“Oh, good morning. While you obviously know of me, | don’t recall 
having ever met... what’s wrong?” 


“Sorry sir. Can’t chat. Security breach. Need your help.” 
“Calm yourself and catch your breath, man.” 
Richard paused for a moment. His panting slowed. 


“The site has been breached and there are enemies on their way 


from the previous fracture. D-299 curses 
observing personnel, but reports that his 
pain has mostly subsided. He limps 
towards the stairs. ] 


2F Stair: [ While trying to navigate the 
stairs, D-209 trips and falls. Twelve loud 
snaps are heard in rapid succession. Upon 
coming to rest, D-299 exhibits several more 
fractures in various places along each limb. 
He screams as they set, and spasms on 
the landing. ] 


23:14 


2F Stair: [ D-299 begins to ambulate. He 
struggles to crawl, eventually passing out- 
of-frame. } 


23:26 


1F Living Room: [ D-299 can be seen, 
dragging himself into the room. He strains, 
moving with great difficulty due to his 
cumbersome limbs. Each arm is estimated 
to be over two meters in length, with 
several inflexible breaks that inhibit motion 
around obstacles. ] 


1F Kitchen: [ SCP-783 de-manifests. 
Visual feed clears. ] 


23:31 


1F Living Room:: [ D-299 occupies the 
majority of the living room. His lower legs 
stretch out-of-frame into the hallway. He 
has a hand on the knob of the front door, 
but the length of his fingers impairs the 
dexterity required to manipulate it. A 
scratching sound is audible in the hallway. 


here. | don’t know if we can hold them off ourselves, so I’m letting 
you out and hoping. There’s a key card in my pocket that can get 
you into your vault: stairs down the hall to the right, three floors 
down, chamber sixteen...” his voice trailed off as he strained to hear 
the dim scream from up the hallway. “Shit! You know Latin, right?” 


“Why yes, | began studying it as a boy back in primary school. What 
does that have to do with an attack of any sort?” 


“Just trust me: you’re going to be using it soon.” 


Richard lifted the tarnished helmet out from under his arm and 
placed it on his head. 


Publius Carthephilus Aetius began to regain consciousness. Death 
was much like sleep, he had decided: deep and dreamless. The 
blackness faded away at the edges of his mind. Heat and sensation 
and hearing gradually flowed into his perception. Without time, the 
process took both years and mere moments. The final push was like 
falling from a great height as the blurred colors and sensations 
whirled around him in a last mad maelstrom before snapping sharply 
into focus. 


He was standing in a small, plain room. The only things of note were 
a small desk, a filing cabinet, and a glass tank filled with water, 
some tropical corals, and a brightly colored slug. Beyond the room 
he could hear a loud, repeated screeching noise. He looked down at 
his new body. Gangly. Thin. The usual orange jumpsuit had been 
switched out for the long white coat he had seen the doctors wear. 


“Are you all right?” 


It was an older man’s voice, though he did not recognize the 
language. Publius glanced around the room. There was no one else 
there, same as before. 


“Who’s there?” 


“So you’re why he said I’d need Latin.” It was the same voice, this 
time in very formal, accented Latin, coming from the glass tank. 


“Who are you? Where are you hiding?” 


“I’m not hiding anywhere, my good man. But that isn’t the time for 
that: we must get out of here quickly. There are enemies coming this 
way.” 


“Wait, what? Who? Who is attacking?” 


“| don’t know, but | intend to find out and stop them, whoever they 
are. Your assistance would be greatly appreciated.” 


There was an awkward pause as Publius looked at the slug. Seeing 
no other reasonable option, Publius removed the lid of the tank, 
reached inside, and picked up the slug. He placed it in the breast 
pocket of the lab coat, where it poked its head out of the opening. 
Publius stepped outside into the corridor, wincing at the alarm 
sirens. 


“To your right, and then down the stairs, and we can... oh, lovely.” 


There was a shout from three figures to their left, perhaps thirty feet 
away. There were two men and one woman: The woman was 
shaved bald, a skull tattooed on her face and a machete in each 
hand. One man was bleeding from a small circular wound in his 
shoulder, yet still held a butcher’s cleaver in his good hand. The 
other was completely naked, with tangled hair down to his waist and 
smeared with blood red war paint, armed with a makeshift spear. 


Publius’ mind sprung into action, analyzing the situation in an 
instant. Three enemies, all armed, one wounded, against one 
unarmed man and likewise unarmed slug. Judging by their looks, 
crude weapons, and slack postures, they lacked any sort of 
professional training or discipline. These were simple thugs. Still 
dangerous, of course, and more so than what they would have been 
with this unfit body. 


The naked one attacked first. Publius sidestepped the spear thrust, 
shedding the doctor’s coat and the slug as he stole the weapon from 
the man’s hands: the attacker's momentum sent him sprawling to 
the floor. Publius swung the spear around and hit him hard on the 
head with the haft, knocking him unconscious. 


He was barely able to dodge out of the way of the woman’s first 
machete swing. In his peripheral vision he could see the wounded 
man running away, back to find reinforcements, no doubt. That was 
a problem for later. 


The woman was a better fighter than the spearman, to be sure: she 
kept herself moving, preventing Publius from slipping around behind 
her. He dodged her swings by uncomfortably small amounts, waiting 
for a opening. His spear was no use at this distance, he needed 
some way to get space between them, but she had good reach... 


There. An opening. She had swung too wide, too hard. Publius leapt 
back and threw the spear. 


It struck home, its jagged scrap metal point puncturing the woman’s 
neck. She managed a moment of bloody gurgling before falling 
dead. 


Publius pulled the spear from her corpse, wiping the blood on her 
clothing and picking up one of her machetes. With it, he walked over 
to the unconscious naked man and hacked off his head. He left the 
labcoat where it lay, instead picking the slug out of the pocket and 
placing it on his shoulder. 


“Nicely done. Now quickly, back down the hall.” 


Publius ran as directed, despite his complete disorientation. He 
would trust the slug for now: it knew more than he did about this 
place, though he knew next to nothing to begin with. 


“Oh, where are my manners?” the slug said from his shoulder. “Il am 
Lord Theodore Thomas Blackwood, a servant of her majesty, queen 
Victoria of England.” 


The name was barbaric, and his queen and country meant nothing 
to Publius. Nonetheless, it was only proper to introduce himself to 
the slug that spoke. 


“My name is Publius Carthephilus Aetius, a soldier under Gaius 
Marius in the war against Jugurtha and a... reluctant survivor.” 


“Ah... that explains matters. Bound to the helmet, | suppose. You're 


quite a long way and time from home, my friend. But, we can’t let 
that get us down. Your body’s prior owner told me where my 
collection was being stored, and so that is our goal. There is 
superior weaponry there.” 


Publius glanced down at Blackwood. 
“You do realize that you’re a slug, correct?” 


“Oh yes, very funny. I’ve heard that one before, I’m afraid.” 


Hazzard Jack beat a man’s head in with a baseball bat wrapped in 
barbed wire. He loved the feel of the pulp between his tattooed 
fingers. The rest of the gang was likewise enjoying themselves: 
there was nothing like some rape, arson and pillaging to start the 
day. 


He took a deep breath of the smoky air before splattering himself 
with the man’s blood. The fun was running dry here. Time to move 
on. 


Those fools in the Foundation. They thought they could protect the 
world, keep it spinning, keep its destiny locked up and “secured”. 
The concept was childish, really. Entropy always won, and Hazzard 
Jack liked winning. 


Fuck bitches, kill bitches, raise some hell and spread some chaos. 
That was his motto. 


Wait...what was this? Running from a fight? Some coward had run 
back. He only had a bullet to the shoulder, that was nothing. He said 
something about a man in a helmet down a couple levels, someone 
tough. 


Hazzard Jack would see about that. 


“Exactly how is this supposed to work?” 


“You use a keyhole. It is a key, after all.” 


Publius looked at the keycard. It was not like any key he was familiar 
with, though of course everything in this place was alien and 
unknown to him. He had decided that writing it all off as magical 
would be the best option for the time being. 


“| can’t find any keyhole.” 
“Still disoriented, | see. It’s right there, next to your hand.” 


The “keyhole” was a smooth black box with a slit in it, positioned on 
the wall at chest height next to the door. Publius looked at the card 
again. Everything he had seen so far seemed to have a parallel to 
the world he knew, just magical, for lack of a better term. This must 
be much the same. He inserted the card into the slot, and the door 
slid open, revealing the vault beyond. Emergency lighting kept the 
room dim: the stuffed and mounted animals seemed ready to leap at 
them from the shadows. 


“Now then, | have some dueling swords which would interest you, 
but what we are really looking for are my particle destabilizers. They 
will be long metal tubes, hollow, with a wooden attachment on the 
end opposite the hole.” Blackwood said. “With two pairs of eyes we 
should be able to find them easily enough.” 


It was a stroke of good fortune that the room was well organized: 
animal specimens here, plant specimens there, artifacts separated 
by area and time period. The muskets were quickly found within a 
glass display case, next to the sword rack and other, more 
mundane, firearms. Publius opened the case, took one of the guns 
of the shelf and inspected it. In his mind it seemed like some sort of 
club, but why would they bother adding a metal handle, much less a 
hollow one? He looked to Blackwood for an explanation. 


“Oh, yes, you wouldn’t know how to use this. Don’t worry: it is quite 
easy. Simply point the end with the hole at the enemy and pull the 
trigger located there, and you should be...Oh dear, they haven’t 
even set up the aether collectors. They’re all about as useless as 
sticks at the moment, until we find the reserves...aha! Those glass 
balls over there, if you take those and insert them to those brass 


slots on the side of the tube...” 


The instructions were simple enough, and Publius had finished 
within a few minutes. He hefted the gun, finding a good way to hold 
it as Blackwood had told him. The wooden part fit against his 
shoulder 


“Well done. That should last for a few shots at...” 


The room shook as the door and most of the adjoining wall 
exploded. Publius dove to the floor, showered with dust and rubble. 
Over the ringing in his ears he could dimly make out some footsteps 
and foreign conversation. 


“Are you all right?” Blackwood said quietly. 
“|... [think so.” 


“This will be dangerous, but | have to ask you to stand up. We do 
have an advantage. Just trust me." 


Publius sucked in a breath, braced himself, and stood up, gun in his 
hands. His vision swam, but he could make out eight rather barbaric 
individuals in the room similar to the three before that he had fought, 
all still bearing a wicked assortment of tattoos, piercings and 
homemade weapons. 


“Well lookie here!” One particularly brutal-looking raider walked 
towards the pair, swinging a wooden bat wrapped in barbed wire 
back and forth. “It’s helmet-man! It’s like it’s fucking Halloween or 
something!” The rest of the gang laughed. 


“What’s he saying?” Publius whispered out of the corner of his 
mouth. 


“Just insults, ignore them.” Blackwood focused on the hooligan in 
question. “It would be in your best interest to lay down your 
weapons, sir. We're willing to avoid violence if you are.” 


“Is that so? How about | tear you a new asshole instead?” The man 
shouted, leaping at the two. Publius swung the musket at the 
attacker, closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger. A bright beam of 


red light sprang from the barrel, illuminating the chamber. And hitting 
the man directly in the chest. His body went rigid, limbs bent at 
angles they were not meant to go, his skin and clothing charring 
black and peeling away like an onion. The light faded. The ash 
drifted to the floor. 


Publius looked at the gun in shock, then at the pile of dust, then at 
the gun again, and then at the slack-jawed insurgents. He grinned. 


“Velim caput tuum devellere deinde in confinium gulae cacare.” 
Lord Blackwood shook his head as best as a sea slug could. 


“My God, man. That's just foul.” 


And Again 


The little boy hid behind a tall sycamore tree, the wind sending a 
steady rain of orange and red leaves over the field behind the 
school. The boy adjusted his satchel again, deciding that he would 
play a game before going to class and beginning the day. The red 
leaves seemed brighter to him, little dots in the landscape. They 
reminded him of the instruments in his father's office, which always 
flashed and beeped, even in the middle of the night. He would count 
one hundred red leaves. And then go to school. 


No other children came out of the path from the woods to come to 
school this morning. In the distance, as he counted the leaves, he 
could see the cars in their procession. Each slowing to a halt, a well 
dressed child emerging (the boy could tell they were well-dressed 
because everyone's hair was neat and no one had holes in the 
knees of their pants), stopping briefly for a few words from a parent, 
and then dashing into the front entrance. 


Five, ten, fifteen red leaves. All the children would be new this year, 
again. 


Twenty, thirty, forty red leaves. This year, his father had told him, his 
name was "Marshall." The boy remembered his name being 
"Marshall" once before. But he must not slip up, and call himself 
"Alan" or some other name when the teacher called him. This was 
very important. Father insisted. 


Fifty, sixty, seventy red leaves. What was he to say, if the principal 
asked him where Allenstown, New Hampshire was? He was to Say, 
"| don't know." He had practiced with Father. All last night. 


Ninety-one, ninety-two, ninety-three leaves. The warning bell 
sounded. He did not like the new house. It was isolated, windy and 
dark. It was his fault that they had to move to this place; why could 
he not control himself? His father hugged him before bed, drying his 
tears. You do what you are meant to do, his father said, smiling at 


him. What's true for you, is true for mankind. Father always spoke of 
mankind. 


Ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven. He peeked around the 
sycamore tree. There she was, lingering by the swings behind the 
school. He could not understand, and Father would not explain it to 
him when he asked. She was here again. Just as she had been at 
every school every time they had moved. The little boy felt 
something stir inside of him. Some Thing (and it was a Thing, he 
prayed that it was a Thing and not himsel/f) that always took over 
when he saw the same girl at each school. The acts that it made him 
want to commit filled him with equal parts loathing and longing; he 
began to tremble. The memories of what it made him do before 
came back in an instant, seared as they were into his mind. His 
breathing came quickly, and he braced against the wide trunk of the 
tree, heaving as he struggled for air, certain that he was going to die 
on the spot. Something like him was too bad to keep living, he was 
sure of it.