Thunder, Part 2
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[START WITH AN SCP-1985 SCENE. …Do we start with an Interlude: Welcome to the Foundation?]
[…Is that actually what we start with? Iris comes before Thunder Part 1?]

After the SCP-1985 demo, Agent Irons met with Dr. Blaire Roth for another briefing. They greeted each other with enthusiasm, and reminisced about old times ("like that time you were a cat?" "Clef did what to some waffles?") before getting down to the business of the reams of paperwork in front of them. Both were of the opinion that paperwork was better done with companionship.

"So this is it, huh?" Irons asked. "They're really letting Alpha-9 out the gate."

Roth nodded. "They're finalizing the official starting roster. Iris. 1985—Jackie, I guess we can call her now. Asset Samekh—meaning Agent Adams in her super suit. Cain. A few others under consideration, including Kain—meaning Dr. Crow. Before now, only Iris was officially part of Alpha-9… so that's where we come in. Asset intake."

"Filling out a thousand forms," Irons said. "The glamorous life of a Foundation agent. You know, I thought we'd be assigned to Director Light, but it looks like she's getting help from the Site-19 director. Tilda David Moose."

Roth turned over another piece of paper. "I've worked with Moose off and on for years. I would hope I know her name."

Irons laughed. "Sorry. Just a hell of a name, 'Moose'." He flipped through some more forms, seeing what fresh boredom awaited him. "Moose. Light. Gears. Bright. Lament. Clef. I can’t take these names seriously sometimes. Why is it still Foundation policy to give half their highly ranked staff members these ridiculous fucking code-names?"

"Sophia Light isn't too ridiculous."

"Not unless you know something about Gnosticism," Irons said. "But seriously, 'Moose'?"

Roth grimaced. "I asked her once if the name was real. She told me that the surname Moose has a long and distinguished history, originating from Southern Germany and dating back to a John Moose who landed in Maryland in the 1600s. She told me there were a large number of Dr. Mooses in the world, and I could look it up if I wanted to."

"And did you?"

"I did. I found a bunch of dentists, actually."

"But is it her real actual name? I mean, Tilda David Moose."

"I have no earthly clue."

Irons scrutinized the director’s file photo. "Tilda. David. You know, she kind of looks like them."

"Like who?"

"Tilda Swinton, David Bowie… Don't tell me you never thought of it. She’s got that same kind of androgyny thing going on. So that can’t be her real name, right? It’s so… on the nose."

"I can’t say if even she remembers. She’s got a lot of damage. You know. Up here." Roth tapped the side of her head. "And that’s from before the Foundation went and did their usual. Self-inflicted."

"She gave herself brain damage?"

"The story goes she was a member of the Serpent’s Hand. Turned traitor. She was involved in a lot of weirdness, so they say. Naturally, all details are classified."

"And she gave herself brain damage."

"So the rumors say."

Irons shook his head. "At least Kondraki wouldn't have given himself brain damage. And they went and made her director of Site-19?"

Roth shrugged again. "I was there back when they promoted her. She was Strelnikov's pick when he retired. I can’t say they had many better choices."

"High praise."

"She’s been good at her job. There have been a few… incidents, but she handles things well. All things considered."

Irons smiled. "You like her."

"I like everyone I’m assigned to," Roth said. "It’s good for business."

"Even if they’re raging incompetents?"

"She’s not a raging incompetent."

"Another ringing endorsement."

"You know what I mean."

"Well then," Irons said. "If we’re gonna be assigned to her, I hope she doesn’t fuck all this up."

Roth didn't look too concerned. "If she does, we'll fix it. I've fixed worse." She looked up, contemplatively. "Maybe then they'll let me retire."


"I don’t understand this," Moose said.

The Director of Site-19 knew she fit into the small lab room awkwardly, sitting in a borrowed chair, lanky arms and legs splayed out at odd angles. Some part of her was always in motion: a tapping foot, a pencil rolling between fingers.

Moose typically suppressed her fidgeting, the outward signs of her anxiety. This increased her stress level, certainly, but it was worthwhile, fitting into the Foundation hierarchy.

But, for better or for worse, she knew that the other person in the room didn't care about such thing. He was a picture of stillness. Dr. Gears.

"The O5's people dumped these records on my doorstep," Moose continued. "For example, I now know that you personally killed Dr. Kondraki."

Gears was impassive as always. "That is correct."

"I guess I do get that. The order came from the Council, and Kondraki was dangerous. A loose end. We were still rebuilding Site-19, and the Council was afraid he'd start an Insurgency… he'd killed so many people. I see why you'd agree to kill Kondraki."

Gears was silent, the way he was sometimes when you hit on certain subjects he didn't want to talk about. Moose had come to understand that as a peculiar way of showing emotion. Or perhaps covering for a void where emotion should be.

"It's the rest of this I don't understand," Moose said. "The old decommissioning logs. All the… over-the-top projects. You were involved in many of them. Most of them. You're on the paperwork, signing off equipment transfers. Allocating requested resources. Advising. Assisting. Dozens of projects that can only be charitably described as clownish."

Gears continued to be silent, watching her attentively, as if politely waiting for her to come to a point.

"Why?" Moose asked. "These projects were so dangerous. So many people died. I know you hate that. You don't like foolishness. Or waste. Why'd you help?"

Gears looked almost contemplative. Or perhaps she was, again, imagining things. "This is a situation which you are familiar with, Director. It was necessary that I assess the situation that we actually had, not a situation which would have been ideal. The directives of our superiors determined the actions and advice which I took."

"So… if one of your superiors, or the O5 Council, said a project or goal, was acceptable… Then, whether or not they were right, you would act and make decisions as if it really were acceptable."

"That is a fair assessment."

"And if you didn’t agree with the projects? Or the goals?"

"It has not been my role to make those decisions," Gears said. "However, when asked for my assessment of particular procedures, I did enter all objections I had regarding their efficacy or level of appropriateness."

Moose imagined for a moment that he was being defensive. Of course, he'd answered in the same tone that he always did, with the same inflections, with the same near-complete lack of body language.

"Why did you contradict my assessment of 1985?" Moose asked.

"Your assessment was made based on parameters that differed from those we were provided," Gears said. "The assessment I made was based on the original parameters."

"What if you are asked to help Alpha-9 with a project that you might judge to be… seriously ill-advised?"

"I will function as I always do. I will operate according to the parameters I am given."

"Does this apply to Mobile Task Force Alpha-9?"

Gears paused. Perhaps for effect, perhaps merely to gather more thoughts. "You are being placed in a command role for Mobile Task Force Alpha-9," he said. "As such, my suggestion is to ensure that the parameters you give me are acceptable."


The evening after the interview, Irons found an influx of files in his inbox. Apparently his special access program via Alpha-9 was being updated. A lot of valuable info, here. Time to sort.

He skimmed a few technical reports before finding an interview transcript dated from this morning. Oh, good. A chance to get to know SCP-1985 before risking that bad first impression.

And the subject matter seemed extremely relevant to him. Kain Pathos Crow.

SCP-1985: Well, you know my story already, right?

Interviewer: Yes. This is for a different audience. Since you've been approved for inclusion in Alpha-9, we want to provide this interview for associated personnel to read. And it would also benefit our assessments to hear your current perspectives.

SCP-1985: Okay, definitely. [Pause] How much should I repeat? I don't know what sort of clearance this interview will get.

Interviewer: Don't worry about it. We'll simply redact anything that needs redaction, depending on the reader's clearance level.

SCP-1985: Like ███ ██████████ ██ ██ ███?

Interviewer: [Pause] Yes. Exactly like that.

SCP-1985: [Laughs] Well, where should I start?

Well, she had a sense of humor. Irons already liked her better than most of the people he'd recently met working for the Foundation.

Interviewer: What is your opinion on potentially working with Mobile Task Force Alpha-9?

SCP-1985: Oh, I’m excited. Are you kidding me? At the very least I’m excited to work with Kain. In this timeline, he’s always been shut away. I know he’s not my Kain, but still… I'd love to at least meet him. Again.

Interviewer: So you have a favorable assessment of Professor Crow.

SCP-1985: He was one of the good ones. A freakin’ dog, but he was more human than most everyone else. I know he didn’t start out that way. I had access to ███████’s files before they shut down, and he was one cold bastard, the way he used those subjects to █████ ███. But ███… changed him. I think they said ██████ was like his ████████. Having a ████████ always changes you. That’s what my mom always said anyway, hey.

Interviewer: We'll have to censor some of that for many of the recipients of this interview, but keep going.

Irons knew exactly what she was talking about, exactly what was behind some of those censor bars. Olympia.

SCP-1985: Alright. Yeah, I’m pretty biased about Professor Crow. I mean, the guy saved my life. I had terminal cancer, you know? Technically, Professor Crow wasn’t supposed to accept subjects like me into the Rhodes program. Healthy subjects only, not all of ‘em volunteers — hey, I’m not saying that iteration of the Foundation was better, or anything. ███████ sure wasn’t made out of volunteers in that timeline any more than this one.

It really hadn't been.

Interviewer: You signed up for the Rhodes Project voluntarily, in your timeline?

SCP-1985: Yeah, I was a volunteer, which was a double whammy. You can discard D-Class, but I wasn’t Class D. Means it would look bad if they had to trash a volunteer. And the project didn’t include a cancer cure. We didn’t have magic cancer cures in my home timeline, either. So it was pretty realistic to think that even if I was a successful subject, I’d just keel over and die from the cancer in a year or two anyway, and there’s all that work down the drain. I knew all this, and I didn’t expect to be accepted into the project. I applied anyway because why not, right? Terminal cancer, after all. But Professor Crow liked me for whatever reason. Said I had spirit. He said he wanted to save me.

Interviewer: And he did, yes?

SCP-1985: He caught hell for bringing me onto the project, but he did it anyway. He found a way to work with my cancer. I never understood exactly what he did, so I might be messing this up, but… He integrated the devices into the cancer. A lot of the devices were biological in nature, so that was apparently easier than it sounds? But still very, very difficult. I almost died. But I didn’t die, and now I’m quasi-immortal.

Interviewer: Right.

SCP-1985: Professor Crow argued afterward that it was my cancer that made me the most successful Rhodes product. I’m not sure if he was bullshitting or not, but hey. I wasn’t not about to argue.

She went on like that for a few more paragraphs, with more gushing about Kain. Irons started skimming.

That was a feature of voluntarily working for the Foundation and keeping your sanity: excusing the faults of the researchers running it. Sometimes monstrous faults. You could even find people talking up Kondraki like he was a good person, for fuck's sake.

He wondered what the point was where it had really gone all wrong. His brothers and sisters had a lot of disagreement on that point.

He knew what stood out in his memory. Reading old incident logs. Kondraki had literally destroyed the Foundation's largest site, and his friends in the hierarchy of the Foundation mostly joked about it. He remembered what Agatha Rights had said, even though she'd later said she regretted it: Shame about Site-19. At least it went out in a blaze of badassery.

Even when they'd rebuilt Site-19, "bigger and better", it had never been the same. There were still fires burning, they said, in the sealed-off areas that no one was allowed to see.

And the people who Kondraki killed? They were dead and never coming back.

Now they were making Omega-7 part two… without General Bowe, or any of the people who'd kept in check at first, who'd made it effective, in service of the United States and the Foundation alike…

Irons didn't want to dwell on that right now. In the next section, 1985 was talking about her first arrival in this timeline.

SCP-1985: Okay. Well… you know… When I first arrived here, I actually thought this was a Bad Future. Like there had to be some mistake. There's never been any issue with sending me forward in time when I hop timelines, so I was worried.

Interviewer: Go on.

SCP-1985: Sure, things didn't look very futuristic. So… not necessarily a Bad Future in the technical sense. See, I was afraid that the world had ended and the Foundation did something to make everyone forget again. Including themselves. For example, SCP-2000. I didn't realize that the timeline had been reset right out from under me.

Interviewer: You said you thought it was a "Bad Future". Why?

Irons had to chuckle. Why, indeed?

SCP-1985: Well, you know this already. The first thing the Foundation did, once the researchers discovered what I could do—with my full cooperation—they tortured me.

Interviewer: Yes. A regrettable mistake.

SCP-1985: Yeah, uh, no shit. [Laughs] But yeah, that didn’t happen in my timeline. No torture. Yes, there was a lot of deliberate emotional stressing, but that was voluntary. Part of what I signed up for. No one really signs up for torture. [Laughs]

Irons eyed the word "Laughs". Foundation transcriptions left a lot to be desired. 1985 could be either practically high-fiving her former torturers, or awkwardly scrambling to cover feelings of dissent. You just never knew, and that was the awful thing.

Interviewer: This was before their superiors stepped in, of course.

SCP-1985: Don't get me wrong, I really like my new team. I love the work I'm doing. I've been able to do the job I signed up for in my original timeline, plus more. And like I said, I'm really excited to work with Alpha-9. I think—

She rapidly devolved into gushing again. Irons sighed, and started skimming again.

He started reading again in one of the more heavily censored areas. They seemed to be talking about something relevant again. Olympia, maybe.

Interviewer: What happened to ███████ in your origin timeline?

SCP-1985: You mean the ███████ Project, or ███████ Zero? ██████?

Interviewer: Either.

SCP-1985: Heh, okay. I guess that doesn’t really matter, because it’s the same answer! I don’t really know. Only the records up to the creation of ███████ Zero were ever de-classified to the level that I could read them. They did have me research K-Class scenarios caused by ███████, but they were so ridiculously varied that I couldn’t extrapolate backwards. Lot of splintering possibilities, there.

"Zero." The Foundation overused single-number code words (among other tropes). Supposedly there were security reasons, though Irons was suspicious.

Zero often meant a prototype. It could also mean "origination". Both contexts could fit here. Of course, it could be disinformation, which by no means was always limited to coy redactions.

Interviewer: Were you able to extrapolate anything in particular?

SCP-1985: I got the idea that something happened to ███. Something really bad, bad enough that even though my timeline didn’t play out the same as this one, they still shut ███████ down for good. Neither Kain nor anyone else ever talked about it. Or about what they did with ███ after. There were rumors…

Interviewer: Rumors?

SCP-1985: Yeah… I mean, I was never sure. A few bits of data I picked up on excursions maybe backed this up, but I was never sure. But the rumor was, after the original project was shut down, ███ got “freeze-dried.”

Interviewer: Freeze-dried?

Well, that was a euphemism if Irons had ever heard one.

SCP-1985: Yeah. Not sure how literal that was, but the idea was, they decided to recycle ███ for… reasons I’m not clear on. They found a way to turn ███ body into a … biological interface, using Tangent technology. That psychologically compatible operatives could wear, and it’d grant them superhuman abilities. Some people were excited about the concept in a really gross way. I mean, ██████ was a person—which was also the problem. It’s always hard to control people. But an interface… so long as you have another psychologically compatible operative waiting in line to wear it…

Interviewer: Psychologically compatible?

SCP-1985: Someone with no memory of the past. No personal connections to get in the way of the mind-merge interface.

Irons was becoming pretty curious. Why was this section included in the interview at all? It didn't sound like they were still talking about Olympia. The interviewer had specifically brought this up as a topic, but it didn't sound like it had any relevance to the current or possible members of Alpha-9 that he knew of.

Was this something he didn't know about, regarding Alpha-9? Or just something relevant only to Kain and his newfound enablers?

Interviewer: You’re a person, yes? How did that philosophy apply to you?

SCP-1985: They only made me a person because they had no choice—Kain didn’t think like that, but his bosses did, and that’s what mattered. But no one could find a way to make the teleportation and transformation stuff work without using a human. Like me. They couldn’t freeze-dry me even if Kain wanted to, which he didn't. And I mean… I wasn't a super-soldier, not really. I was an exploration device. I mean, I must seem like a super-soldier in this timeline, but in that timeline they could create armies that would put Able to shame. They only built my other body this strong so I could survive in certain K-Class scenarios for more than a few seconds.

Interviewer: Go on?

SCP-1985: That's actually the only thing I'm really worried about here. With Alpha-9. God knows I’ve had training, but it's different to keep other people alive in the middle of a fight, you know? …Alright, that was a bad explanation. I mean I’m not trained to lead an assault as part of a group. Tech was more advanced in my timeline, you know? I was supposed to have operatives sent with me who could be the tanks, and I’d play the anchor. Here, I’m the tank, too.

Interviewer: How much of a problem do you think that will be for you?

SCP-1985: Well, you know. ██ ██ ██ ██ ███ ███████ ███ ███ ██ ████ ██ ███, I’m immortal, so I’m not worried about me. I’m more worried about everyone else. I had to adapt before, I’ll adapt again.

Irons stared at the redactions. Maybe something relating to the "kill switch" the Overseers had so glibly discussed? Probably.

He read onwards. The rest of the interview was either more gushing about Foundation members working with 1985, or censored to the point of uselessness.

Still, this was a good start. All he needed to do was get a little closer. Just a little closer…