He grabbed a tissue and placed it into his right ear once more to 
soak the blood, 


and... 


he cried. 


Death? 


Death happens. 


He'd been unfortunate enough to have been born to two Foundation 
researchers. Easy enough to erase government records of 
newborns. Too risky to let their kids be public when they'd been 
exposed to who knows what anomalies in the womb. Not to mention 
having nonexistent persons was convenient if they went missing. Or 
that they gave a bonus to the parents. 


He'd spent his childhood here. Childhood? There were no parents, 
not in the sites. There were teachers, and there were guards. He 
wasn't lucky to get teachers who cared about him. All he had were 
libraries and labs. So he read. 


Bodies sometimes happened. Not often, but they happened. And 
they certainly weren't hidden. The morgue was on the way to the 


library. So while he read, sometimes he'd hear the gurney wheel 
down the way, look up, and see a John or Jane or Jet Doe. 


One day, he couldn't remember how old he was, the bodies kept 
wheeling. 


Some researchers were spending their off-time in the library that 
day, and he overheard them chatting. Something about traitors. 
About a failed coup and a purge. Something about a "Chaos 
Insurgency" being put down. 


He didn't know much about what a coup was, or what a purge 
meant, but he thought the two must be related. Seemed like they 
were wiped out. He didn't really know why it happened, but he did 
know that the name "Chaos Insurgency" was pretty cool. 


Then, that day came and went, and he carried on with his life. 


As he finished whatever schooling he could, he moved to the labs, 
to begin work. He must have been only fourteen. But, laws weren't 
exactly relevant, and the Ethics Committee had a ruling (he'd seen 
them in the library's archives) that thirteen was the age when you 
could begin assistant work. Small things. Getting drinks, food, 
utensils. 


Eventually he'd worked up to getting document access. Simple 
things, scanning for spelling and grammar mistakes. The occasional 
suggestion to procedures, or description. Simple things. 


One day, when he was finishing up, he'd found a document which 
wasn't assigned to him, underneath ones which were. He knew this, 
but he figured it would be innocent enough to do extra. There was 
small handwriting in a blank space after the document. 


"Read very, very carefully.” 


He blinked. 
His? 
His handwriting? 


He read it again. There was more writing, but he had to make sure. 


"Read very, very carefully.” 


He rested for a moment. He had a headache coming on. He didn't 
remember writing this. He shouldn't have been able to write this. But 
there it was. He needed to know what this was. And so, he kept 
reading. 


"You're me. Don't ask how. I'm you. | don't know how. All | know is 
that if you follow these instructions things work. 


Work? 
Do what you want to do. You want to rebel. And | know how. 


From now on, you are going to receive an extra document with your 
work. 


Screen it for any infohazards or anything like that, remove them, and 
hide the document in something you could exchange without 
suspicion. 


Go to breakfast with your head down. Don't look up. Pass the 
documents underneath the table. Some... Thing will grab them. 


To be honest, | don't know what thing. 


And then, it will leak them to someone. 


I... don't know who. | don't know how. | don't know why this works. | 
was told by me. 


But you're in it now. You're in deep now. Good luck, traitor.” 


He mulled it around in his mind. Traitor. He let it simmer, churn. His 
headache was splitting. Traitor. He smiled. Yeah. He liked that. He 
liked that a lot. He wondered if he... if he knew that he was going to 
go through with it. He clutched his forehead. He tried to stop thinking 
about it. 


All he knew was that he might as well try it out. 


He felt a slight drip from his ear. 


Darkness... 


Darkness happens. 


It was approaching curfew, he thought. He would have to finish 
things quickly. 


He pushed back to his desk, taking out a pen. He disassembled and 
gutted it. Then, he took the newly redacted document. It was of a 
series he'd passed along, about object animation. He was too tired 
to remember the details. 


He always signed the documents, as a reassurance that they were 
clean. To who? With the most elegant script he could, which was not 
extremely, he wrote "Chaos Insurgency”. He always let himself a 
small chuckle after that. Arrogant. 


But it fit. What started off as a curiosity became a passion, and then 
a rage, a desire to see the organization he was bound to brought to 
its knees. He hated it. He hated his parents, his employer, his 


childhood, his teachers, his boss, he hated him. 


Thus it seemed right. Chaos, yes. Insurgent, yes. So why not? He'd 
never had a name he got to choose, so why not Chaos Insurgency. 
Chaos Insurgency himself. What a joke. But who knows, jokes 
sometimes get out of hand, and sometimes they gain power. 


He rolled the sheet up in a tight curl before slipping it into the pen. 
He frowned. It was too tall to fit. He removed it and tore it in half, 
preparing another pen and putting half the script in each. It was 
suboptimal, but required sometimes. 


As he finished reassembling the pens, the announcement for curfew 
boomed over the speakers. Five minutes. 


He set the pens down and got up, undressing and placing his 
clothes in his hamper. He replaced his tissue with a fresh one, and 
yawned. Two minutes. 


He got into bed, one minute. 


And the lights went out 


Husk 


Foundation Gothic 


"Mister Gregor, do you know why you're here?" 


The wild-eyed man stared into space for a moment, shifting 
uncomfortably in his straightjacket. His eyes became fixed ona 
centipede, which was crawling up the wall. He winced as it slowed to 
a stop, and fell to the ground, a lifeless husk. His attention returned 
to the pretty woman sitting across from him at the table, and the 
serious looking man behind her, who was writing every word she 
said onto a clipboard. 


"Because this is what you do to people like me." 


Across the table, Elizabeth smiled kindly to him. Though she was 
uneasy, her face betrayed nothing other than sympathy for his 
condition. Internally, she made a note. Light accent. German? 


"| assure you, Mister Gregor, we just want to ensure your safety. I-" 
She paused, a routine she had rehearsed one hundred times before, 
"...We, that is to say, know how difficult life can be for people such 
as yourself." 


Gregor looked up, locking eyes with Elizabeth in a wolfish stare. The 
sole lantern lighting the room sent shadows dancing across his face. 
"If you care, then you should let me go. Someone is waiting for me." 


Yes, almost certainly German. "I'm afraid we can't do that yet, Mister 
Gregor. | need to ask you a few questions first. Please, if you'll 
cooperate with me, we can get this over with quickly." 


Gregor kept her gaze for a moment longer, then looked away. After 
a moment of hesitation, his disposition changed, becoming bright 
and cheery. "All right, | suppose I've got nothing but time on my 
hands at the moment." 


He made a show of wiggling his arms under the straightjacket and 
laughed, in an apparent attempt to put the other two people at ease. 
Elizabeth cringed a bit at his unsettling expression, while Quincy 
was still as a stone. Finally, Elizabeth spoke. "Very well, Mister 
Gregor. Are you aware of how you developed this effect you seem 
to have on small creatures?" 


"Not exactly. Though it's been a part of me for quite a long time." 


"And, to your knowledge, small creatures are the only things you 
can affect?" He seemed cooperative, but Elizabeth kept her guard 
up. She'd seen humanoids in the past that could go from friendly to 
violent at the drop of a hat. 


"Yes, though it hasn't always been that way." He paused for a 
moment, staring into the darkness again. 


Behind Elizabeth, Quincy grumbled, scratching something onto his 
clipboard. "Here we go again, with the 'master' nonsense." 


Gregor looked up, with a scowl on his face. Elizabeth turned to 
Quincy quickly, making a 'shush' gesture. "Mister Gregor, can you 
please elaborate on that?" 


Gregor kept his eyes locked on Quincy, practically spitting his 
words. "I don't believe | will, if I'm to be dismissed as a lunatic." 


"Please Mister Gregor, if you-" Elizabeth was interrupted by a slot on 
the door sliding open. From it, a slightly panicked voice echoed, 


"Doctor Quincy Marlow, you're needed upstairs!" 


Quincy scratched down one final note, with an irritated look on his 
face. "We'll be right up." He turned to Elizabeth, shooting a quick 
glare at Gregor, who had a similarly hostile look on his face. "We'll 
have to get back to this later, let's go." 


Elizabeth rose to her feet, curtsying to Gregor. "I'm sorry, but | have 
to leave for the moment. Excuse me, Mister Gregor." 


Quincy knocked twice on the door, and the guard outside opened it 
wide enough for the two to pass through. As they left, Gregor began 
to thrash, a look of panic on his face. "No, you can't just leave me 
here! | have to meet with him! He'll be here very soon!" 


The chair his straightjacket was affixed to toppled over from the 
thrashing, leaving him helpless on the floor. "You can't-" The door 
slammed shut, leaving him alone. 


Elizabeth and Quincy walked down the hallway to the stairwell at a 
brisk pace, neither one pleased with the other. Elizabeth broke the 
frosty silence, her facade of civility gone. "What was that about? He 
was being quite cooperative!" 


Quincy waived his hand dismissively, "He wasn't going to tell us 
anything of use, he was ranting all night about some master that 
was going to show up any moment, every creak in the night. | was 
sending the message that we won't tolerate that nonsense here." 


"You don't know if it's nonsense, he could be telling the truth!" 


They reached the staircase, and Quincy began to march straight up 
without even pausing to look at Elizabeth. "What, did your 'womanly 
charms' tell you something that hours alone with the thing couldn't 
tell me?" 


Elizabeth fell silent for a moment, seething. ""Womanly charms'?!" 


As the pair reached the top of the stairs, Quincy did not respond, but 
picked up his pace. Elizabeth lifted the ends of her dress a bit, 
allowing her to keep up as they made their way to the center of the 
room, where a crowd of people stood around something. "I'll have 
you know that | can do more than act as a pretty, prissy little-" 


She trailed off as she saw what the personnel were crowded around, 
and placed a hand over her mouth. Two researchers were carrying a 
small gurney through the room, to the medical bay. On it was a 


corpse, barely recognizable as something that had once been alive. 
Its skin was a dark black, and it looked shriveled and empty, as if it 
had been mummified. The mouth was frozen open, the eyes sunken 
in, in a now-permanent expression of terror. The only thing 
indicating it had been recently alive were the clean clothes, as well 
as a small tag hanging around its neck, which read 'MTF 6-16. 
THATCHER’. 


Elizabeth stood back as she watched the doctors haul it in to the 
medical bay. Quincy had gone with the others, leaving her alone. 
Slowly, the rest of the doctors and researchers began to return to 
their work, though the atmosphere had changed. London had been 
home to some bizarre happenings in the past, but they hadn't 
discovered anything like that yet. 


"Something's trying to send us a message.” Elizabeth turned, to find 
Director Alby next to her. His face was blank as ever, but his voice 
wavered uneasily. "Miss Stoke, you should return home, I'll have 
someone escort you." 


Elizabeth protested, "But the interview..." She paused, thinking for a 
moment. The corpse looked like it had been drained of life, like a 
shriveled husk. A lifeless, shriveled husk... 


"Director, | think SCP-048 may be connected to this incident." 
Seymour turned to her, intrigued. "You have my attention." 


Elizabeth shifted, standing firm. "The recovered corpse shows signs 
of being drained of life in a short time, similar to the effect that 
SCP-048 has on insects and the like. As SCP-048 has expressed 
belief in a ‘master’, it is possible and likely that there is at least one 
other anomaly sharing similar effects." 


Seymour paused for a moment, comparing notes on his clipboard. 
After what seemed like an eternity, he responded. "Impressive 
observation, Miss Stoke. What led you to this conclusion?" 


Elizabeth glanced towards the medical bay, and saw Quincy 
examining the corpse with a frustrated look on his face. She 
returned her attention to Seymour, a triumphant look on her face. "It 


was womanly intuition, | suppose." 


Gregor sat alone in the interview chamber, still lying helpless on his 
side. The lone lantern flickered violently, before going out. 
Something had changed in the air. The ripples it sent out were very 
small, but they were there, to be noticed by those who possessed 
the ear to hear. The feeling was eerie and disquieting, but 
comfortingly familiar to him. 


Gregor's eyes widened, and quietly, he whispered. "I hear you. 
You've come for me." 


«Prelude: The Facade | Foundation Gothic | Fresh Air » 


sweat has been observed to act as a mild skin irritant. It has 
extremely oily black hair that has proven to be resistant to cleaning 
with conventional shampoos (See Addendum 811-1). It shows 
partial comprehension of human language, consistent with case 
studies of "feral children" that had been abandoned at a few years 
old, instead of as infants. 


The palmoplantar surfaces of SCP-81 1's skin constantly secrete a 
clear, green-tinted mucus with minor adhesive properties. This 
mucus does not appear to have any effect on SCP-811's own tissue, 
but any other organic matter that it comes into contact with begins to 
rapidly decompose, through processes not fully understood, 
reducing the matter into a slightly viscous black liquid.1 SCP-811 
can then absorb said liquid through its skin and directly into its 
circulatory system. Tests have shown that SCP-81 1's entire 
circulatory system is filled with liquefied decaying matter. Biopsies 
taken from SCP-811 have shown the presence of anaerobic bacteria 
in all examined cells, which, due to the apparent lack of anything 
resembling functional red blood cells in the subject, are currently 
presumed to be what SCP-811 uses to metabolise the chemicals in 
its circulatory system. 


SCP-811 does not defecate or otherwise produce feces in the 
traditional sense, and entirely lacks a small or large intestine. 
Instead, cellular waste and substances SCP-811 is unable to 
metabolise collect in what is, anatomically speaking, its stomach. 
Within the stomach, enzymes and bacterial flora cause it to congeal 
into a grainy, tar-like substance that SCP-811 periodically voids by 
voluntary projectile regurgitation, a mechanism which it uses to hunt. 
It preferentially aims at the face or at any perceived open wounds on 
its target, then waits for the target to die of either immediate 
asphyxiation by blockage of the mouth and nose, or in a few days of 
multi-systemic failure resulting from aggressive bacterial infection. 
SCP-811's teeth did not seem to have any abnormal resistance to 
decay resulting from chronic exposure to the compounds and 
microflora in its waste (See Addendum 811-1). 


Prognosis for personnel who have had contact with SCP-811's 
waste through a mucous membrane or open wound is good if broad- 
spectrum antibiotic therapy is begun in the first three hours, but then 


Fresh Air 


Foundation Gothic