Isabel opened her eyes. Her sunglasses had flown off in the chaos. 
“Are you guys okay?” 

“Yes,” Emma said. 

Jeremy barked the affirmative. 


She looked beside her to see that Emma was still in her seat. 
Jeremy had rolled onto the floor. True to their word, neither of them 
were hurt. 


Isabel sighed in relief, and stepped out of the Wondermobile. Emma 
and Jeremy followed. 


The creature that had crashed in front of them was massive. More of 
a smooth, grey hill, big enough that its head and upper torso 
stretched across the whole of the road, with the back legs and tail 
draping down the slope. It rested on its side, rising up at least twice 
Isabel's height and exposing its white underbelly. A broad, wedge- 
shaped head, encrusted with barnacles. Gigantic serrated claws. 
The stench of salt. 


It didn’t move. Isabel tiptoed up to it, straining to hear or see some 
sign of breath. There was none. 


“| think it's dead, ma’am.” 


Isabel nodded, and said nothing. The words got bunched up in her 
throat. She was aware of death, as a concept: sometimes people 
and animals stopped moving and looked like they were sleeping, but 
they weren't actually asleep, and they weren’t going to wake up. But 
this was so sudden it had been alive when it jumped onto the road, 
and now it...wasn’t. Things weren’t supposed to die like that. Its 
eyes weren't closed. Its eyes should have been closed, but Isabel 
could just see the creature’s pale yellow eye, staring blankly out at 


nothing. 


A sickly acid-green feeling welled up inside Isabel’s stomach. She 
didn’t know its name, but she knew its flavor. Impressions of 
memories, dredged up from subconscious seafloors. Old 
impressions of presence, of something that once was, and the 
empty space that now took its place. Buried wrongs and hidden loss. 


Isabel found herself shaken by this, and the feeling remained. She 
tried shrugging it off, and it did not budge. The creature was dead. It 
had died here on the road. The road was dangerous, then, and the 
Factory even more so. 


Isabel turned to Emma. 

“We should keep going.” 

“That’s going to be difficult.” 

“We can get around it. Let’s just go...” 


A great gurgling noise erupted from behind them. From the 
creature’s body. Emma ran over, grabbed Isabel, and hoisted her 
above her head. 


“I’ve got you, ma’am,” Emma said as if this was the most normal 
thing in the world. Isabel said something that sounded like “eeeep”. 


The creature’s belly split open. A thick wave of putrid brown fluid 
gushed out, flecked with crusting black foam and chunks of 
unidentifiable semisolid sludge. Isabel, being held above Emma’s 
head, was kept safe from the tide of sludge. Emma, standing 
underneath Isabel, was not. 

The air was ripe with methane and fermenting sewage. Steam 
billowed out from the burst innards. The flow slowed, and stopped. 


Wordlessly, Emma walked over to a bare spot of road and set Isabel 
down. Behind her, Jeremy pulled himself out of the sludge and 
began shaking the gore off of him. 


“Thanks, Emma.” 


“lam here to help.” Everything south of her collarbone was an 
unpleasant shade of brownish blackish reddish puke. Flecks 
spattered her glasses. She looked completely unflustered, as if she 
was Standing in line at the grocery store or some similar task. 


“Are you doing all right, ma’am?” she asked. 
“I’m fine. Just a bit...” 

A pause. 

“Do you need a hug, ma’am?” 


Isabel looked at her gore-stained assistant for a moment. Emma 
was not predisposed to smiling, but there was nonetheless a sort of 
reassurance to be found in her face. Stability and support. 


Yes, a hug would be nice, Isabel decided. 


It was a very awkward hug, given the difference in height between 
the two, but awkward hugs were okay sometimes, when a hug was 
really needed. 


“Thanks, Emma.” 
“It’s what I’m here for.” 


Isabel righted herself, her sweater now thoroughly filthy. Jeremy 
wandered over, with a very plain “Hugs? | love hugs!” expression. 


“Okay, Jeremy, hug for you too.” Isabel grabbed her still-dirty corgi 
and hugged him. “We're going to need to get you a bath. And get 
me a bath.” 


“There should be soap in the back of the Wondermobi...oh no." 


Something was emerging from the carcass on the road. Something 
like a man, with rotten brown skin and stringy hair, and wide flaps of 
loose skin that hung almost like tattered clothing. It stumbled out, 
basalt cracking audibly under its feet. It moaned, shielding its eyes 
from the suns. 


“Ma’am...| am going to have to ask you to run,” Emma said. 
“What is that thing?” 


“Ma’am, you need to run. Now. Pick a direction and don’t stop. Don't 
let them touch you.” 


“What? Emma, I’m not just...” 


Two sunken sockets, now adjusted to the light, came to rest on the 
two women and one dog. 


“Isabel. You need to go. Now.” The force of her delivery softened 
back into her normal, neutral tone. “You'll be okay. I'll catch up with 
you.” 


Isabel swallowed nervously, and nodded. She couldn't really think of 
anything to say. With Jeremy in her arms, she ran. Ran off the road, 
down the hill, through the trees, and away. 


Emma, running at the Rotting Man in nothing more than a casual 
jog, jumped up and landed a kick directly on its neck. The Rotting 
Man dropped to the ground. Emma did not. She planted herself on 
its back, swooped her arms under its withered limbs, joined her 
hands behind its neck, and with the full skill of the Viscount Nelson 
impeccably executed, cleanly severed its skull from its vertebrae, 
with the sound of a spoiled grapefruit trod under foot. 


Emma stood up and removed the map from her pocket, its spaghetti 
strands still writhing. She tore it up, and tossed the scraps into the 
alr. 


The sky pulsed in shades out of space-time, and the desert was 
flooded with silence, and the ground crumbled into dust. The Way 
began to curl in upon itself like burnt paper, folding in like origami. 
Blurring at the edges like glasses in the rain. 


More Rotting Ones pulled themselves up to the surface of the road. 
Men, women, children, lured by the smell of their decaying prey. 


Emma stood there, and watched them approach, as the Way 
collapsed around her. 


« Part 1: Assistance for the Boss Lady | Hub | Part 3: 
Adventuring Interlude » 


Footnotes 

1. Or chocolate and strawberry, or chocolate and vanilla, or 
chocolate and literally anything, really. 

2. Cartography is one of Emma Aislethorp-Brown’s secret skills. She 
has not once, in the entirety of her life, asked for directions: She is a 
woman who knows exactly where she is and what she should be 
doing, at all times. 

3. Isabel was still prepared if one of them had been hurt, as she had 
a crate of Boo-Boo-Bye-Bye Bandages™ in the back. They had 
rocket ships on them, because bandages with rocket ships are 
objectively better than bandages without rocket ships. 


Adventuring Interlude 


During a particular road trip adventure... 


A new toy rolled off the production line at the Wondertainment toy 
factory. It was a cube. The cube was grey, and consisted of six 
sides, none of which were in any way differentiated from any of the 
other five; All six sides were completely equal in their grayness and 
flatness. The edges and corners were rounded, so as to remove all 
threatening influences from the cube and to provide a safe, feelings- 
appropriate environment. In addition, the cube was designed so that 
it was incapable of interacting with any other cubes, so as not to 
form unbalanced societal hierarchies such as stacks, rows, or piles. 
While a green dot had been included on one of the sides in the 
prototype, this was found to be offensive to certain obscure minority 
groups, and was subsequently removed. Colored shapes were 
written off entirely after this point. 


The Executive Board nodded in approval of the focus group results, 
in one slow, knowing movement. A new age for Wondertainment 
toys, they thought as one. 


Wheezing admissions of thanks rose from the board to the cube’s 
designer; a little old lady who stood at the far end of the table. A 
special guest to the Workshops of Wonder. 


An outside adviser. 


Nowhere 


A tide of rotting flesh swept up around Emma Aislethorp-Brown, 
throwing itself at the leviathan in an orgy of scrabbling fingers, and 
gnashing jaws. She was ignored. The Rotting Ones found their prey 
by the sound of its heartbeat, by the heat in its blood, by the stench 
of the slow decay of life. 


Emma had a heart, but it was purely decorative. She watched the 
Rotting Ones gorge themselves on the Leviathan's corpse. A few 
more had crawled out of the monster's burst stomach, shambling 
around, half-melted by digestive juices and torn by teeth. 


The rushing sound of contracting time-space rose to a deafening 
cacophony midway between silence and absence that overpowered 
the snarling, slobbering horde. It all fell in upon itself at once, 
blinked, and went black. Like a station switched off. 


And then Nothing. 


Emma floated in-between Here and There. Somewhere around her", 
the collapsed Way existed in a negative state. An inside-out space 
leading nowhere, arriving nowhere. The Rotting Ones would still be 
feasting, frozen in a moment, but they could not emerge, lest 
someone else flipped the negative space right side out again and 
stabilized it. With the map gone, and no place in the overarching 
directive to permit her, Emma had neither the inclination nor ability 
to do so. An uncommon occurrence. 


Emma drifted, and while drifting, she thought. She didn’t have much 
else to do. The plan reorganized itself, the underlying directives 
planted new supporting actions. Redundancies merged together, 
events shuffled themselves into an abbreviated timeline. 
Contingencies were pruned and alternatives sprouted anew. 
Variables arose. The specter of attention drifted onto the stage 
where probability danced the tango on the back of turtles all the way 
down. 


Unwelcome, but not unplanned for. Even this far out, a Way 
collapsing, especially one that had been breached by a Leviathan, 
would attract attention. Though not immediately. There was still time 
for things to work out, still time to adapt. 


From this side. As for Isabel...she was on her own, for the time 
being. A contingency triggered long before Emma had originally 
hoped. She had shaped events as best as she could for the child, 
but uneasiness still settled like a patina on her mind. Isabel was 
outside her protection. Unsupported. Prepared for, but nonetheless 
unwelcome. Why delegate to others what you can do better 


yourself? Why leave a vulnerability open? 


Alas, she couldn’t be in more than one place and the same time. All 
the threads she had woven would now be on their own. Drifting as 
she was. 


A light opened upon the Nothing. A gaping maw of burning white, 
circles within circles within circles, twisting and swirling and spiraling 
about, on a field of gunmetal grey. 


Emma looked up into it, and hoped she had chosen the right people 
for the job. 


The Workshops of Wonder 


Mister Merit tugged at his red ascot. A nervous habit of his, 
something to show what his face didn’t. The neatly folded note in his 
pocket itched to be taken out, to be revealed. 


The Doctor had left to go on an adventure, and this was not unusual. 
The Doctor often left, and her adventures were often lengthy, but 
this particular time something was wrong. Somewhere down in his 
gut, Mr. Merit felt that some cosmic tumbler had shifted awry. 


The toy factory was never this busy when the Doctor was gone. 
Now, misters and misses and workbots and roving hordes of 
Jeremies scurried about, as if the Doctor was sitting down in her 
office churning out blueprints until the pen caught on fire.2 The halls 
were clouded with swarms of Memobots, all carrying messages from 
the Executive Board. More messages than ever before, and Mister 
Merit was unsettled by them. The print was too small and the words 
were too big, and they all looked incredibly important, but none of 
them mentioned where the Doctor had gone. Or the Doctor at all. 


What they did mention was that an Outside Adviser had been 
brought in, an adviser that did not sit well with Mr. Merit. 


“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” he asked the little old lady 
standing in front of him. She had little round glasses, and a pink 
shawl over her shoulders, and freshly permed blueish-grey hair, and 


a warm, friendly smile. 


“It's nothing to worry about, dear. The Executive Board invited me in 
as an adviser for the new toy line. You don’t need to worry yourself 
at all.” 


Mr. Merit glanced at the little old lady’s twin bodyguards; two tall 
robots with gleaming chassis and rubber faces to make them look 
like people. They did not look fun. They looked...wrong, to Mister 
Merit. He was used to Wondertainment robots, which had all sorts of 
knobs and dials and doodly-doos and thingamawhaizits and 
doohickeys and various other choking hazards. These looked like 
they were just popped out of the mold and fit together, without so 
much as a kung-fu action grip. 


“| don’t recall the Doctor saying anything about you.” 


“| was brought in after she had left for her trip, though | am looking 
forward to meeting with her when she returns.” 


Mister Merit kept a brave face and nodded. Better to just let her go. 
He didn’t like the way her eyes twinkled, or the look of her robotic 
friends, and the appeal was lessening by the moment. 


“All right then. Enjoy your stay here,” he said with the most genuine 
cheer he could fake. 


“Thank you very much. Now, don't get into any trouble now, dear. 
Wouldn't want you to get involved in any messes while the Doctor is 
away.” 


The little old lady walked off down the hall, her guards clanking 
alongside her. Did she know? Had she seen through the cracks of 
his act? Was she weighing her suspicions now? Or had she not 
picked up on it, and just seen the simple-natured Mister who was a 
bit confused at the change of pace? Mr. Merit had no idea which, but 
he felt himself erring on the side of fear. She was a little old lady. 
Little old ladies were powerful creatures. They could smell fear. And 
secrets. Mr. Merit had both of them in large quantities. The note in 
his pocket felt as heavy and conspicuous as a brick of lead. 


overarching narration being provided by SCP-570-1. 
Analysis: Test was performed as a baseline for 
SCP-570's properties. 


Test B - 6/23/19 


Subject: SCP-570-1, 6 rabbits. 

Procedure: SCP-570-1 was instructed to perform a re- 
enactment of the book "Watership Down". 

Results: SCP-570-1 used no dialog in the play; when 
asked, it claimed that such an action would be 
"unrealistic". 

Analysis: Test was performed to establish baseline for 
SCP-570's effect on animals. 


Test G - 8/19/19 


Subject: SCP-570-1, 7 completely paralyzed D-Class 
personnel 

Procedure: SCP-570-1 was instructed to use the D- 
Class personnel in a play of "Peter Pan". 

Results: Play was performed by SCP-570-1 and the D- 
Class personnel, with SCP-570-1 providing all lines for 
the D-Class personnel in addition to narration. 
SCP-570-1 was noted to have difficulty speaking 
following the test. 

Analysis: Later tests have shown that, once mute, 
SCP-570-1 will simply act out the motions of the 
performance without any dialog. 


Testl- / /19 


Subject: SCP-570, 3 D-Class subjects. 

Procedure: Test was conducted for 6 days, 7 hours. 
Results: SCP-570-1 and the D-Class personnel were 
provided with sustenance; however, all D-Class 
personnel were not able to eat while being controlled by 
SCP-570-1. Following 4 days of testing, all D-Class had 
expired due to malnutrition and exhaustion. SCP-570-1 
continued using the cadavers in the performance, 
providing narration in a manner similar to Test G. After 5