought about the abandoned village that surrounded the facility. 
How long? He saw that much of the graffiti was simple strings of 
numbers: 1199, 1418, 507, 512, X. 287, 1062, 481, 1213, X. 032, 
1388, 272, X. There were at least fifty of these lists written in ink, 
chalk or that prison favourite blood just in the space by Keagan's 
head. It didn't escape his notice that the X was often written in a 
different medium than the rest of the list. 


It is a fundamental rule of the universe that where men are locked 
up together and certain items made contraband, some quantity of 
said contraband will always be in circulation. Somehow, despite the 
searches made of the prisoners before they left their former abodes, 
some few items had made it through, though quite where they had 
been stored was probably not worth thinking about. In addition, 
small stashes were found under the bunks, in crevices in the floor, 
and wedged between the slats at the top of the walls. And, ina 
global corollary to the above law, even this pathetic collection of 
cigarettes, Page 3s from The Sun torn out and folded small, 
plasticine dice and playing cards became something to be claimed, 
owned, bestowed on friends or demanded as tribute. 


The sequence of events went something like this; a lighter, made of 
light-blue plastic and a quarter-full, was found wedged a foot and a 
half down the hollow end of one of the metal bedposts, and its 


recovery became a team effort, with Keagan eventually supplying a 
mechanical solution—by pushing the bed up against the wall from 
the opposite corner, the sides would scissor in on the bedpost so as 
to compress it along the axis of the lighter. Simple lever action. The 
inmates took turns ‘leaning’ against the opposite post until eventually 
there was a rattle and the lighter fell to the floor, which is where the 
problems began. 


Keagan was eventually able to gather from asking the others after 
the fact that even before the lighter had been recovered, Marvin 
Hagman had decided that it could be entrusted to Cameron Moat, a 
known smoker, if Mr Moat acknowledged Marv's clear overlordship 
of D-Block Alpha-2. Unfortunately, it appeared that Cancer Herrigan 
had different notions, and had already promised it to one of the 
inmates who arrived on Keagan's bus and who he evidently thought 
of as his core support. Accordingly, the men began to argue about 
who exactly should have the privilege of giving the find away. 
Keagan had in the meantime gone to lie down, but was jolted awake 
as the first punches began to be thrown.