SCP-8273 (2)

Link to article: SCP-8273 (2).
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The following is a transcript of Chief Ibanez's investigation of her family home and other locations in Puerto Extirpado during the period covered above.

[[div class="blockquote"]]

//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Chief Ibanez is walking through the Ibanez shack. Its interior is well-preserved, though the furniture and personal effects have been removed. The shack is extremely uneven in construction, all angles acute or obtuse, and the floor is hard-packed earth. As in the other shacks in Puerto Extirpado, the earth appears to originate from baseline; soil from this dimension, as with the flora, carries a distinct greenish hue absent here.>//

//<Chief Ibanez explores each of the three rooms, which are only differentiated by the corrugated steel walls separating them. She appears to be searching for something, but does not appear to find it.>//

**SCP-8273-3:** What are you doing in here?

//<Chief Ibanez does not look back at the voice, which is that of a female child, but looks out through the nearest window at the trees and the gulch beyond -- a match for the one leading to her grandfather's shack in baseline.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Nothing. Why are you sneaking back there?

**SCP-8273-3:** I wasn't sneaking. But I snuck up on you.

**Chief Ibanez:** I knew you were there.

**SCP-8273-3:** Why didn't you say anything?

//<Chief Ibanez turns to see a scrawny girl of perhaps ten years of age, wearing shredded blue jeans, leather boots, and a worn adult-size hooded sweater which functions as a dress given her height.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Maybe I wanted to see what you'd do if you got the drop on me.

//<SCP-8273-3 laughs.>//

**SCP-8273-3:** You've got a sword. I've just got sticks.

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah? What do you need sticks for?

**SCP-8273-3:** To fight the dragons.

**Chief Ibanez:** Now you have my attention.

//<She leans on the doorframe. SCP-8273-3 is standing in the middle of the largest room in the shack.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What's your name, kid?

**SCP-8273-3:** Saray.

**Chief Ibanez:** Pelaez, I'm guessing.

**Saray:** How'd you know?

**Chief Ibanez:** Got your mom's cheeks. 

**Saray:** What's your name?

**Chief Ibanez:** F--

//<She clears her throat.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Delfina.

**Saray:** That's pretty. This place is boring.

**Chief Ibanez:** You mean the house, or the village?

**Saray:** Yeah.

//<Chief Ibanez nods.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Then why don't you get out of here?

**Saray:** Why don't you?

//<Chief Ibanez sighs.>//

**Saray:** Are you hiding from someone?

**Chief Ibanez:** Not very well, apparently. Are you?

**Saray:** Nope. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Any chance I can get you to hide from me, then?

**Saray:** Nope.

**Chief Ibanez:** Didn't think so.

//<She walks past Saray to stand on the doorstep of the shack, looking out across the bay.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What happened to the big silo? 

//<Saray moves to stand beside her.>//

**Saray:** What big silo? The one over there, where my mom is?

//<She points to the grain silo. Dr. McDoctorate and Ursula can be seen climbing the windmill tower.>//

//<Chief Ibanez points across the bay.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** No, on the other side, up the rise. There used to be a silo...

**Saray:** Oh! I think I know the one you mean. They took it apart a long time ago, before I was born.

**Chief Ibanez:** What did they do with it? 

//<Saray shrugs.>//

**Saray:** Patched up the old houses, I guess. They say they were pretty beat up. 

//<Chief Ibanez nods.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** That's true. What's there now? 

**Saray:** Let's go see. 

//<She reaches out to take Chief Ibanez's hand.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I like to keep my hands free.

**Saray:** Suit yourself.

//<She skips down the path to the main road, stopping briefly to pick up a pitted green stick from the ground, taking a few practice swings.>//

//<Chief Ibanez watches her go.>//

//<She sighs.>//

//<She follows.>//

[[=]]
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[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

**Chief Ibanez:** Oh. 

//<They are now standing on the rise on the eastern side of the bay. Where Chief Ibanez indicated the large grain silo once stood, there is a gently sloping roughly circular depression in the ground. It is filled with tall, haphazardly-arranged wooden markers; each marker bears an inscription, apparently hand-carved and then burned for additional clarity.>//

//<There are several hundred of them.>//

**Saray:** Yeah. 

//<Chief Ibanez walks the gravel path between the markers. She reads the inscriptions, one after another.>//

**Saray:** You know anybody?

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah.

**Saray:** Sorry.

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah.

//<She glances from marker to marker, but does not linger in front of any. The names Eloy, Aurelio, Ernesto, Jorge and Teresa are visible.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I wonder if they're really down there. 

**Saray:** What do you mean? 

//<Chief Ibanez looks away from the markers, then immediately looks back and resumes reading. Saray walks beside her as she speaks.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** They died in Zevala. There wasn't even enough of Eloy left to bury. And I doubt they were hauling corpses while they were hauling a-- 

//<She looks down at the child, who looks up at her with wide eyes.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** ...while they were running for the Facility. Sorry.

//<Saray shrugs.>//

**Saray:** It doesn't matter. 

**Chief Ibanez:** What doesn't matter? 

**Saray:** Whether they're really buried there. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Why not? 

**Saray:** You don't have to be somewhere to... //be// somewhere. You know? 

**Chief Ibanez:** No. 

**Saray:** Okay. 

//<Chief Ibanez resumes scanning the markers. She reaches the back row, where the land starts to rise again to meet the bayside cliff, before she stops.>//

**Saray:** What's wrong?

//<Chief Ibanez does not respond.>//

**Saray:** Delfina?

//<Chief Ibanez looks away.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Nothing. It's fine.

//<Saray approaches the marker Chief Ibanez was inspecting, and mouths the name to herself. She frowns, places a hand on the marker, and walks around behind it aimlessly.>//

//<Chief Ibanez notices the next marker, and pauses.>//

[[include component:image-block
    name=http://scp-sandbox-3.wdfiles.com/local--files/harry-blank-8/Sisters.jpg|
    caption= Puerto Extirpado, graveyard, and SCP-8273-3. |
    width=700px|
    align=center|
]]

**Saray:** What?

**Chief Ibanez:** Let's go.

**Saray:** But--

**Chief Ibanez:** I'm going.

//<She heads for the path.>//

**Saray:** It was for you?

//<Chief Ibanez stops at the edge of the fence, and does not look back or respond.>//

**Saray:** Guess they should pull it up. 

**Chief Ibanez:** It's fine where it is. 

**Saray:** But you're not--

**Chief Ibanez:** It's fine where it is. 

//<She leaves the graveyard. Saray runs after her, catching up easily.>//

[[=]]
@@ @@
[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

//<Villagers are going about their daily tasks, hauling supplies from the caches, discussing matters with the scientists, and pointing out peculiarities in terrain to the agents. Chief Ibanez and Saray head back toward the village core.>//

**Saray:** Are you an adult?

//<Chief Ibanez glares at her.>//

**Saray:** How come you're not much taller than me?

**Chief Ibanez:** Dunno.

**Saray:** Is the rest of your family...?

**Chief Ibanez:** No, just me. Drew the short straw, I guess.

//<Saray laughs.>//

**Saray:** Want to see my fort? 

**Chief Ibanez:** You've got a fort? 

**Saray:** Yep. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Sure. Show me. 

//<Saray leads Chief Ibanez off the beaten path, to where a round concrete emplacement is crumbling into the lower slopes of the cliff which forms one edge of the Facility's gulch farther west. It is covered in green vines; Saray bounds up the pitted stairs, lifts the vines, and disappears inside.>//

//<Chief Ibanez remains outside, hands on her hips.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I was expecting a tree fort. 

//<Saray's face appears between the vines and the concrete.>//

**Saray:** Mom says we can't climb the trees. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Why not? 

**Saray:** Because the trees eat people.

**Chief Ibanez:** Huh.

**Saray:** Do they eat people where you're from? 

**Chief Ibanez:** No. I don't think so, anyway. Then again, there's probably...

//<She considers.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** No. 

//<She walks up the steps, lifts the vines, and enters Saray's 'fort'. The base of the Chaos Insurgency gun emplacement has crumbled away entirely, and someone has excavated the dirt below to create a sort of cistern. A variety of objects of interest to a child are scattered about. Discarded rebar can be seen, as can the holes widened around where it used to be threaded through the concrete, providing keyhole glimpses of the village.>//

**Saray:** Do you know how to climb? 

//<Chief Ibanez sits cross-legged in the fort. Saray follows suit.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Sure. I lived in a tree for a while. 

**Saray:** Really? Why? 

**Chief Ibanez:** I was spying on some people. 

**Saray:** Like a game? 

**Chief Ibanez:** No.

**Saray:** Were they bad people? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah. 

//<Chief Ibanez reaches up to test the elasticity of the vine ceiling, and grunts.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** This is a pretty cool fort. 

**Saray:**  Right? Mom says it used to be a battery, but I can't see any plugs. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Weird. 

**Saray:** All the lights and stuff comes from batteries. I've seen them. They're shiny and small.

**Chief Ibanez:** Uh huh.

**Saray:** You know something you're not saying. 

**Chief Ibanez:** How'd you figure that?

**Saray:** You're like mom and dad. You're talking the way they talk when they don't want to say anything.

**Chief Ibanez:** Mmm.

**Saray:** Just like that. 

**Chief Ibanez:** You want to know something about your fort, Saray?

**Saray:** Sure.

//<Chief Ibanez lifts the vines and points.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** One time, I ran up that road, real fast, about where that rock is now, and I jumped, and it took me all the way from there to all the way up here. And there was a man up here, turning a big, big gun. He was going to shoot down some planes up in the sky. 

**Saray:** What's a plane?

//<Chief Ibanez pauses.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Like a big metal bird you can ride. 

**Saray:** There's birds you can ride around here. But mom says I can't.

**Chief Ibanez:** Let me guess. They eat people? 

**Saray:** Yeah. What did you do about the man? 

**Chief Ibanez:** His gun had a little hole at the bottom, for putting in the big bullets. It had a thick iron door on it. I put his head in the hole, and then I shut the door. 

**Saray:** All the way? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Close enough.

**Saray:** Wow. 

**Chief Ibanez:** That doesn't freak you out? 

**Saray:** I guess he deserved it. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah, he did. 

**Saray:** So that's alright then.

//<Saray picks up a carved wooden model of a cargo ship, and sails it lazily through the air.>//

//<She glances at Chief Ibanez, and frowns.>//

**Saray:** What's wrong? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Nothing's wrong. 

**Saray:** You're doing it again. Not talking.

**Chief Ibanez:** I don't like to talk.

//<Chief Ibanez exhales loudly. Saray jumps.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Okay, actually. Maybe you're freaking me out a little bit, kid.

**Saray:** Why? 

**Chief Ibanez:** You look like you weigh about twenty pounds soaking wet, and you didn't even blink when I told you I stuck a guy's head in the breech of a mortar in the middle of your fort one time. Tough as nails, aren't you? 

//<Saray shrugs.>//

**Saray:** We have to be tough around here. It's a tough place.

//<She flexes the muscles of her right arm -- entirely obscured beneath the thick sweater -- and growls menacingly.>//

//<Chief Ibanez looks away.>//

**Saray:** What?

**Chief Ibanez:** You remind me of somebody. 

**Saray:** You too.

//<They sit in silence for a while. Chief Ibanez eventually looks back at Saray, and then at the toy ship. It resembles the// Northern Reach //in many respects.>//

**Saray:** Are you going to move in with us? 

//<Chief Ibanez sounds surprised.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** No. I've got a job to do.

**Saray:** That's what dad said. Before he left.

**Chief Ibanez:** Left? 

**Saray:** He went to the winter.

**Chief Ibanez:** You mean he died.

**Saray:** No, I told you. He went to the winter.

**Chief Ibanez:** Winter isn't a place. You can't just go to winter. 

**Saray:** We can. You'll see.

**Chief Ibanez:** How do you figure that? 

**Saray:** You're a hero. He's probably in trouble. So you're gonna go find him.

//<Chief Ibanez laughs.>//

**Saray:** What? 

**Chief Ibanez:** I was going to say I'm not a hero, but I've still got this f--

//<Saray grins.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** --this //thing// strapped to my back.

**Saray:** Can I see it?

**Chief Ibanez:** If I say 'yes', you will understand that I do not mean you can //touch// it?

**Saray:** Sure.

**Chief Ibanez:** Okay.

//<She leans forward, to avoid damaging the vine ceiling, and draws SCP-6500-SWORD. It is glimmering faintly.>//

**Saray:** Whoa. Is it magic? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Matter of fact it is.

**Saray:** It glows. 

**Chief Ibanez:** It does.

**Saray:** Like the flowers. 

//<Chief Ibanez glances around the blade at her.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You've got those here too?

**Saray:** My dad used to bring some home.

**Chief Ibanez:** From the Facility?

**Saray:** The what?

**Chief Ibanez:** The big ugly building.

**Saray:** Oh. No. I don't think so?

**Chief Ibanez:** They only grow in the cold.

**Saray:** That's what he said. But they don't grow very well. They're too small, and the wrong color, he said. He didn't know why.

**Chief Ibanez:** He tried to grow them here?

**Saray:** That's what he said.

**Chief Ibanez:** Hmm.

**Saray:** I don't even know what he wants them for. He used to give them to me and my sister. 

**Chief Ibanez:** What for?

**Saray:** To put in our hair. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Who do I remind you of? 

**Saray:** Who do I remind //you// of? 

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

Shortly after the noonday meals, Chief Ibanez confronted Ursula Pelaez in the latter's home. A transcript of their conversation is appended below.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Ursula is putting away the last of the dishes as Chief Ibanez storms in. Her finger is raised before she even enters the room.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You. And my dad.

//<Ursula closes the upper cabinet, though there are still dishes in the sink, and sits down at the kitchen table. She gestures for Chief Ibanez to be seated as well, but the latter remains standing.>//

**Ursula:** Who told you? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Nobody. 

//<She takes a deep breath, and puffs out her cheeks before swallowing it again.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Saray and Pilar?

**Ursula:** That's right.

**Chief Ibanez:** Why didn't you tell me? 

**Ursula:** It's already a lot for you to process.

//Chief Ibanez reaches to pull out a chair. Her fingers wrap around the top, then tighten, and her muscles constrict, and she nearly hurls it against the wall instead. She keeps her grip and stands her ground as she responds.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What's to process? The fact that you all fucked off and left me to die in a burning harbour? The fact that I thought you were all dead for thirty years? 

**Ursula:** We didn't know it was you.

**Chief Ibanez:** Would it have made a difference? 

**Ursula:** Of course it would have. We tried not to leave anyone behind. We searched all the prisons while the bombs were falling. We gathered everyone we could. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Not me. 

**Ursula:** I practically had to drag your father through the doors. He kept saying you were still out there. And his sons. 

**Chief Ibanez:** I //was// still out there. His sons, not so much.

**Ursula:** I can't begin into imagine what you saw. What you had to do.

**Chief Ibanez:** That's too bad, because I'm not in a mood to tell you. Where's winter?

**Ursula:** What? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Saray says her dad went to winter. Where's that? 

//<Ursula considers Chief Ibanez closely, lips pursed.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** It's not a fucking metaphor for death, before you try that. You already misled me.

**Ursula:** I told you he was gone. He //is// gone.

**Chief Ibanez:** Gone //where.//

**Ursula:** Somewhere that isn't safe. A long time ago.

**Chief Ibanez:** Specify.

**Ursula:** About a month. I wasn't misleading you, Delfina. He really is gone.

**Chief Ibanez:** Did anybody tell you what I'm Chief of?

//<Ursula nods.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** This is the only lead left that's worth pursuing. And when there's only one thing to be done, I'm gonna be the one doing it. 

**Ursula:** Leave it alone. It would be a mistake to try and find him. If he hasn't come back yet, he's not going to.

**Chief Ibanez:** I wasn't intending on asking his opinion.

**Ursula:** Your people have enough to be doing right here, right now. Getting that machine ready for another trip. Getting to know your--

**Chief Ibanez:** My people are staying. This is a one-woman job.

**Ursula:** Going alone is dangerous.

//<Chief Ibanez reaches over her shoulder to tap the pommel of SCP-6500-SWORD.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Now spill.

**Pilar:** I'm going with you. 

//<She steps forward. She had been standing past the doorway, obscured by the angle of the sun through the windows.>//

//<Chief Ibanez glances over her shoulder.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I remember this. Sheet metal walls don't block sound for shit.

**Ursula:** You're not going. 

//<Pilar approaches the table, and stands between Chief Ibanez and Ursula.>//

**Pilar:** You said it yourself. She can't go alone.

**Ursula:** She can bring her wizard friends. 

**Chief Ibanez:** No, they need to stay here. You were right, they've got their work and I've got mine. All of mine involves fucking shit up. I'm the only extraneous one when there's nothing needs hunting or killing. 

**Pilar:** Take me, please. 

**Ursula:** This is ridiculous. We don't even know where he is.

**Pilar:** I do. 

//<Ursula starts.>//

**Ursula:** You do not. 

**Pilar:** I do. 

**Ursula:** How? 

**Pilar:** I saw him go. 

//<Ursula stares at her, momentarily speechless.>//

**Ursula:** And you didn't tell me.

**Pilar:** He didn't want me to. 

**Chief Ibanez:** You're sure you can find it? Places change in a long time. 

**Pilar:** Not this place.

**Ursula:** Pilar, no.

**Pilar:** She'll protect me.

**Chief Ibanez:** No promises.

//<Pilar places a hand on Chief Ibanez's shoulder. The latter stiffens.>//

**Pilar:** You'll protect me.

**Chief Ibanez:** What makes you so sure?

**Pilar:** I talked with your friends. They told me it's what you do.

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

As Pilar prepared for the journey with her mother's help, Chief Ibanez returned to Facility-34 to collect her own supplies. Dr. McDoctorate met her at the airlock.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Dr. McDoctorate is already walking back into the Facility, and gesturing at Chief Ibanez to follow him. She does.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What's in your pants?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Eh?

**Chief Ibanez:** Why you so antsy?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** We've got a new problem.

**Chief Ibanez:** I was just telling someone there's nothing left here for me to do. You're not going to make a liar out of me, are you?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** It's more complicated than that. I've been dealing with a bit of an issue with the TLP.

**Chief Ibanez:** What kind of an issue? And why didn't you tell me sooner?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Because you went walkabout, and anyway there's no engineering component to what went wrong. I made discreet enquiries with the locals, and they don't know anything that can help us with it.

**Chief Ibanez:** With what, exactly? I've got places to be.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** There might be less urgency than you think.

//<They have reached the control chamber. Dr. McDoctorate indicates a single indicator with his left forefinger, tapping the panel for emphasis. This pages through the controls, and he hurriedly scrolls them back so that the indicator is visible again.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** This.

**Chief Ibanez:** What is it? 'RANUN'... 'RANUNCLE'...

**Dr. McDoctorate:** 'RANUNCULACEAEIC ANGIOSPERMA QUOTIENT'. It's one of the tracking metrics the system uses to determine the status of its components. You'll remember it's the only one I thought seemed kind of redundant. It basically just checks whether there's plants in the hopper.

**Chief Ibanez:** Uh huh. And you know better now?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Yes. Think of it as the pilot light. 

//<Chief Ibanez looks at the indicator again. The readout says 'N/A'.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** It's... out?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** It is out. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Why is it out? 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Because it doesn't have enough fuel.

//<Chief Ibanez exclaims noisily.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What? We've got a whole warehouse of it. 

//<Dr. McDoctorate makes hushing motions, and looks from side to side. Neither of his technicians is visible.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** They brought the problem to me, but they don't grok the meaning yet. It's heady. Time dilation in here isn't too bad, we only get an extra hour or two per day compared to outside--

**Chief Ibanez:** I didn't know that was still happening, either.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Yeah, well, you were playing fort, so.

**Chief Ibanez:** Smartass. Give me the bad news.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I did a test firing. The system has a mechanism for resettling the multiversal foundations, basically going for a spin without the spin, making sure everything's solid on the ground. But it's a no-go. The mechanism won't catch. It won't turn over. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Don't tell me our gas went skanky between dimensions. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Skanky. 

**Chief Ibanez:** You know what I mean. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I'm going to keep doing tests, but at first blush? It looks like you need something other than //Nigella cerritulus// to get out of the places this place can get you into. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** That would have been really, really useful information to have had before we came here. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I agree, yes. 

**Chief Ibanez:** And it doesn't make any fucking //sense,// because--

//<Dr. McDoctorate raises a hand to forestall her. She swats it away, but lets him continue.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Because you flew all around the timeplane on this thing, back in the day, and you didn't need to stop at any gas stations. Yeah?

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Well, you were using the gas that was already in the tank. The plants grown hydroponically. Maybe there's something special about the growth process we don't understand.

**Chief Ibanez:** I know you checked for that, because you're not an idiot.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I would be a bad scientist if, faced with a situation where the most likely explanation is that I did something an idiot would do, I disregarded that on the basis of not thinking myself to be one.

//<Chief Ibanez stares at the indicator.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** So, we're stuck here.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** We might be.

**Chief Ibanez:** All right, well, keep it under your abstracted identity, alright? We don't need a panic, even if these people are supposedly professionals. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I've never heard my abstracted identity described as a hat before.

**Chief Ibanez:** In my experience, identity is something you wear. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** And wears on you? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Could do.

//<She turns to leave.>//

//<He places a hand on her shoulder.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You value that hand?

//<He releases.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** It's just, there is one more thing. We've been doing seismographic studies, because of the whole moving mountains thing.

**Chief Ibanez:** Okay.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I sent something to your PDA. I know you leave me on read, but you really ought to //actually// read this one before you go on your little walk.

**Chief Ibanez:** It's going to be a long walk, actually.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Maybe not, if you don't read the thing.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Right. Noted.

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

----
[[# anchor-14]]

**Addendum 8273-14, Rescue:** The following morning, having discussed the perils of the road ahead and the best means of avoiding them, Chief Ibanez and Pilar prepared to leave Puerto Extirpado in search of Leandro Ibanez.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<PTF Delta-6500 and many of the villagers are gathered at the former Ibanez house. Chief Ibanez and Pilar, laden down with provisions, are standing at the mouth of the gully leading to where the cave is located in baseline reality.>//

//<Dr. Okorie kisses Chief Ibanez on the forehead.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** Bad idea don't do this.

//<Chief Ibanez pinches her. Dr. Okorie swats the top of her skull in response.>//

//<Dr. Astrauskas steers Dr. Okorie aside.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You don't both get to tell me--

//<Dr. Astrauskas kisses her.>//

**Pilar:** Oh. Okay.

//<Chief Ibanez, flushed, turns away.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** At least take one of those suits.

**Chief Ibanez:** I'm not running out of power in the middle of a swamp. Appreciate the concern.

//<She points at Pilar, then jerks a thumb at the entrance.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Burning greenlight.

**Dr. Okorie:** Let me come with you, god dammit!

//<Chief Ibanez responds over her shoulder.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Do what we said. If I fuck this up, they're gonna need you.

//<She notices Saray in the crowd, wide-eyed, and contorts her face.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I'm not used to kids.

**Saray:** Me either.

//<Chief Ibanez attempts to say something else, then closes her mouth and simply nods. Saray nods back.>//

//<Chief Ibanez and Pilar head into the gully.>//

**Pilar:** What was that about?

**Chief Ibanez:** Your sister's a punk.

**Pilar:** Tell me about it. But you know what I mean. What were you telling the witch?

**Chief Ibanez:** That's our word, thanks. And I was telling her she needs to protect the village if we piss anything off out here.

**Pilar:** But we're not going to piss anything off.

**Chief Ibanez:** We might.

**Pilar:** We plotted our route specifically to avoid--

//<Chief Ibanez reaches over her shoulder and draws SCP-6500-SWORD. It is glowing, though only a little.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Do you know what this is?

//<Pilar stares at the blade, transfixed.>//

**Pilar:** Kind of. Not at all.

**Chief Ibanez:** It's a lightning rod.

//<She sheathes it again, and shoulders her backpack.>//

**Pilar:** What does that mean?

**Chief Ibanez:** It means that if there's anything weird out here, it's going to be attracted to us.

**Pilar:** So why did you bring it with you?

**Chief Ibanez:** Because if there's anything weird out here, it's also our best chance of getting out in one piece. Two pieces.

//<They pass by a shaded copse, in the same position where Chief Ibanez's grandfather's shack once stood. There is another, lone, grave marker. They pass it by without comment.>//

//<Chief Ibanez jerks a thumb back at the village, now out of sight.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Was it always like that? 

**Pilar:** Long as I can remember.

**Chief Ibanez:** How old are you?

**Pilar:** I don't know.

**Chief Ibanez:** What? 

**Pilar:** I don't know how to explain it in a way you'll understand. Time passes differently in the World, compared to Earth. Or so they tell me.

**Chief Ibanez:** Do you know how soon after they came here you were born? 

**Pilar:** Nine months by your reckoning after... a while. Maybe a year or two. 

**Chief Ibanez:** How can you stand it here? 

**Pilar:** Everywhere. 

**Chief Ibanez:** What? 

**Pilar:** This isn't here. This is everywhere. Everywhere I've ever been. Everything I've ever known. I was born and raised to stand it. Standing it is my default condition.

**Chief Ibanez:** Mm.

//<They have reached the cliffside. There is a cave, farther up, as there is in baseline reality. The climb is higher, but far less steep; there are rough steps and handholds carved in the rock, allowing them to climb at relative leisure.>//

**Pilar:** It must have been like that for you, at some point. 

**Chief Ibanez:** What do you mean? 

**Pilar:** In Zevala.

**Chief Ibanez:** No. 

//<They pause only briefly at the cave, which is choked with gleaming green vegetation and (according to Chief Ibanez's later verbal report) sweet-smelling. On Chief Ibanez's back, SCP-6500-SWORD thrums once with a light visible through the end of the scabbard, then returns to its low ebb.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** No, Zevala was perfect, and I absolutely couldn't stand it. Couldn't wait to be out of there. 

**Pilar:** Now you're talking sense. 

**Chief Ibanez:** This is different. This place is a dead end. 

//<She walks back out of the cave mouth, and starts on the steeper trail toward the lip of the cliffs perhaps fifty feet up.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** There was something beyond my village. My version of our village. 

**Pilar:** There's something beyond this one too. The same things. It's just a little harder to get to. 

**Chief Ibanez:** The same things, you think?

**Pilar:** Don't you see it? What the World really is?

**Chief Ibanez:** Give me some drones and satellites, maybe. Don't see the point in speculating from the ground.

**Pilar:** We're practically on the roof of everything, Delfina.

**Chief Ibanez:** Chief Ibanez. And one of these days, let me tell you what a mountain really is.

//<She snorts.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Maybe I should start you on 'really tall hills', actually.

//<They crest the cliff to a narrow plateau ledge, only a few more metres of rock remaining above them, and look back down on the sheltered bay. The villagers have begun dispersing back into the village. One tall figure, three smaller, and one much smaller wave at them from the top of the windmill. Pilar waves back.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You should appreciate this place while you have it. 

**Pilar:** Why? You don't. And you didn't, apparently. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah. That's why.

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//<Above the final rise, the landscape stretches on to the fuzzy horizon. It is an expanse of trees like those in Puerto Extirpado, as seen from atop the windmill, but there is also a lower tableland leading up to a broad, algal bog which has no apparent end. Chief Ibanez and Pilar walk the tops of the cliffs, the latter leading the way to a path heading back down.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Do they ever talk about the way things were?

**Pilar:** All the time. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Really? 

**Pilar:** Of course. You know how they are. 

**Chief Ibanez:** I know how they were. 

**Pilar:** Then you know they don't change much.

**Chief Ibanez:** I guess. 

**Pilar:** They used to talk about you all the time. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Used to?

**Pilar:** Well, they still do from time to time. It's just that they've run out of new things to say. 

**Chief Ibanez:** I could supply a few, but it's not exactly dinnertime conversation. 

//<In the distance, the trees sway.>//

**Pilar:** I'm not a replacement. 

**Chief Ibanez:** What? 

//<Pilar stops walking, at the edge of the cliff. The carved path to the forest floor begins a few inches from her feet.>//

**Pilar:** I'm not a replacement for you. 

**Chief Ibanez:** I never said you were. 

**Pilar:** No, but you were thinking it. You're still thinking it. 

**Chief Ibanez:** I am not. 

//<Chief Ibanez walks past her. Pilar follows, then walks beside her.>//

**Pilar:** They didn't have me so they could forget about you. 

//<Chief Ibanez rolls her eyes.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Do you know why we record these conversations? Why we're both wearing cameras? It's because we're supposed to be learning things. Interesting, important things. Not these things. 

**Pilar:** It's cultural. Isn't that useful to you? Meeting a new culture. Learning what they're like. 

**Chief Ibanez:** You said it yourself. These people aren't new to me. 

**Pilar:** Then why--

**Chief Ibanez:** --am I asking at all? Now that, that's a good question. 

**Pilar:** Not what I meant. Why are you talking to me, instead of my mother, or any of the others?

**Chief Ibanez:** //Because// I know them. 

**Pilar:** And? 

//<The surrounding land is higher than the Puerto Extirpado table, and they have reached it already. The trees here are gnarled and overrun with glittering green ivy. A long, low hoot sounds through the forest, and Pilar starts. Chief Ibanez checks her service weapon, returns it to its holster, and keeps her hand on the butt.>//

//<They proceed down the path. It, too, is partially overgrown, but it can still be followed. It must have been cut back many times in the past.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You ever find a candy bar you forgot you bought? No, of course you haven't. Uh... hmm. Metaphor breakdown. You probably won't get any of my television analogies, either. 

**Pilar:** Nobody I know drags things out this long. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah, the Internet's been bad for us. Don't ask me what that means. I'll just say it straight out, then: some surprises are nice. Sometimes it's nice to forget something, so you can remember it later. 

**Pilar:** And this isn't one of those things. 

**Chief Ibanez:** No. This is a thing I worked very, very hard to forget, to put behind me, and I'm not happy that it's in front of me again. 

**Pilar:** You wish they were all dead? 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Pilar:** Hold up. This isn't the direction we agreed on.

//<This time Chief Ibanez is the one to stop walking. She turns to face Pilar.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** They //were// all dead. They've been dead for thirty years. I've lived almost twice as long as I knew them since they died. 

**Pilar:** Say that again? 

**Chief Ibanez:** I was sixteen. Those people and that place? They've been bad memories to me since before you were born. The person I am right now never met any of them. The first people //she// met were Chaos Insurgents, and that set the tone. 

**Pilar:** You're still who you were before. Just a little different, that's all. 

**Chief Ibanez:** I have nothing in common with the person they remember. 

**Pilar:** Oh yeah? How long did it take them to recognize you, again? 

**Chief Ibanez:** I'm a fucking dwarf. 

//<She turns on her heel, and resumes the trek at speed. Pilar hurries to catch up.>//

**Pilar:** Were you listening? I told you, that's the wrong way.

**Chief Ibanez:** Right.

//<Ahead, the trees thin out. They are heading in the direction of the bog.>//

**Pilar:** No! Wrong! It's not safe.

**Chief Ibanez:** I'm just checking alternate routes.

**Pilar:** We've been over this already!

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah, well, there's a memo you didn't get.

//<She scans the horizon for a moment, then nods.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Okay, point me the right way again.

//<Pilar begins to walk back into the forest proper. Chief Ibanez grabs her arm.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Point me, I said. You're not leading. And keep well back.

//<Pilar frowns, but does not argue.>//

//<They walk for several minutes in silence, Chief Ibanez keeping well ahead of Pilar. The path is still visible, though there are strange warps evident in the landscape which make traversal difficult at stages.>//

**Pilar:** Your sword is--

**Chief Ibanez:** I'll bet.

//<There is a slight tremor. Chief Ibanez stops.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I hear these didn't used to be so frequent.

**Pilar:** You think our world is ending too?

//<Chief Ibanez shoots a look over her shoulder.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I specifically told my people to ixnay on the orld ending way.

//<Pilar blinks.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I told them not to tell you about that.

**Pilar:** They didn't. You guys just make so many cryptic statements and exchange so many meaningful looks at poignant moments, it's hard not to notice. You know we can see and hear you, right?

//<Chief Ibanez laughs.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Well, don't worry about that right now. No, I don't think this world is ending. I think it's got more to do with the reason all the predators in this place are birds or trees or whatever.

**Pilar:** Trees?

**Chief Ibanez:** Saray said the trees eat people.

**Pilar:** Did she also tell you she fought a troll in the cave?

**Chief Ibanez:** No...

**Pilar:** Good, because there's no trolls in the cave, and the trees don't eat people.

**Chief Ibanez:** They sure act like they do.

**Pilar:** The waving? It's probably just the w--

//<There is a violent CRACK from the earth, and the path just ahead jerks upward.>//

//<Chief Ibanez turns to face Pilar, and walks toward her. She raises a finger to her lips.>//

//<They walk back the way they came.>//

//<There is a much louder CRACK, and dirt falls from the sky all around them.>//

//<Chief Ibanez grabs Pilar by the arm, and pulls her into a run.>//

//<The forest erupts around them in linear features, rippling and shedding the tree cover, filling the air with the sound of snapping trunks and branches. It is difficult for the women to keep their feet as they flee.>//

//<SCP-6500-SWORD is apparently glowing enough for halation to appear on both camera feeds, although it is situated well behind the lenses.>//

**Pilar:** ...what...

**Chief Ibanez:** Save oxygen.

//<She reaches down to her belt, makes a sudden motion, and then throws something to the right, hard. There is a loud BANG; she has apparently deployed a concussion grenade. The path of the landscape alterations turns to follow the noise.>//

//<A particularly gnarled tree is visible ahead and to the left, and Chief Ibanez steers Pilar toward it. Before the other woman can respond, Chief Ibanez has boosted her into the lower branches. Pilar scrambles up, and Chief Ibanez follows.>//

//<The two of them wait as the ground near the grenade's landing point continues to crack and rise. After a few minutes, during which a large pit forms and many trees fall in, long and tangled roots keeping them horizontal on the edge, the rumbling stops and the disturbances move away in the direction the women were originally heading.>//

//<Pilar struggles for several seconds to catch her breath. Chief Ibanez waits patiently.>//

**Pilar:** What?

//<Chief Ibanez hops down from the tree.>//

**Pilar:** What was that?

**Chief Ibanez:** I like to think it was a reminder not to leave mad scientists on read.

//<She heads in the direction of the bog again. Pilar carefully climbs down and rushes after her.>//

**Pilar:** Explain that explanation?

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[[/=]]

//<Chief Ibanez and Pilar are standing at the treeline again. The bog has apparently not been disturbed.>//

**Pilar:** Everyone who's ever walked into that has //died.//

//<Chief Ibanez nods.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You know what that means?

**Pilar:** Our people are careful. Too careful. They never take risks. If they die when they go in there, it means there's something in there that //kills// them.

**Chief Ibanez:** Right. 

**Pilar:** So why is that better than getting earthquaked to death?

//<Chief Ibanez does not respond. She waits.>//

**Pilar:** What?

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Pilar:** You think... it's the same thing?

//<Chief Ibanez nods.>//

//<Pilar sits down on the forest floor.>//

**Pilar:** That would make it pretty... pretty big.

**Chief Ibanez:** Did they not teach you any swear words?

**Pilar:** So you think it moved off.

**Chief Ibanez:** We saw it move off.

**Pilar:** You knew it was down there? You intentionally stirred it up?

**Chief Ibanez:** I //suspected// something was down there. Only explanation for the lack of land predators in a verdant paradise. I didn't know what direction it was in. Now I do.

**Pilar:** And what if there's more than one?

**Chief Ibanez:** Don't be ridiculous. Anything that huge would have to be carnivorous.

//<Chief Ibanez draws SCP-6500-SWORD.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** There's definitely more than one.

**Pilar:** Why don't they go into the village?

//<Chief Ibanez widens her eyes, opens her mouth and leans forward, head shaking expectantly.>//

**Pilar:** Because...

//<She draws a sharp breath.>//

**Pilar:** ...because we're severed?

**Chief Ibanez:** Right. And my friends aren't.

**Pilar:** But you are.

//<Chief Ibanez ignores her.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Point is, unless there's lots of meat underground, these things probably eat each other. But we'll do in a pinch.

**Pilar:** It's probably harder to track us through a swamp.

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah, it'll be an advantage for sure. As long as it's less than four feet deep.

//<Pilar frowns.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Anything in there that catches wind is bound to follow me to wherever your dad is hiding.

**Pilar:** Our dad. But why? We're small fries, if it's that big. Not even morsels.

**Chief Ibanez:** Because of the sword. 

//<She brandishes SCP-6500-SWORD. It is glowing faintly from the earlier encounter.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** It re-energizes things. Makes things happen.

**Pilar:** What sort of things?

**Chief Ibanez:** The exciting sort.

**Pilar:** So why did you bring it, if it's just going to make things harder?

**Chief Ibanez:** Because I'm the best at handling hard things. Shut up.

//<Pilar looks confused.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Wow. We need to get your out more. Anyway, it's not the worst possible situation. If this stuff doesn't chase me out into the boonies, it might wander into the village. I'll bet it can smell Udo and Roz's magic and McDoctorate's ridiculous cologne on the wind.

**Pilar:** Is that his actual name? It can't be, right?

**Chief Ibanez:** So, here's what's going to happen. You're going to go climb a tree and be mouse-quiet for a bit -- mice are... just be quiet, okay, and I'm going go scout the bog.

**Pilar:** How?

//<Chief Ibanez sets down her backpack, and produces a small LIDAR drone and a pair of binoculars.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** If it's safe, it's safe. If it's not, it will be before I come back to find you.

**Pilar:** Find me //nothing.// I'm coming with.

**Chief Ibanez:** Like hell you are. I need someone to catch me on camera.

**Pilar:** Doing what?

**Chief Ibanez:** Whatever it takes.

**Pilar:** What's wrong with your own camera?

//<Chief Ibanez grins.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** It's probably going to be moving around a lot.

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//<Chief Ibanez finishes her LIDAR survey of the bog, revealing it to be relatively shallow and resting on a bedrock lattice providing ample footing. She examines the results carefully, committing the landscape to memory, then proceeds in the rough direction of their destination as indicated by Pilar.>//

//<She moves through the water for approximately ten minutes, never submerged below the top of her waterproof boots. She holds SCP-6500-SWORD in front of her, and its soft glow does not ebb.>//

//<There is a sudden eruption of water and soil.>//

//<The next thirteen minutes of footage come from Pilar's body camera. All footage from Chief Ibanez is blurred and obscured to the point of incomprehensibility; Pilar's footage is zoomed in to 4000% to accommodate the distance between lens and subject, rendering everything extremely low-fidelity and subject to considerable motion blurring.>//

//<Chief Ibanez subsequently provided additional information regarding the events described below and her actions during them, which have been interpolated where appropriate.>//

//<The water of the bog has been broken by a tremendous spined form stretching from Chief Ibanez's position to at least several hundred metres away. It begins thrashing, and algae and mud fill the air. Chief Ibanez leaps from her starting position to the nearest bedrock protrusion, and an enormous club-shaped tail pulverizes the space she has just been occupying. She raises SCP-6500-SWORD and shouts: "¡En guardia!">//[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]Audible on recording only as a distant, incoherent shriek.[[/span]]

//<Footage is briefly obscured as Pilar hurriedly climbs a tree and secrets herself among the branches. She is able to achieve a vantage point between the broad leaves, revealing the scene again. The bog is already unrecognizable, with a massive pit filling with swamp water; the tail is slamming down again and again, tearing deep divots into the bedrock and excavating the soil down to the peat layer. Chief Ibanez is leaping from rock to rock around the rim of the pit, waving SCP-6500-SWORD defensively. A tremendous ribbed space resembling a cave has risen in front of her, filled with what appear to be stalactites and stalagmites.[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]Chief Ibanez has confirmed that this was in fact the maw of a living creature.[[/span]] It recoils from the sword, with geological import; the tree in which Pilar is situated shakes.>//

//<A massive forelimb emerges from the bog, with talons significantly larger than Chief Ibanez, and they rake the air. Chief Ibanez swings SCP-6500-SWORD, colliding with the longest talon and shattering it with a tremendous burst of air which entirely denudes Pilar's trees of leaves two seconds later. Chief Ibanez is hurled away, landing in the water on her back. She still has hold of SCP-6500-SWORD. She is underwater for only an instant, spluttering back to the surface and swimming for the nearest surviving crop of bedrock. She spits up the last of the water and yells: "Fuck this!">//[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]Inaudible; recording is dominated by a deep bestial groan.[[/span]]

//<The creature's back is emerging from the bog, metre by metre. There are ripples in its pebbled flesh, and it shudders, and two wings on the approximate scale of a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress rise from the water and begin to spread. A moment later the creature bucks forward, and a second pair of wings extends perhaps one hundred metres back. Chief Ibanez sinks to a runner's crouch, and roars at the creature defiantly. It becomes possible to discern the creature's neck as it extends its vast mouth toward Chief Ibanez, who is pointing a brightly-glowing SCP-6500-SWORD at it, and roars back with enough force to send her reeling. It then makes purchase on the bedrock with its talons, and begins drawing its full body out of the water.>//

//<Chief Ibanez states, at this point: "Finally.">//[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]Inaudible; Pilar is screaming.[[/span]]

//<Chief Ibanez charges the creature, still roaring.>//

//<A shower of water from the altercation belatedly falls onto Pilar, drenching her.>//

[[include component:image-block
    name=http://scp-sandbox-3.wdfiles.com/local--files/harry-blank-8/Swamp.jpg|
    caption=Chief Ibanez engaged in combat, representative frame. |
    width=700px|
    align=center|
]]

//<The next twenty-one seconds are difficult to discern visually, but Chief Ibanez's subsequent commentary tracks with what is visible. The creature, in roaring, has placed Chief Ibanez at eye level -- the segmentations of its hide become iridescent in patches near the top of its head, and these are presumed to be its eyes. It turns its head to one side, presumably to examine Chief Ibanez in birdlike fashion; she thrusts SCP-6500-SWORD in its direction, and a massive burst of light strikes the eye-scales, and the creature reels back in surprise. Chief Ibanez presses the attack, dislodging a scale from the creature's right forelimb and gaining purchase there with the slick treads of her combat boots. Stabbing at the creature's hide to create additional purchases, she makes her way up its trunk as it attempts to locate the source of its new injuries.>//

//<The creature leaps into the air, leaving the bog entirely. Chief Ibanez has affixed climbing pitons to the holes in the creature's scale cover, and has secured herself to them with SCP-6500-SWORD's harness. The creature roars again, this time so loud that Pilar falls out of the tree, screaming. Her landing is softened by the now-sodden ground, but her camera lens is obscured.>//

//<Sounds of scrabbling, screaming, roaring, crashing, and splashing occupy the next four minutes and forty-seven seconds of both recordings. Chief Ibanez's full accounting of her actions at this time is on record with RAISA.>//

//<As the sound subsides, save for a series of tremendous thunderclaps Chief Ibanez will later identify as the beating of six sets of wings, her camera view finally stabilizes. The creature has already almost vanished into the murky horizon, with only a silhouette discernible.>//

//<She makes her way slowly back to the shore, panting and coughing. The trees on the forest edge look blasted; Pilar is slumped with her back to the tree she had climbed, and she is staring at Chief Ibanez with wild eyes.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Tell me you got some of that.

//<Pilar screams.>//

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//<After an interval of approximately fourteen minutes, during which neither woman speaks, Chief Ibanez has attended to minor abrasions on her skin while Pilar's camera has been cleaned and checked for damage. Chief Ibanez is seen to be soaked from head to toe, but save for some fraying on the cuffs and divots in the armour from ascending the razor-sharp scales, her combat uniform is largely intact.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Hahaha.

**Pilar:** How.

//<Chief Ibanez shrugs, and climbs to her feet.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I want to say the sword did it.

//<SCP-6500-SWORD, having been employed multiple times in the altercation, now glows only dimly.>//

**Pilar:** But?

**Chief Ibanez:** Talk to Place. I'm all out of hot air.

//<She reaches down to help Pilar up, an operation made slightly awkward by the foot in difference between their heights. The taller woman stands, shakily, and expels a loud sigh.>//

**Pilar:** I don't know what to say.

**Chief Ibanez:** Best possible result.

//<She shoulders her gear, and begins the descent down the ruined shoreline to the bog.>//

**Pilar:** Did you kill it?

**Chief Ibanez:** No.

**Pilar:** What if it comes back?

**Chief Ibanez:** I'll have caught my breath, assuming you don't make me waste any talking.

**Pilar:** What if it heads for the village instead?

**Chief Ibanez:** It won't. But if it does--

//<She has raised a hand to forestall Pilar's objection.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** --Udo can pick up half the bay and flense the fucker to the dinosaur bone. It's not the only thing around here that can move mountains.

//<Pilar's eyes widen.>//

**Pilar:** I'd like to see that.

**Chief Ibanez:** Honestly? So would I.

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//<The trek through the bog is slow; though the water is not deep, thick layers of mud are built up over the bedrock lattice, much of it churned up by the creature's passage and emergence. It takes several hours to reach a patch of solid ground above the water table identified by Chief Ibanez's drone survey, and as the task is unpleasant both women are largely silent for the duration.>//

//<The sky is a dark green by the time they reach the island, and the spores are fluorescing thick and early. Chief Ibanez sets up a portable fire kit and a pair of bedrolls, though the night air is warm.>//

**Pilar:** You should have brought the dragon over here.

//<Chief Ibanez arches a brow.>//

**Pilar:** I'll bet it burns better than soggy old wood.

**Chief Ibanez:** Why would it burn at all?

**Pilar:** Did you smell it?

//<Chief Ibanez's eyes widen.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I was trying not to inhale.

**Pilar:** Well, it smelled like peat. It was under a peat bog. I think it was //made// of peat, and that stuff burns really well.

**Chief Ibanez:** Huh.

**Pilar:** Yeah.

//<Silence on recording.>//

//<Chief Ibanez bursts into laughter, and slaps her thigh. Pilar jumps.>//

**Pilar:** What?

**Chief Ibanez:** Peat dragon. //Peat's Dragon.//

//<Pilar blinks.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Never mind. 

//<She shivers lightly, and rolls her jumpsuit sleeves back down.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Bit nippy now. What are the seasons here?

**Pilar:** What's a season?

//<Silence on recording.>//

//<Pilar laughs.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Fuck you.

//<She laughs as well.>//

**Pilar:** But it would have been a fair statement. I've just heard stories. Snow sounds interesting.

**Chief Ibanez:** The fucking Canadians think it makes them special. They act like they're born to it. Northern people, hardy and wind-whipped. Load of horse shit.

//<There is a single dead tree on the island, and Chief Ibanez is able to find enough dry branches to start a fire. She begins setting up her portable cooking equipment.>//

**Pilar:** What if something out here is attracted to fire?

**Chief Ibanez:** Then the sword would call them anyway. And the sword will take care of them.

//<Pilar watches Chief Ibanez pour a can of stew into a small bowl, and cook it over the fire. The can bears the emblem of the Secure Containment Institute.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Soup from a dead timeline, cooked in an alternate universe, eaten by people from two different realities. Globalism is out of control.

//<Pilar has been looking at the pommel of SCP-6500-SWORD since Chief Ibanez mentioned it.>//

**Pilar:** You must be pretty important to have a weapon like that.

**Chief Ibanez:** It's not mine.

**Pilar:** No?

**Chief Ibanez:** Actually, you know what? It //is// mine. I found it, and I powered it up. I saved the interesting parts of the world with it.

**Pilar:** And now you're saving us.

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah. 

**Pilar:** You don't seem too excited about it.

//<Chief Ibanez stirs the stew.>//

**Pilar:** It doesn't require that much attention.

**Chief Ibanez:** We'll introduce you to more people on the other side. You'll learn social cues, like when someone doesn't want to pursue a conversational topic.

**Pilar:** All those people you know never taught you when someone's not taking 'no' for an answer.

//<Chief Ibanez sits back on her haunches, and watches the stew bubble.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Do you know what Florence is?

**Pilar:** No.

**Chief Ibanez:** Italy?

**Pilar:** Vaguely.

**Chief Ibanez:** Florence is a city in Italy. It has a cathedral. Do--

**Pilar:** I know what a cathedral is.

**Chief Ibanez:** It took like a hundred years to build this thing. The original architect died, and nobody could figure out how to put a roof on it. Biggest roof they'd ever had to make, bigger than the world had seen since back when they had slaves and dictators.

//<She frowns.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Well, they still... no, finish the story. If you showed that dead old architect the finished product, he wouldn't have recognized it. I'm sure it wasn't what he imagined. Some new guy came along and had all the right ideas for finishing up that roof, decades later, and it made the whole thing one of the most famous buildings in the world. That first guy? He had an idea. The second guy? He had a plan, and he made it happen.

**Pilar:** Okay.

**Chief Ibanez:** When something's big and complex enough, and it takes decades to put together, you only get full credit for it when you're around to see it through. If you're not, it's left to other people. And the results belong as much to them. Maybe more. Probably more. Anybody can doodle on a napkin, Pilar.

**Pilar:** But buildings aren't people.

**Chief Ibanez:** You're right. People start building themselves, from an early stage. The people who are there with you while you're doing that? They matter. They matter a lot. The people who aren't?

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Pilar:** They were there at the start. Like the architect. They put in a lot of work. A lot of love, before they had to leave.

**Chief Ibanez:** Difference is, the architect had no choice. Stew's ready.

[[=]]
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@@ @@
[[/=]]

//<Both women deactivate their cameras during the night, reactivating shortly after first light. They pack up their equipment in the morning, and Chief Ibanez briefly checks in with the Foundation personnel back in Puerto Extirpado by radio before setting out again with Pilar.>//

//<The second leg of the journey is less difficult; the spaces between the bedrock lattice are smaller, and easier to see even without the survey data, and the water is clearer as well.>//

**Pilar:** I don't understand bogs.

**Chief Ibanez:** Me either, but this isn't one.

**Pilar:** What do you mean?

**Chief Ibanez:** Bogs aren't mud stuck through a honeycomb of rock. Whatever these formations are, they're not natural. Paranatural, maybe.

**Pilar:** What does //that// mean?

**Chief Ibanez:** It means your proto-world is weirder than my full one, in a few respects. Not as well-populated with bizarreness, but give it time.

**Pilar:** You think this place is in an earlier stage of evolution?

**Chief Ibanez:** I think I'd rather leave that question to the people who really care about it.

//<They walk for two more hours, and a gradual atmospheric change takes place. The air is less warm now, and the water is very still. There are spores on the air again, but they are white and blue instead of green, in spite of the sky. It is not uncomfortably cool, and they cannot see their breath, but the climatic trend is definitely downward.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Going to winter, huh.

**Pilar:** Feels like it shouldn't transition this fast.

**Chief Ibanez:** It definitely shouldn't. Could be the world's still settling into its shoes. Or, might be magic.

//<Pilar laughs, then sees the look on Chief Ibanez's face.>//

**Pilar:** I keep forgetting magic is real.

**Chief Ibanez:** That's what happens when your beliefs are challenged. Your brain tries to fit the new information into the space where the old used to fit, only there isn't enough room, and the old just fits so //well.// It's a coping mechanism.

**Pilar:** You adapted pretty well to all the changes.

**Chief Ibanez:** Do you know how exercise works?

//<Pilar sighs.>//

**Pilar:** Can you just say what you mean?

**Chief Ibanez:** The only way to make something more flexible is to bend and twist until it breaks a bit, and then knit it all back stronger. Is that...?

//<In the far distance, the bog ends on what looks to be a rocky shore. In the distance, very faintly, a rectilinear feature is visible.>//

**Pilar:** I've never been there.

**Chief Ibanez:** But that's it, right? That's where...

**Pilar:** Where he went? I think so. 

//<It takes another half hour to escape the final reaches of the bog and clamber up the stones, then dry off their gear and approach the cabin. The construction is even more crude than that of the villages in Puerto Extirpado, and it is smaller as well. The metal is rusted through in many places, though thick sheets have been hung on the inside to block the flow of cool air. There is a rack for hanging clothes to dry by the near wall, and a cooking pit on the other side. Out front there is a wheelbarrow, its components carved from green wood, with a broken wheel. Tools are piled beside it on the earth, as though discarded in frustration. There is a long bench and a rickety chair, both constructed from the same material. A jerry can lies on its side beside the bench, cap absent. >//

//<The two women stop just before the front door. Pilar speaks, very quietly.>//

**Pilar:** I'll go first.

//<Chief Ibanez visibly strains to step forward and overtake her, but her feet do not move. Pilar opens the shack door.>//

**Pilar:** Dad? 

//<The shack interior is indifferently kept. Rusted agricultural tools are tossed here and there on the hardpacked floor. There are opened cans in the primitive sink, and the bed is unmade. A gaunt older man in a badly-patched hooded sweater and jeans is sitting crosslegged on the floor, repairing an old shirt with needle and thread. He is staring at Pilar in shock.>//

**Leandro:** What the hell are you doing out here?! It isn't safe! 

//<He puts the shirt aside and stands, moving quickly across the small space to embrace his daughter.>//

**Pilar:** It's safer than it was.

**Leandro:** What do you mean? 

//<He looks past Pilar, through the open door. Chief Ibanez's camera records an expression of bafflement and fear on his face as he sees her.>//

**Leandro:** Who is //that?!//

//<He stares for several seconds.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Come on. 

//<Pilar releases him, but he holds her in place between Chief Ibanez and himself, still staring. His mouth is working, and horror is now the dominant emotion on his face.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Come //on.//

//<She steps across the threshold and enters the cabin. Her camera feed is slightly motion-blurred.>//

**Leandro:** No. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah. 

**Leandro:** No...

//<Chief Ibanez clenches her jaw.>//

//<He releases Pilar and rushes across the room, lifts Chief Ibanez from the floor, and embraces her.>//

**Leandro:** No.

//<He drops her back to the cabin floor, falling to his knees in the process, and begins sobbing into her shoulder.>//

//<He clutches her desperately to his chest.>//

**Leandro:** No no //no.//

//<Pilar watches them in silence. Chief Ibanez is neither returning the embrace, nor refusing it. Her expression is blank.>//

**Leandro:** How? 

//<Chief Ibanez does not speak.>//

**Leandro:** How are you here. How are you...?

//<Leandro pulls back, with obvious effort, and begins brushing Chief Ibanez's hair out of her eyes. He cups her cheek in his hand, and she looks away. He attempts to capture her gaze, but she will not look at him.>//

**Leandro:** Fina.

//<Chief Ibanez closes her eyes.>//

**Leandro:** It is you, isn't it? 

//<He turns to face Pilar.>//

**Leandro:** It's really her? 

**Pilar:** It is. Her people are back at the village. They say they can get us home. 

**Leandro:** What people? Who are her people? 

//<He looks back at Chief Ibanez, and lets out a strangled cry. He embraces her again, and she sighs heavily.>//

**Pilar:** They call themselves the Foundation.

//<Leandro laughs bitterly into Chief Ibanez's shoulder.>//

**Leandro:** Fire in the frying pan. 

//<Chief Ibanez grunts, and extricates herself from Leandro with a firm shove. He stumbles, and Pilar catches him, as Chief Ibanez backs into the doorway again. Her eyes are narrowed, and her fists are balled.>//

**Leandro:** Fina...

**Chief Ibanez:** You left me. 

//<Leandro reaches out to her, though neither makes any attempt to close the physical distance.>//

**Leandro:** I'm so sorry. 

**Chief Ibanez:** You //left// me. 

**Leandro:** I didn't mean to.

**Chief Ibanez:** You didn't have to go. 

**Leandro:** I thought we did. 

//<Pilar places her arms around her father's neck, obscuring the camera view.>//

**Leandro:** Fina. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Leandro:** //Fina.//

//<There is a sound of heavy footfalls. Pilar straightens, and the camera view shows that Chief Ibanez has left the shack.>//

[[=]]
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[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

//<Over the course of thirty-four minutes, Chief Ibanez remains outside the shack repairing the wheelbarrow while Pilar fills Leandro in on the details of Delta-6500's arrival. He does not speak for the duration of the explanation. When it is over, he leaves the shack through the back door; several minutes later Pilar's camera microphone picks up a distant howling, resolving into a low moan which continues for several more minutes.>//

//<The sound is audible on Chief Ibanez's microphone as well, but if she hears, she does not react, hammering nails into the green wood of the wheelbarrow.>//

//<The door to the shack opens, and tentative but heavier footfalls indicate that Leandro is standing in the doorway. Chief Ibanez remains fixated on her task, securing a crossboard to the bottom of the barrow.>//

**Leandro:** The others? 

//<His voice is hoarse. She does not respond.>//

**Leandro:** Fina, please.

**Chief Ibanez:** What others.

**Leandro:** Yésica.

//<Chief Ibanez shakes her head.>//

//<Leandro's voice is now tight, his tone high, pleading.>//

**Leandro:** Eloy?

//<Silence on recording.>//

 **Leandro:** Ernesto? Jorge?

//<Chief Ibanez spins the front wheel speculatively.>//

**Leandro:** Aurelio?

**Chief Ibanez:** No. 

//<Leandro staggers into view. He is holding the chair seen earlier; he places it gingerly on the soil, and sits down. His legs are shaking, and they continue to shake when he is no longer standing.>//

//<Chief Ibanez shifts the wheelbarrow back onto its legs, and grunts in satisfaction.>//

**Leandro:** I couldn't... I, you know, I tried...

**Chief Ibanez:** It was an easy fix. You didn't try hard enough.

//<She looks up at him. His eyes are red and puffy, and his face is streaked with tears. He makes no effort to wipe them away.>//

//<When she next speaks, Chief Ibanez's tone has shifted from neutral to an angry growl.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Don't you fucking //demonstrate.// Don't you //demonstrate// to me.

**Leandro:** What?

**Chief Ibanez:** You must have known. 

//<He wordlessly shakes his head. Chief Ibanez stands, and points an accusing finger.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You gave them //graves.// 

//<Leandro's voice is a weak whisper, but perfectly audible in the stillness of the shore.>//

**Leandro:** I gave all of you graves.

**Chief Ibanez:** And then you married Ursula.

//<He spreads his hands, hopelessly, and again attempts eye contact.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** There's nothing to say. 

**Leandro:** Fina, I don't know what you've been through...

**Chief Ibanez:** And you don't want to. 

**Leandro:** I //do// want to. I still can't believe you're here. But we can't leave. 

//<She walks past him, stiffly, to look out on the distant bog.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** There'll be a clear path now. I made an impression on the locals that's not likely to buff out anytime soon.

**Leandro:** That's not what I mean. We can't go back. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Leandro:** Back to Earth.

//<She does not turn to face him.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You can't stay here. 

**Leandro:** We have to.

**Chief Ibanez:** I guess somehow you didn't hear, but I fought a fucking eldritch beast out there.

**Leandro:** You //what?//

//<He audibly rises to his feet, and approaches her. He does not enter her field of view.>//

**Leandro:** Fina, what--

**Chief Ibanez:** Don't you fucking call me that. Not now.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Leandro:** The things in this world? If you've seen them, you should know. You leave well enough alone, they don't bother you. Mostly. Where we came from? We'd be looking over our shoulders every day. 

//<Chief Ibanez still does not turn.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Looking for who? Give me an itemized list. 

**Leandro:** Why?

**Chief Ibanez:** So when I dump you off, I can go fight them, too.

**Leandro:** I don't want you to fight anyone.

**Chief Ibanez:** I don't care what you want. You shouldn't want //anything.//

//<She whirls on him.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You shouldn't //want// anything, Leandro! You should be //in the ground// with Yésica and my brothers //and my god damn __mother!__//

//<Leandro crumples to sit in the dirt. He looks down at his hands.>//

//<She watches him, silently, for several seconds, then looks up. Pilar is watching from the interior of the shack.>//

**Leandro:** The people who attacked us. 

//<Chief Ibanez looks down again.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What?

**Leandro:** They're still waiting. If they think the job's not done, they'll be back. We'll never be safe.

**Chief Ibanez:** The people who attacked you shot themselves in the foot over and over again until they didn't have any feet left, and bled to death in their parachute pants. Not an issue. 

//<He idly paws at the dirt. There are specks of green, even here.>//

**Leandro:** Not just them. People were... People were always looking for us, F--

//<He reaches up to wipe his face. Streaks of dirt are deposited.>//

**Leandro:** Delfina. For a long time, they were looking. Longer than you can imagine.

**Chief Ibanez:** You mean the Aphians, yeah?

//<His head snaps up. His expression is now one of amazement.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** We've got diplomatic relations. I'm married to one of them. They're not looking anymore. 

**Leandro:** Married...?

**Chief Ibanez:** Come on, keep up with the list. 

//<Leandro reaches out to take Chief Ibanez's left hand with his.>//

**Leandro:** Two wedding rings?

//<There are two bands on Leandro's left ring finger as well.>//

//<Chief Ibanez pulls her hand back, with force.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I'll do it for you then. The //giftschreiber?// Girlfriend of mine is tearing them a new asshole. //Schriftsteller?// Same deal. The Uncontained and Unyielding? Both in a box. One of them well on his way to a //pine// box. Everything you were afraid of is over.

//<He shakes his head.>//

**Leandro:** Not everything. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Everything that's fixed by staying here. 

**Pilar:** Dad, she's right. 

//<Chief Ibanez and Leandro both look up sharply. Neither heard her approach.>//

**Pilar:** We're all going to die if we stay.

**Leandro:** We'll all die if we go. 

//<He looks back at Chief Ibanez again, the same look of pleading in his eyes.>//

**Leandro:** Delfina, it doesn't matter how many threats you check off your list. There will always be another. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Actually, that's more good news. I have it on good authority we've almost reached the end of threats. 

**Leandro:** What do you mean? 

**Chief Ibanez:** I mean that we're in act one of an apocalypse right now, and if we don't get help soon, it might turn out to be a one-act play. That's why I'm here. 

//<Leandro blinks.>//

**Leandro:** That's why you're here. 

//<He frowns, and rubs his hands off on the sides of his pants.>//

**Leandro:** How long have you been looking for us? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Couple weeks. 

**Pilar:** What?

**Leandro:** A couple of weeks. 

//<Chief Ibanez reaches up and takes his chin in her fingers. She lifts his head until they can lock eyes.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Don't start. It's not like you pulled the handbrake on your siteship and came roaring back to look for me. 

**Leandro:** I thought you were d--

//<Leandro suddenly stands, and Chief Ibanez takes a step back. His voice is louder now, though no less anguished.>//

**Leandro:** I thought you were //dead,// Fina!

//<Chief Ibanez closes the distance again, glaring up at him with wide eyes.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I thought you were dead too! Because if you weren't, there was no way, //no way// you would have left me there on my own! //My father would never have left me alone.//

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** But I was wrong.

//<From Pilar's camera view, Chief Ibanez appears to deflate. She sits down on the soil, as Leandro had just moments prior.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Yésica kept telling me you were going to sort it out. 

//<She reaches down and idly traces curves in the greenish earth.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You were going to save us. They killed her, dad. She probably never even heard the shot. I hope she didn't know what was going on. I wonder every night if she could feel it, even for a moment.

//<Chief Ibanez is weeping.>// 

**Leandro:** Fina--

**Chief Ibanez:** They beat Aurelio so bad, we had to watch him bleed to death on the inside for almost a week. They blew Eloy apart. 

**Leandro:** Please--

**Chief Ibanez:** They shot Ernesto in the head, as a warning. A warning to //me,// because of a situation YOU PUT ME IN!

//<She does not rise again. The effort to shout seems to have exhausted her.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** And Jorge? You want to know what happened to Jorge? 

**Leandro:** No.

**Chief Ibanez:** Goddamn right you don't. It would //kill// you.

//<She looks up at him. He appears to be dissociating.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Or maybe it wouldn't. 

//<She shakes her head.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Maybe you wouldn't even care. 

**Pilar:** Delfina, please.

//<Chief Ibanez gets to her feet again, slowly.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I don't know what I expected you to say. 

//<She walks back toward the shack.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I don't know what you could say.

//<Pilar reaches out for her as she passes. She bats the hand away.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You abandoned me. 

//<She picks up the harness and scabbard, and affixes them to her back again. Without looking back, she asks Leandro a question.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Are you going to abandon me again?

//<Leandro's lip trembles as he considers Chief Ibanez for several seconds, before responding.>//

**Leandro:** I have more than just you to think about. 

**Pilar:** Which means we're definitely going.

//<Chief Ibanez turns to face her. Leandro looks at his younger daughter with astonishment, and some anger.>//

**Leandro:** Pilar, no.

**Pilar:** Why not?

**Leandro:** It's certain death. No, it's worse than that. It's //uncertain// death. Our people could tell the future once, you know that? Once. Not anymore. You understand what that means?

**Pilar:** It means you saw too much, and became cowardly. I don't blame you for that. But you have to move past it.

**Leandro:** It //means// that everything's falling apart. The universe doesn't even know where it's going anymore. How can we find our way in that dark? There is no future for us in her world.

**Pilar:** There's never a future in any world until you //do something,// dad. Watching is never enough.

//<He deflates, but still shakes his head.>//

**Leandro:** It's going to be //so// dangerous. You really have no idea. 

**Pilar:** That's right. I don't. 

//<She plants her hands on her hips.>//

**Pilar:** I don't know what's out there, beyond the handful of things you've told me about. I don't know whether she's right, or you're right, about what we're up against. But I do know one thing. 

//<She suddenly grins.>//

**Pilar:** She really did kill a fucking dragon. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Fought. I //fought// a fucking dragon.

//<Leandro looks at each of them in turn.>//

**Leandro:** How can you... how.

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah. 

**Leandro:** You aren't really serious, that you...

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah. 

**Leandro:** Just... //how.//

**Chief Ibanez:** I'll tell you if you tell me. 

**Leandro:** Tell you what? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Grandfather said we were doing something shameful. Something foolish. 

**Leandro:** You spoke to him? 

**Chief Ibanez:** I cradled his head in my lap while he died. 

//<Leandro emits a sudden, strangled cry. Pilar reaches out to comfort him, but he staggers away, looking up at the green sky with a look of lost desperation.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** They've all been dead for thirty years. 

**Leandro:** //Not for me.// Not like that...!

//<Chief Ibanez steps back onto the rocks, to where her father is wandering aimlessly, fingers clenching and unclenching at his side, knuckles white.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What did he mean? What were we not doing? 

//<Leandro is looking back and forth across the undifferentiated landscape, as though searching for something which is not there. When he responds, there is a lack of presence in his tone.>//

**Leandro:** We had a plan...

**Chief Ibanez:** What kind of a plan? 

**Leandro:** A plan to stop them. The brothers. We had our part, and the others... you named them. 

**Chief Ibanez:** The Aphians. Go on. 

**Leandro:** Creatures of chaos. The shifting sands. Our people brought knowledge to the endless uncertainty. We saw the future, and we were never wrong. 

//<He stumbles, and takes a knee on the rocks.>//

**Leandro:** Do you understand me? //Never wrong.//

**Chief Ibanez:** Order.

//<Leandro spits.>//

**Leandro:** Order.

**Chief Ibanez:** And chaos.

//<He nods bitterly.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** One people for each of them. 

**Leandro:** One city for each of them. One //tomb.//

**Pilar:** What? 

**Leandro:** Zevala and Aph. Our prisons. But they weren't destined for us. Not at first.

**Chief Ibanez:** They were prisons for the brothers.

//<He looks up at Chief Ibanez. His eyes are drying; he has no tears left.>//

**Leandro:** We thought we could take them, capture them. Transport them to the space between spaces, and leave them where they couldn't hurt anyone ever again. 

**Chief Ibanez:** And why didn't you? 

//<Leandro laughs desolately.>//

**Leandro:** Because love makes you strong, and love makes you weak. 

**Chief Ibanez:** So, it's my fault. 

**Leandro:** No! 

**Chief Ibanez:** It's my fault, and Yésica's, and--

//<Leandro reaches up to grab her hand, and this time she does not shake him off.>//

**Leandro:** No! We make our own decisions, and no one is responsible for them but us. I knew what it would cost if we brought that demon home. I knew that we were planning a one-way trip. I knew that I would lose you, and your brothers, and your sister, and your... 

//<He chokes back a sob.>//

**Leandro:** ...and your mother, one way or another. I couldn't pay that price. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Maybe it would have worked out. 

**Leandro:** It wouldn't. 

**Chief Ibanez:** How do you know? 

//<They stare at each other for a few moments.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You looked? 

**Leandro:** Your mother looked. 

//<Chief Ibanez eases herself to the ground, and Leandro shifts from kneeling to a sitting position. He still has her hand in his.>//

**Leandro:** She was one of the few who still had the sight. It takes more than just the flowers to make it work. There's a strength of spirit that not all of us have.... Maybe none of us, now. 

//<Pilar remains at a distance, watching.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** She saw that it wouldn't work. Your plan.

**Leandro:** That's right. 

**Chief Ibanez:** But if your foresight is so orderly, then wasn't she seeing something that //had// to happen? Had to be attempted? I thought these visions always came true.

//<Leandro nods, over and over, as though he cannot stop himself.>//

**Leandro:** Yes. That's important. It's not that they always come true, it's that they //must// come true. We have a responsibility to them. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Them?

**Leandro:** The visions. We have to make sure they're realized. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Or what? 

**Leandro:** Or everything gets much, much worse. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Are you saying...

//<His lower lip trembles.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You //are// saying. 

//<Pilar approaches, sitting down between them.>//

**Pilar:** Saying what?

**Chief Ibanez:** Because they didn't fail to save the world, they made it end quicker. Is that right?

//<Leandro nods miserably.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You worsened the entropy by violating causality. You saw the fixed future, and allowed it to flux.

**Leandro:** What point is a sacrifice if it gains nothing? 

**Chief Ibanez:** It would have gained us time for more sacrifices. 

**Leandro:** But my children would never have seen it. You expect me to save a world that my children wouldn't get to live in?

**Chief Ibanez:** The things you didn't sacrifice then? Odds are I'll have to sacrifice them now. 

**Leandro:** What do you mean? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Because you didn't fight, it's my fight now. I'm the hero. I'm doing what you couldn't. 

//<She takes her hand back, though not violently as before.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Wait. Is that why they attacked? 

//<He stares at her, uncomprehending.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Did the Insurgency attack because they found out about your plan? 

**Leandro:** No. They attacked so they could make plans of their own. 

**Chief Ibanez:** What does //that// mean? 

//<Leandro's mouth works. Pilar is looking at him very closely, and he is flinching from her gaze.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You know something about the Chaos Insurgency? 

**Leandro:** I know that the name is a deception. They wanted what we had.

//<He spits again.>//
 
**Leandro:** Certainty. 

**Chief Ibanez:** The visions? They came to you for the visions? 

**Leandro:** They came for what was behind the visions. 

//<He takes a deep breath, and when he speaks again, his tone is surer.>//

**Leandro:** You should ask Ursula. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Just tell me. 

**Leandro:** I don't know the details. It wasn't for me to know. I have my shame, and she has hers. 

**Chief Ibanez:** It's good to compartmentalize. Share the responsibilities. Sign of a healthy marriage. 

**Leandro:** Fina... Delfina--

//<She stands once again, and shakes the harness back into position.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Pack your shit, and let's git.

**Leandro:** Please believe me.

//<She looks down at him.>//

 **Leandro:** I'm so happy you're alive.

//<He has been able to muster a few final tears.>//

 **Leandro:** Whatever you've become.

//<Chief Ibanez freezes.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I never wanted you to see me.

**Leandro:** What?

**Chief Ibanez:** It was simple. It was all so //simple,// because I knew you'd never see me.

**Leandro:** What do you mean?

**Chief Ibanez:** I think you know what I mean.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Leandro:** I never wanted any of this. 

**Chief Ibanez:** That's what you get. 

//<She grits her teeth, and speaks through them.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** That's what happens when you don't //choose.// When you don't push. When you just let things happen. You get what you never wanted, and you don't get to blame anybody but yourself. 

**Leandro:** I'm not blaming anyone. 

**Chief Ibanez:**  That's what pissing and moaning is. Feeling sorry for yourself. Saying it isn't fair. It //is// fair, d--

//<She growls with inarticulate rage at herself.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** It's what you deserve for taking the easy way out. There's only so much ease to go around. You made it harder for everyone else. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I'm doing what you should have done, only now it's so much worse, because you didn't do anything. 

**Leandro:** When you have children--

**Chief Ibanez:** I'll have a name that's worth passing on to them. I'm glad you took hers instead. 

//<She stalks back toward the shack, stiffly.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I'm still the last Ibanez.

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

----

[[# anchor-15]]

[[include component:image-block
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    caption=SCP-8273-1. |
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]]

**Addendum 8273-15, Return:** Leandro suggested remaining at the cabin until the next morning, but Chief Ibanez demurred, citing the fact that a safe path through the bog had now been determined and the return journey would not take longer than the remainder of the day. Leandro accepted this decision, but insisted on a brief detour half an hour's walk from the cabin first.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Leandro leads at a distance across the increasingly-frozen terrain. Ice on the ground glistens with unnatural brightness. Chief Ibanez and Pilar speak in low tones as they proceed. If Leandro is listening, he gives no indication.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I'm still not clear on how you knew where to go. 

**Pilar:** Hmm?

**Chief Ibanez:** Don't fucking //hmm// me. I'm the Chief of Pursuit and Suppression, your evasiveness is doomed from the start.

**Pilar:** I was just--

**Chief Ibanez:** Stalling to come up with an excuse, yeah, I know. Too bad. This place is almost impossible to map, and I get the distinct impression you've never actually  been here before. 

**Pilar:** Yeah, well. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah? Well? 

//<Pilar reaches into the back pocket of her jeans, and hands Chief Ibanez a water-damaged paper map. It is drawn in a child's hand.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Saray.

**Pilar:** Yeah. She saw him go, and snuck after him. He made her promise not to tell. 

**Chief Ibanez:** How'd you get her to? 

**Pilar:** I didn't. She came to me. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Why?

//<She pauses.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Because she knew I could save him? 

**Pilar:** No, because she knew you needed to. 

**Chief Ibanez:** I do like that kid.

//<She shakes her head ruefully.>//

**Pilar:** Are you going to forgive him?

//<Leandro looks at the ground. A slight but very broad depression in the earth is now visible ahead.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** It doesn't matter.

**Pilar:** Of course it matters.

**Chief Ibanez:** Sorry, I was doing the thing again.

**Pilar:** What thing?

**Chief Ibanez:** Overcomplication. What I meant to say was it's none of your fucking business.

//<Pilar smiles.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What?

**Pilar:** You wouldn't be this angry if it didn't still matter to you.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Why not just give me the map, though? 

**Pilar:** Hmm?

**Chief Ibanez:** Why come with?

**Pilar:** You're not the only one who's ever wanted to leave home, Chief.

//<Chief Ibanez nods, seems to consider something, then nods again.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You can call me Delfina.

//<Leandro looks back at them.>//

**Leandro:** We're here.

//<He is standing at the edge of the depression, which slopes down further into a shallow valley a few metres on . The valley is filled with blackened soil, and the mummified remains of unusual vegetation.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What is this? 

**Leandro:** The ashes of our last hope. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Less flowery?

**Leandro:** No, that's just it. That's what this is. 

//<Chief Ibanez walks past him to examine the vegetation more clearly. She picks up one of the stalks, and sucks a breath in through her teeth.>//

**Leandro:** This is my //Nigella// plantation.

//<Chief Ibanez mutters the next sentence under her breath.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** No leylines for miles, she said.

**Leandro:** What?

**Chief Ibanez:** Nothing. What's it doing way the hell out here?

**Leandro:** Same thing the cabin is. Been here for generations. The flowers too. Waiting for us to return.

**Chief Ibanez:** And only you knew where it was? Before now?

**Leandro:** The men tend the flowers, and maintain the machine. The women have the visions, and make the decisions. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Nursery rhyme sexism. I guess it's nice to have a mnemonic.

**Pilar:** What happened to them? The flowers, I mean.

**Leandro:** Wouldn't grow. Rotted so badly they scorched the permafrost. All that potential energy had to go somewhere. 

//<He shrugs. The gesture seems forced.>//

**Leandro:** I guess it's possible to be too much a stranger.

**Chief Ibanez:** You planted them?

**Leandro:** I did. That's why I came out here, the first time. When we arrived. I wanted to grow a new crop, so that...

**Pilar:** ...you could go looking for her?

**Chief Ibanez:** So he could get out of this lime-green hellhole.

**Leandro:** Whatever you want to believe.

//<Leandro slouches in a posture of defeat.>//

**Leandro:** I thought I understood the principles. As usual, I was wrong. It takes years for these things to grow, you know. They should have been ready by now. Instead...

**Chief Ibanez:** That's why you didn't go back. To Puerto Extirpado.

**Leandro:** They're better off without me.

**Pilar:** That's not true.

//<Chief Ibanez rotates the desiccated stalk in her fingertips, thoughtfully.>//

**Leandro:** I just... I hoped it would work. But hope isn't always enough.

**Pilar:** But it's fine, right? We don't need them. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Sure. It's fine. 

//<She stands, dropping the stem to the ashen earth. Pilar's camera captures the last of the light from SCP-6500-SWORD sputtering out.>//

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

Chief Ibanez, Pilar and Leandro reached Puerto Extirpado at approximately midnight, after an uneventful trek through the bog, forest, and hills. Chief Ibanez radioed ahead; a party met them where the gully opened on the rear of the abandoned Ibanez shack.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Drs. Astrauskas, McDoctorate and Okorie, Ursula and Saray are waiting at the shack when Chief Ibanez emerges. She steps aside to let Leandro pass; he moves tentatively into the village proper, and is immediately pounced upon by his younger daughter.>//

**Leandro:** Little fish.

//<He kneels to embrace her, and they remain that way in silence while the others speak.>//

//<Pilar hugs her mother.>//

**Pilar:** Told you we'd be fine.

//<Ursula draws back, and brushes a few specks of muck from Pilar's face and hair.>//

**Ursula:** You don't look fine.

**Chief Ibanez:** Nothing a bath won't fix. 

//<Seeing Drs. Astrauskas and Okorie approach her, Chief Ibanez adopts a hostile posture.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** I think she thinks we're going to kiss her again.

**Dr. Okorie:** Well, I was.

//<Ursula approaches Leandro, a sorrowful smile on her face. He stands -- Saray remains attached to his legs -- and allows her to embrace him as well.>//

**Leandro:** I'm sorry. 

**Ursula:** Hush. 

**Leandro:** I tried--

**Ursula:** Hush, I said. 

//<Dr. Okorie kneels to examine the damage to Chief Ibanez's uniform.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** Are you okay?

**Chief Ibanez:** Obviously.

**Dr. Okorie:** I don't mean--

**Chief Ibanez:** I need to talk to Place. Anything to report before I do? 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Nothing that can't wait. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Good. 

//<She stalks off, in the general direction of Facility-34.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** Are you gonna catch one of those showers?

**Chief Ibanez:** Might be a waste of time.

//<When she has disappeared beyond the edge of the shack, Dr. Okorie turns to see Leandro staring at her. Ursula is fussing over the state of his clothing, silently.>//

**Leandro:** Hello. 

**Dr. Okorie:** Mr. Ibanez?

**Leandro:** I go by Pelaez.

**Dr. Okorie:** Is that your first name? 

**Leandro:** No, it...

//<He frowns.>//

**Leandro:** Fina never told you my...?

**Dr. Astrauskas:** She speaks. But she speaks slowly. 

**Dr. Okorie:** Some sentences take years.

**Leandro:** You're her...

//<Leandro gestures at the rings on their fingers.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** That's right. 

**Ursula:** It's good. 

//<He glances at her, uncertain.>//

**Leandro:** It's good?

**Ursula:** Yes.

//<He keeps eye contact for a moment, nods, and looks back at Drs. Astrauskas and Okorie.>//

**Leandro:** Well. Good. Pleased to meet you. 

//<He extends a hand, and each woman shakes it in turn.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** Likewise. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** I think we've all got a lot to talk about. 

**Leandro:** I've told Fina everything I know.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Mmm.

//<Her eyes are narrowed.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** You shouldn't feel bad she didn't tell us about you, Mr. Pelaez.

//<He gives her an inquisitive look.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Because apparently she didn't tell you about me, either. 

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

Chief Ibanez consulted briefly with Dr. McDoctorate, confirming that the state of the Trans-Liminal Propulser was no better than before. She passed on her information regarding the failed //Nigella// crop, and was in the process of workshopping a possible solution to the dilemma when Drs. Astrauskas and Okorie joined them in the control room.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Both Dr. Astrauskas and Dr. Okorie are carrying data tablets filled with the information they have gleaned both from and about the locals during Chief Ibanez's absence.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You've got good news.

**Dr. Okorie:** How can you tell?

**Chief Ibanez:** That wasn't speculation. That was an order.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Well, I don't know if this counts as //good,// particularly, but it's interesting at least. I think the severing really is what they say it is. There's Hume tendrils waving off every one of the Extirpadans, stopping just short of each other, shearing every which way. You've got them too, and they've been reaching out ever since we arrived. I noticed it as soon as we found Pilar in the gulch. That's what I was going to tell you at the town hall.

//<She waves in the air, tracing lines only she can see. Chief Ibanez follows the trail of her fingertips, looking uneasy.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** They've also all got the same declension you have.

**Chief Ibanez:** And what do you think that means? 

**Dr. Okorie:** Could it just be because they're from Aph? Originally?

**Dr. Astrauskas:** No. The Aphians have a slight Hume //elevation.// This is on the other side of baseline.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I have an idea. 

**Chief Ibanez:** About how we can get out of here? 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I'm still working on that. Did you think I'd forgotten? 

**Chief Ibanez:** You're a mad scientist. It was at least worth considering. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Mad science is just something you perform. It's not an identity. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Have you met Everett Mann?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** The point is, I'm not comfortable talking about that subject on the record.

**Dr. Okorie:** Why?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I'm not comfortable explaining why on the record, either.

//<Chief Ibanez kicks the base of the nearest console, and the metal vibrates loudly. They all turn to face her.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** We're learning a lot about everyone's comfort zones. That's great. Now finish explaining the stupid Hume thing. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Personally, I think it's a consequence of dimensional travel. Not an indicator of origin, but repeated transportation. 

**Chief Ibanez:** How would that work?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Do you know how the transporters on //Star Trek// function?

//<Dr. Astrauskas winces.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** If that's the explanation, don't explain it.

**Chief Ibanez:** What? What's he talking about?

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Never you mind. But that would certainly explain the discrepancies. Not that we could have known it before we figured out what the machine does.

**Chief Ibanez:** I think that's why the TAD fucked with my old file, too. They didn't want anyone realizing this place existed outside of time. 

**Dr. Okorie:** Probably they would have wanted something like that for themselves. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** They have something like that for themselves. 

//<The others turn to look at him.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** You ever been debriefed by them? Don't recommend it. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** You remember everything now, right?

**Chief Ibanez:** Now, in this moment, in this room, yes.

**Dr. Okorie:** I still don't understand why your memories were location-specific. Has anyone been forgetting what they've learned in Puerto Extirpado?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** No, because I properly fixed those exchangers.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** What did they exchange?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Psychic fields. Those first dimensional travellers all died because the systems didn't properly sort their memory sets between worlds. Every one of their possible selves tried to template on the same brains, and fried them. The caretakers must have understood the machinery just well enough to jury-rig a stopgap system that compartmentalized you between each reality. Me, I like to work from first principles.

**Chief Ibanez:** Why didn't it do that to the Prophets? The diary says they all lived, only the Institute people kicked off.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Best guess? The Prophets don't have alternate selves.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** I don't know why, but I don't like the sound of that.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I do know why. You're happier not knowing.

**Chief Ibanez:** Getting a bit tired of hearing that.

**Dr. Okorie:** So, okay. Memories compartmentalized to each universe, before, but not anymore? Meaning if we went back to all the other places Del visited...

**Dr. McDoctorate:** ...she'd get to keep her memories once she reclaimed them, yes.

**Chief Ibanez:** Pass.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Let's get back to the memories at hand. The journal entries are undated. How long were you in here for, really? Well, not really. Subjectively.

**Chief Ibanez:** Maybe two years. 

**Dr. Okorie:** What?! 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** I thought it was months at the outside. Jesus Christ.

**Chief Ibanez:** Think about it. When I came in, I was an angry teenager on a lucky streak. I came out in military power armour with the mental and physical capability to use it. I came out with enough engineering knowledge for a Foundation degree. Muscle mass you'd usually need steroids to get. This place gave me all the time I needed to make myself into something new. 

//<She sighs.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** And last week, when I stepped outside again for the first time, I remembered green hell too. Not just what was in the journals, all of it. It was different when I first visited; wilder, more dangerous, no village. That's where I taught myself how to use the suit. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Just popping around the corner and back a few times shouldn't have been enough to affect your Hume spirals so dramatically. 

**Chief Ibanez:** It wasn't. I went to lots of other places. More than I wrote about. I wasn't a big writer. And like I said, emptied out the hydroponics.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** You went on a multidimensional training voyage.

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Like--

**Chief Ibanez:** Like some batshit version of Batman. 

**Dr. Okorie:** Sheesh.

**Chief Ibanez:** Aphora will be jealous. 

//<Dr. Astrauskas is nodding.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Yeah, that's it. That's what I saw. 

**Dr. Okorie:** How can you tell?

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Because now that I know to look, I can see that all of our Hume spirals are slightly off too. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** By how much? 

//<She indicates with her forefinger and thumb.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Tiny little fraction. 

**Dr. Okorie:** Compared to Del's? 

//<She squints.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Hard to say. I've got a point scale, but it's more subjective than anything. Maybe a tenth? Maybe a twentieth. 

**Dr. Okorie:** Holy shit. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** And here I thought we all took our first multidimensional trip together.

**Chief Ibanez:** Well, don't feel bad. We've probably taken our last one together.

**Dr. Okorie:** What's that mean?

**Chief Ibanez:** Egghead says our flowers won't work on this side. 

**Dr. Okorie:** Kept that to yourself, did you? 

**Chief Ibanez:** I'm the commander. That's my job. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Well, you should have shared the job. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Why? 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Because the villagers were talking about this already, obviously. They said they couldn't get the mechanism to work either, so they were really surprised when you pulled the Facility back to baseline. They thought somebody had figured out how to use it again, and abandoned them.

**Chief Ibanez:** Somebody. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Yes. Your father. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Figures. But that's not really useful information, is it? 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** It is if I'm reading the implications correctly. I think your father knows something the rest of them don't. And if I'm right, we might be able to get out of here after all.

**Chief Ibanez:** Well, spill the beans. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** First I need to see if I can get the beans to spill. 

**Chief Ibanez:** What the hell does that mean? 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** I get to have secrets too. This is an equitable relationship we're in.

[[=]]
@@ @@
[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

//<Dr. Okorie and Chief Ibanez emerge from the Facility together.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** What were you talking to Place about before we came in?

**Chief Ibanez:** Stranger-in-the-Mist needs leyline proximity to grow, is that right?

//<Dr. Okorie nods.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** That's what the demonics were for, in the hydroponics, you figure?

//<Dr. Okorie nods again.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Are there any leylines //here?// In this world?

**Dr. Okorie:** There are not. Not for hundreds of miles in every direction.

**Chief Ibanez:** How do you know?

**Dr. Okorie:** I set up a skein under the ground, put out feelers as far as I could go without using myself. Roz read my aura while I was doing it. New thing we figured out, I did send you the paper a few months back.

**Chief Ibanez:** Well, you knew what that would get you.

**Dr. Okorie:** Hope springs eternal.

**Chief Ibanez:** So everyone keeps telling me.

**Dr. Okorie:** You're wondering if it's possible to grow the plants here? 

**Chief Ibanez:** No, just musing. Can a leyline be alive?

//<Dr. Okorie blinks.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** Leylines are magical conduits in the earth. The demonics are a dirty hack that probably works really badly at best, and Tartareans aren't alive //per se.// So, debatable. But I think you mean 'ambulatory', which is just insane.

**Chief Ibanez:** Mad, even.

**Dr. Okorie:** Sure?

//<Chief Ibanez nods, then heads down the path.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** What prompted that?

**Chief Ibanez:** Just settling a bet. Nothing to worry about.

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

The following morning, Dr. Astrauskas scheduled a private meeting with Leandro Pelaez. He met her in the empty Ibanez shack.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Dr. Astrauskas is seated in a battered steel chair. She has set up another for Leandro; he takes it, eyeing her suspiciously. She has no devices on her person, save for her lapel camera, and her hands are folded neatly in her lap.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Mr. Pelaez. We haven't been properly introduced. My name is Rozálie Astrauskas. I'm married to your daughter. 

**Leandro:** I'm still waiting for someone to explain that to me.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** There will be plenty of time for that later. 

//<When he replies, his tone is petulant.>//

**Leandro:** We have plenty of time right now. It's not like we can go anywhere. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** I think you know that's not precisely true. 

//<He frowns.>//

**Leandro:** Meaning?

//<She leans forward, crossing her knees and placing both hands on them.>// 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** How would you describe the problem with the mechanism in the Facility? 

**Leandro:** Trying to catch me out? 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Trying to see if we can all get on the same page. Indulge me? 

**Leandro:** We ran out of flowers, and all the ones I tried to grow here are dead.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** I believe the second part of that statement is true, if a little misleading.

**Leandro:** You're calling me a liar? 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Yes.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Do you want to explain, or should I? Probably you'll want me to do it, in case we're not both thinking the same thing.

//<Leandro shrugs.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Fine with me. The mechanism doesn't just need flowers, it needs flowers from the dimension you're trying to leave. 

//<Leandro's mouth twitches.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** You don't really need to confirm. Dr. McDoctorate and I have it pretty well figured out.

**Leandro:** Dr. //who?//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** He'd be so pleased to hear you call him that. 

//<He waves dismissively at her, and turns to look out the open window. Chief Ibanez is using SCP-6500-SWORD to sharpen a farmer's plough in front of the blacksmith's shop, which has been converted out of the empty Lobo household shack. The blacksmith is watching, bemused. Saray is also watching; she is jumping up and down and swinging a stick while speaking with great excitement. Chief Ibanez is nodding indulgently.>//

//<Leandro scowls.>//

**Leandro:** I don't know what you're talking about. All of this is nonsense. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** You were the one responsible for replanting Stranger-in-the-Mist, right? 

**Leandro:** Yes. That's one of my duties. The most important one. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** How come you were suddenly so bad at it? 

//<His head snaps back in her direction, and his tone becomes defensive.>//

**Leandro:** There was nothing sudden about it. The old crop was dead, and the knowledge of how to grow a new one was never properly passed down to me. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** That's a good explanation. But the fact you've been dishonest with me about part of this process suggests--

//<Leandro stands, and towers over her.>//

**Leandro:** Suggests what? Why don't you just come out and say it?

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Okay. 

//<She looks up at him, unflinching.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** You killed your own crop. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** They grew just fine, so you killed them yourself.

**Leandro:** Why would I do that? 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Because you saw the Facility vanish when Del called it back home, and you knew what that meant, and you didn't want to leave. 

//<He walks past her, into the back room. His voice carries easily in the steel shack.>//

**Leandro:** Of course I want to leave. I've wanted to leave since the moment we got here. 

//<Dr. Astrauskas does not turn to watch him, but continues facing forward and speaking in an even tone.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Fine, you do //want// to leave. But you wouldn't let yourself do it. You were too afraid. So you stranded everyone here. 

**Leandro:** What are you basing that on? 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** You never let Del or her sister or her brothers leave the village. I imagine the shield was a part of that, no? Made her dizzy when she climbed too high.

**Leandro:** They don't still have vertigo back on Earth?

**Dr. Astrauskas:** All your precautions, and still you couldn't protect them. So the second time around, you found a way to control the remaining variables. 

**Leandro:** That's...

//<Leandro has walked back into the main room. Across from Dr. Astrauskas, the front door is now open. Ursula is standing in the doorway.>//

**Leandro:** Ursula. 

**Ursula:** Leandro.

**Leandro:** You heard?

**Ursula:** I heard.

**Leandro:** Do you believe this? 

**Ursula:** Of course I believe it. I've known the entire time. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

//<Leandro sags.>//

**Leandro:** Do we need to tell them? 

//<Ursula walks into the shack, and attempts to comfort her husband.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** It's true, then? 

//<Leandro spits on the floor, then looks mortified at having done so. He scuffs it out with his boot heel.>//

**Leandro:** Of course it's true. This place might not look like much to you, but to me it's the only safe home I've ever had. Killing those flowers was the easiest thing I've ever had to do. 

//<Ursula embraces him.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Was it easy killing any chance of ever seeing me again? Killing the hope in your heart?

//<She is standing at the window, which is partially ajar. Due to the buildup of soil and plant matter outside the shack, she is able to meet her father's eyes without craning her neck.>//

**Leandro:** I thought you were dead. 

**Chief Ibanez:** No, you didn't. 

//<She glances back over her shoulder, ensuring that Saray is still chatting with the blacksmith, who is inspecting the sharpened plow with an expression of astonishment. She then leans on the sill, and continues to speak.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I'm an investigator. No reason you should have known that. It's not like we've really talked yet. But the first day in this village, after speaking with your daughters, I went looking for something. Found it in your old laundry. 

//<Chief Ibanez unslings her backpack and unzips it. She removes a faded salmon dress, and drapes it over the windowsill before placing the bag on the ground beside her.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I left this here on the last day. I went for a swim in that bay--

//<She points.>//

**Chief Ibanez:**  --and when I came back out, I started putting on the armour. Fired up the mechanism, and went back home to Zevala. Left the last thing that connected me to you, here. 

//<She stamps her foot for emphasis.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Did you find it, or someone else? 

**Leandro:** I found it. 

//<Leandro is whispering now.>//

**Leandro:** I was the first one out. I'm always the first one out.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Another of your duties. 

**Leandro:** If something's going to happen to one of us, it should happen to me. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Why?

//<He looks up, and straightens somewhat. Ursula withdraws.>//

**Leandro:** Because you're right. It's always my fault. I wouldn't let them put the plan in motion. I wouldn't let them reach out for help. And I poured gasoline all over the flower crop. 

**Ursula:** Leo...

**Leandro:** I'm sorry, Ursula. 

**Chief Ibanez:** "The ashes of our last hope," you said.

**Leandro:** You knew.

**Chief Ibanez:** I've beaten the truth out of folks with a literally magical way with words. You're nothing by comparison.

//<Ursula winces, but takes Leandro's hand.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** I don't understand. You had the flowers, and you had the dress. You had to know there was a chance she was still alive out there. 

**Chief Ibanez:** What are you talking about? Those flowers take ages to grow. Didn't he tell you the old ones had all died?

**Dr. Astrauskas:** He did tell me that.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Mr. Pelaez? 

//<He is shaking his head. He can't seem to stop.>//

**Leandro:** I never took any chances, and even so, my children... my //children...//

//<He raises his hands in a pleading gesture.>//

**Leandro:** How could you expect me to go back? 

**Chief Ibanez:** What's going on? The old flowers //were// already dead, right?

//<Silence on recording.>//

//<Chief Ibanez is ashen.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Oh, my god.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** You burned them too. In 1994, when you first arrived.

//<Wordlessly, he nods. Once.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** How could you abandon your children? 

**Ursula:** Because I forced him to. 

//<Chief Ibanez stares at her.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What? 

**Leandro:** Ursula, no--

**Ursula:** When we first arrived, I went with him. It was against the rules, but after what we saw... the rules didn't seem to matter so much anymore.

//<Leandro clutches her hand tightly.>//

**Ursula:** I picked a flower, I ground it up, and while he was tending to the rest of the crop, I had a vision. 

**Chief Ibanez:** A vision of what? Of what would happen if you tried to come back for me? 

**Ursula:** Of whether or not we //would// try. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** And what did you see? 

//<She makes eye contact. Both women hold it for a time.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Obviously that you wouldn't. 

**Ursula:** That's right. 

**Chief Ibanez:** So you set that in stone. You made it so you could never come home, not without damaging reality further. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** You were making it easier for him. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Letting him let me go. 

**Leandro:** I'm so sorry, Fina. 

//<He pulls himself together yet again.>//

**Leandro:** But you're all safe here now. Long after everything else is perished, we'll still be here. 

//<Chief Ibanez picks up the sack again.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Nothing else is going to perish. We're going to make sure of that, soon as we get back. 

**Leandro:** Your friend is right. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Wife. 

**Leandro:** Your //wife// is right. The flowers need to be from here, and they don't grow anymore. I used the last of the seeds, and the plants are all dead. It would take decades to replace them.

**Chief Ibanez:** Pack some supplies, and meet me at the gulch tomorrow morning.

**Leandro:** Why?

**Chief Ibanez:** You're going to show me. 

**Leandro:** But... 

//<He sighs in desperate frustration.>//

**Leandro:** They're dead, I told you. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Never stopped me before.

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

As requested, before heading back out Chief Ibanez engaged in a brief consultation with Dr. McDoctorate. The latter was adamant that no record of their conversation be made.

Chief Ibanez and Leandro Pelaez left Puerto Extirpado again the following day, at first light. They travelled together to the altered treeline, at which point Chief Ibanez again left her escort on the shore before walking into the bog, SCP-6500-SWORD in hand.

The pair returned to the village at sunset.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Dr. Okorie exits the Ibanez shack, stretching her back and grunting. It is late evening, and the invisible sun is setting; Puerto Extirpado is bathed in a fierce greenish-yellow glow, and verdant spores begin to catch the light all around her. They are much thicker than usual, settling over the rolling plateau like a blanket. She yawns, and takes a single step in the direction of the gully when a small stone skitters across her path, followed by a filthy brown boot, followed by its owner.>//

//<Chief Ibanez appears around the corner of the shack. Her jumpsuit hangs at her waist, and her armour is deeply scored and plastered with dried green mud. The entire right sleeve, most of the left, and both cuffs are missing. Her hair is alternately slick and matted with more mud which gleams dully in the dying light, or dripping with rotted mulch; even more mud covers every exposed inch of her body and attire, and she leaves a trail of it on the grass behind her. Two bands of rebar encircle her exposed abdomen, presumably bearing the weight of SCP-6500-SWORD which hangs behind her, glowing warmly, sheathe and harness apparently discarded. It is difficult to tell beneath the grime, but she appears physically unharmed.>//

//<Slowly, theatrically, she flexes the muscles of her right arm.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** What the fuck happened? 

//<Chief Ibanez jerks a thumb at herself.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** What did you happen to? 

//<Chief Ibanez grins.>//

[[include component:image-block
    name=http://scp-sandbox-3.wdfiles.com/local--files/harry-blank-8/FWP.jpg|
    caption=Chief Ibanez returns. |
    width=700px|
    align=center|
]]

**Chief Ibanez:** Wholeass dragon.

//<She claws hair out of her face, and wipes the sweat from her brow.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** This time it //took.//

**Dr. Okorie:** Fina, Warrior Princess.

//<Both laugh.>//

//<Dr. Astrauskas exits the shack, turns, and freezes when she sees Chief Ibanez.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** What the hell happened? 

//<Chief Ibanez and Dr. Okorie laugh again.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Where's your father? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Dragging the sack. 

**Dr. Okorie:** What sack?

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

Leandro Pelaez arrived at Facility-34 half an hour later with Chief Ibanez's bag in tow, filled to the brim with //N. cerritulus// revitalized via the anomalous properties of a hyper-energized SCP-6500-SWORD. Dr. McDoctorate performed his baseline tests a second time, and indicated that the TLP's 'pilot light' was now back on. It was possible to return to baseline reality.

The villagers of Puerto Extirpado were informed that a transference would take place the following day, and they should prepare their structures and remove all vital personal possessions to the Facility. A feast was held in the town square using the remainder of their perishable goods, after which Delta-6500 met with the Ibanez/Pelaez family for a final debriefing.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<It is late. Chief Ibanez and Leandro have showered and changed into fresh clothing, and the adults are drinking homemade malt beer from malformed green glass bottles around the kitchen table, except for Pilar who is lying on the floor, sound asleep and snoring.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** All's well that ends well.

**Ursula:** Have you ever heard of tempting fate, Dr. Place?

//<He laughs.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Don't get me started.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** He means that. Don't.

**Dr. Okorie:** You look pretty gutted, Mr. Pelaez.

**Leandro:** Just call me Leandro, please.

**Dr. Okorie:** Leandro. I know you've got misgivings--

//<A tear rolls down his cheek. He doesn't bother to brush it away.>//

**Leandro:** It's not even that.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Then what?

**Leandro:** I just saw my daughter do something I never thought possible. It still seems impossible. It was already impossible to even see her again.

//<Dr. Okorie reaches out to hold his hand. He is surprised, but allows the contact.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** She does that a lot. You won't get used to it, but you will get used to expecting it.

//<He shakes his head.>//

**Leandro:** I never imagined anything like that could be under the ground. I didn't even believe Saray when she told me about her birds. 

**Dr. Okorie:** They might not have existed until recently.

//<He frowns.>//

**Leandro:** How's that?

**Dr. Astrauskas:** This world is waking up. 

**Leandro:** What does that mean? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Nothing good for ours.

//<He appears to give up attempting to understand, and sighs deeply.>//

**Leandro:** I never wanted any of this for you, Fina.

//<She shrugs.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** It's not your problem anymore. It's mine. So you can either help me fix it, or stay out of my way.

//<He nods.>//

**Leandro:** I don't know what help I can be, but you...

//<He smiles tentatively.>//

**Leandro:** You are a //wonder.// Now and always. You only need to ask.

//<Dr. Astrauskas tugs at Chief Ibanez's cheek. The latter scowls, but does not resist.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Our miracle worker.

//<Leandro swirls his bottle, staring at the liquid through the distortion of the glass, then takes a deep breath as though he is building up his courage.>//

**Leandro:** How did the three of you meet? 

**Dr. Okorie:** Roz was in my cohort as a novice thaumaturge. Del was Chief of Security where we worked. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Then lots of people died, and here we are.

//<Leandro blinks.>//

**Ursula:** Our people have married outside the village often, of course. And our ancestors did the same.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Can't sustain a population that low without exogamy. Not healthily, at least.

**Ursula:** My point is, you're not the only one to leave home to find love. 

**Chief Ibanez:** I never left home. Home left me.

//<She empties her bottle, and claps it to the table with finality.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Leandro. You offered, now I'm asking. No more secrets. 

**Ursula:** I think that's for the best. 

**Chief Ibanez:** What was the Chaos Insurgency doing in Zevala?

//<Leandro stands, and leaves the room for a moment to check on where Saray is sleeping. When he returns, he shuts the door behind him before sitting down again and looking under the table at Pilar. She is still snoring.>//

**Leandro:** They were building something. 

**Chief Ibanez:** I know that. What were they building? 

**Ursula:** We never heard. We never even asked. They shot anyone who said anything they didn't like. 

**Leandro:** Your mother...

//<Chief Ibanez raises a hand, a look of warning in her eyes.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I know more about that than you do. But come on. You were all cooped up in their cages for weeks. You must have learned something. 

**Leandro:** Why is that important? It was so long ago. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Because the Insurgency is toast, but the kind of shit they were into? It lingers. We don't understand why they were so focused on Zevala, and we don't know how they're connected to the rest of what's going on, and we can't very well ask them. 

**Leandro:** Didn't you take any prisoners?

**Chief Ibanez:** Me? 

//<She scoffs.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** No.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** And trust me, they had an even bigger taste for cyanide than they had for blue flowers. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Ursula:** I really do not know, Delfina. 

**Leandro:** I do. 

**Ursula:** What? 

**Leandro:** They kept me separate from the others. Made me do things. Tell them things.

//<He shakes his head at the implied question in his wife's eyes.>//

**Leandro:** I'm not going to expand on that. It wouldn't do anybody any good to know. What matters is we're all still alive because of it. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Not all of us. Those people you sold us out to--

**Leandro:** I didn't sell anyone out. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Then who did? How did they find us, d--...?

//<She picks up the bottle again, and swills the last few drops. He waits a moment for her to finish, and resume speaking; when she does not, he does.>//

**Leandro:** Mostly what they wanted was information. A lot of it was about the Facility. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Like what? 

**Leandro:** What it did. How it worked. I played dumb, gave them little tidbits here and there like I was only just now putting the pieces together. Stalling until I saw my chance to get away. To get everyone away. 

**Chief Ibanez:** And you heard things?

**Leandro:** Heard, and saw. They were building something in one of the crevasses. Something big and shiny. And it was taking something out of the air. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Taking what? 

**Leandro:** I don't know. They called it a Hume collector. It was on for weeks, and it chugged through an ungodly amount of fuel. Smoked like a bastard. I think it was draining all the life out of the bay. You remember the sunsets? 

//<Chief Ibanez nods.>//

**Leandro:** They were never the same after that thing was turned on. 

**Ursula:** And the flowers. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Stranger-in-the-Mist? 

**Ursula:** They dredged up the entire cargo from the //Northern Reach.// I know that much.

**Leandro:** And they fed it all in.

//<Dr. McDoctorate suddenly drums the table in triumph. Beneath, Pilar stirs but does not wake.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I knew it! I //knew// it.

//<Dr. Astrauskas leans over, and they share a high-five.>//

**Leandro:** What did you know?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I don't have all the right equipment for this -- it was only just invented, after all, which is why nobody ever ran the tests before -- but I was able to jury-rig some of what I found in the Facility, and it gave us a very strong--

**Chief Ibanez:** Tonight, Place.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** We know why the //Nigella// in the hydroponics worked for all universes, probably.

**Leandro:** I never figured that out myself. The man who taught me didn't know.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** It was Dr. Astrauskas who cracked it, really.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** It was half my magic and half your science. You're much too modest.

**Chief Ibanez:** He really isn't.

**Dr. Okorie:** What did you guys figure out, though?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** That these flowers grow in every dimension. They //exist// in every dimension. And I don't just mean versions of them. The same flowers. The same //instances// of the same flowers. They're entangled across the timeplane. They're a multiversal constant. The name is a misnomer; these flowers are strange to //nowhere.// 

//<The others exchange glances.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Then again, maybe //that's// what it means. Strange to nowhere. Strangers //only// in the mist, the inter-universal gulf where nothing grows but nothing.

//<He shakes himself out of his musing.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** But that's why they give visions. They're connected to every reality.

**Chief Ibanez:** The same flowers blooming under every sun.

**Ursula:** That's beautiful.

**Leandro:** And I let you wear them in your hair.

**Ursula:** That's beautiful, too.

//<He looks away. There are tears in his eyes.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** But what does that have to do with the hydroponics?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** //Nigella// grown in the Facility aren't in any universe. It's a pocket all its own. They're Hume-neutral, and can access the entire set without corrupting the data with local identifiers. That's why they let the TLP get a fix on so many coordinates, and you just have to pick one and see where it goes.

**Dr. Okorie:** Maybe that's what the time dilation was for, too. Maybe it was intentional.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Hmm?

**Dr. Okorie:** So the Facility could regrow its crop without taking up thirty years real-time.

//<His eyes widen.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I really do love how smart we all are. You know that?

**Leandro:** I don't think I will ever understand how people like you exist.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Thank you!

//<Dr. Okorie nudges Dr. McDoctorate.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** What was your secret little chat with Del about? Before she went out to kill the dragon?

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Isn't it obvious? He told her to kill the dragon so the sword could power up and bring the plants back to life.

**Chief Ibanez:** That was my idea. He said it wouldn't work.

**Dr. Okorie:** But... it //did// work.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Powering up the sword was only half of it. Leandro wasn't lying when he said the plants didn't grow well here. That's because their leyline wasn't reliable.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** There //is// no leyline. We established that.

**Dr. Okorie:** But then they could never have grown at all. Wait a fucking second.

//<Chief Ibanez snorts.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Do you get it?

**Dr. Okorie:** No way.

**Chief Ibanez:** //Do you get it?//

**Leandro:** What?

**Dr. Okorie:** Ambulatory leylines.

**Leandro:** What?

**Dr. Okorie:** The dragon?

**Chief Ibanez:** The dragon.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** I do wish I could have seen it. 

//<Leandro grimaces.>//

**Leandro:** You can have my memories.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Not in my skillset. That's Udo's territory.

**Leandro:** Huh?

**Dr. Okorie:** It's a shame none of the camera footage is clear.

**Chief Ibanez:** I'll make sure to bring a Steadicam next time. 

**Ursula:** Well, Pilar drew this.

//<She places a sketch on the table.>//

[[include component:image-block
    name=http://scp-sandbox-3.wdfiles.com/local--files/harry-blank-8/Dino--Drew.jpg|
    caption= Extranormal Entity, rendering by SCP-8273-2. |
    width=700px|
    align=center|
]]

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Oh. //Wow.//

**Dr. Okorie:** You fought //that?//

//<Chief Ibanez glances over the sketch. She whistles appreciatively.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** More or less. Looked a little different close-up, and I think there were more wings. Fatter mouth? Might just have been my... forced perspective.

**Leandro:** Pilar drew this? It's beautiful.

**Ursula:** You should see the wood carvings Saray has been working on.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Ursula:** You really should have just come back home, you silly man. 

//<Leandro flushes, and turns to Chief Ibanez.>//

**Leandro:** What artistic talents have you picked up? Since this is apparently a family of prodigies.

**Chief Ibanez:** Harpsichord. I got into the Royal Academy, but had to defer for a semester so I could see the worlds.

**Ursula:** If I might interrupt. Your plan was to kill the dragon, Delfina. His plan was //also// to kill the dragon. Why did he say your plan wouldn't work?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Her plan was to kill it for the wrong reason. Intentionality matters--

**Drs. Astrauskas and Okorie:** [simultaneously] --when it comes to magic.

**Leandro:** This is //insanity.//

**Chief Ibanez:** Why did you think I lured it to the plantation before killing it?

//<Leandro purses his lips.>//

**Leandro:** Honestly?

//<She nods.>//

**Leandro:** I thought you wanted to frighten me.

//<All laugh.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** It does mean we really do have to be moving on, though.

**Ursula:** Why?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Because that thing was more than just a living leyline. I got the data from the atmospheric collectors we set up around the ridge, and compared it to the dragon guts on Delfina's ruined clothing, and--

**Chief Ibanez:** You went through my laundry?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Woman, I was //doing// your laundry.

//<All laugh.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** The dragon was algal. It was a spore-creature. The same spores we see in the sky every morning and every night.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** By the same, you mean--

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I mean the air we breath is dragon's breath. Yes.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** I //thought// they were getting pretty thick, these last couple days.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** You slew this world's primordial deity, Chief. Or one of them. No matter what else happens next, nothing will be the same. Your coming marked the end of this world's mythical age. The advent of heroes.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Mother of the future.

**Dr. Okorie:** Prometheus with a sword.

//<Chief Ibanez looks up at the ceiling, reflectively.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I didn't mean to harsh your buzz with an inconvenient truth.

//<She shoots him a dirty look.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I can't think of anything to say about that.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Segue!

**Chief Ibanez:** Segue! What were we... right. The machine. The other one. The one the Insurgency was making. What did it //do?//

**Leandro:** Calculations, I heard. Lots and lots of calculations. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Calculations they could only do in Zevala. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Or with something unique to its environment. 

**Dr. Okorie:** Particles in the air. The stuff I was detecting.

**Chief Ibanez:** The festivals.

**Ursula:** What? 

**Chief Ibanez:** What were the festivals? What were they really? 

//<Ursula and Leandro exchange a glance.>//

**Ursula:** We took the village... 

**Leandro:** Elsewhere. 

**Chief Ibanez:** I saw the sky change.

**Leandro:** Of course you did. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Why? Why do that? 

**Ursula:** It's what we've always done. The Prophets started it. 

**Leandro:** It helped protect us. Replenished our defences. Put something in the air that fed the machine that strengthened the dome. 

**Chief Ibanez:** You'd stopped doing it by the time I was a teenager.

**Leandro:** The machine was too far gone by then, and we didn't know how to repair it.

**Ursula:** That's not entirely true. We didn't exactly lose sleep over the decision. We already thought it was too dangerous. 

**Leandro:** We thought the defences were strong enough already.

**Ursula:** We thought it would bring unwanted attention. 

**Chief Ibanez:** The Insurgency? 

**Leandro:** The Foundation.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** But that's what let them in, isn't it? 

**Leandro:** Maybe. Probably. If you ask me, Dom Magnusson sold us out.

**Dr. Okorie:** Who?

**Chief Ibanez:** Captain of the //Northern Reach.// If he was in on it, he sure got paid for his trouble.

**Dr. Okorie:** Is this why the dome hardened before it fell? Why nothing could go in or out? Was that a symptom of it failing, because you didn't keep it fuelled up?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** That's one possibility. It might also have been reacting to the firefight in the sky, closing up shop to protect everyone.

**Chief Ibanez:** Worked great, didn't it.

**Ursula:** What does it matter? What does one more thing that went wrong matter in the long litany? Can't you just let these things go? 

**Leandro:** She's right to question us. We kept so much from them all.

**Chief Ibanez:** All I care about is seeing this thing through. If the Insurgency was building a machine that ran on the emissions of the Facility, or the air in the alternate dimensions...

//<Her eyes suddenly widen, and her mouth snaps shut.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** No.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Alternate dimensions. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Multiversal data sets.

**Dr. Okorie:** The flowers. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** The aura variations. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Fuel. //Churning.//

**Dr. Okorie:** Calculations. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Probability.

**Dr. Okorie:** //No.//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Are we saying...

**Dr. McDoctorate:** It's the only logical explanation. And the timeline works.

//<Drs. Astrauskas, McDoctorate and Okorie each look as though they wish to speak next, but something is holding them back.>//

//<Chief Ibanez makes eye contact with all three in turn, then finally nods.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** That's it, then.

//<They nod back, one by one.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** It's the Engine. They were building the Engine. 

//<Leandro and Ursula are looking back and forth between the four of them.//

**Leandro:** What Engine? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Never mind. I understand now. It let them triangulate. Build up a sort of... cosmic cheat sheet. Visions of the future. Visions they could act on. Oh, Jesus.

**Dr. Okorie:** What? 

**Chief Ibanez:** This changed everything. This //changed// everything. 

//<Drs. Astrauskas, McDoctorate and Okorie are in obvious shock. None speak until Chief Ibanez prompts them again.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Zevala is the reason the Insurgency couped itself. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Reorganized around the Engine. 

**Dr. Okorie:** Change. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** //Change.//

**Chief Ibanez:** //Delta// Command. 

//<Dr. Okorie whistles.>//

**Leandro:** What does all this mean? 

**Chief Ibanez:** It means you gave the worst people in the world a road map to conquest. 

**Ursula:** Conquest of what?

**Chief Ibanez:** Everything.

**Leandro:** But you said they were destroyed. 

**Dr. McDoctorate:** The Engine predicted the future for them, but its predictions stopped being correct a couple years back. Very badly. Something else intervened, and changed the nature of causality. We're still trying to determine what.

**Chief Ibanez:** But that doesn't matter, not in this context. The Insurgency were only the hand of something bigger. Only //one// hand. And they rowed us a long, long way down the river before we cut that hand off.

**Ursula:** Is there anything we can do to fix it? 

**Chief Ibanez:** There's one thing.

//<She stands, walks to the icebox, and begins retrieving a new set of green bottles.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** It's time we brought those sunsets back to Argentina.

[[=]]
@@ @@
[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

//<The scientists and Chief Ibanez are spending the night in the shack, room having been made by the removal of most of the family's possessions to Facility-34. As they lie on their bedrolls, still inebriated, Chief Ibanez turns to face Dr. Astrauskas.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** How did you make sense of it? 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Hmm?

**Chief Ibanez:** The thing with the flowers? 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Oh. 

//<Dr. Astrauskas yawns.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** You're not the only one who learned a new thing in that Facility. I tried something I've never tried before. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Don't keep me in suspense. I'll snap before I bend. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Engineering joke. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Engineering joke. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** I read the aura of the flowers we brought with us. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Flowers have auras?

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Most living things do, but not as complex when they aren't sapient. It only occurred to me to look when I saw the Leading Edge had one. I just wondered. And what I saw was the most incredible little constellation of interlocking Hume spirals you can imagine.

**Chief Ibanez:** I can't imagine that at all.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** I'll draw you a pretty diagram when we get back. Suffice to say I had to go on antipsychotics after. It was... a strain.

//<Chief Ibanez reaches out and interlocks their fingers. A tear rolls down Dr. Astrauskas' cheek.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What?

**Dr. Astrauskas:** They find each other. The flowers. Across all that empty. They stay connected. Entangled. It's...

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah.

//<Dr. Astrauskas clears her throat.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** So after I saw that, I went back down to hydroponics, and checked out all those dead twigs. Hume spirals leave a residuum which lasts a good long while after death, but it should have run out by now. Luckily, time in here is all screwy, so. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Declension and elevation. You could see they'd been using flowers from other dimensions, and storing them alive in the hydroponics. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** I could. It was only a few out of thousands, probably just as an insurance policy. But I knew.

**Chief Ibanez:** Still a bit of a logical leap, wasn't it? I mean, presumably they were growing plants across the multiverse for practical purposes too. Not wanting to rely on the Facility's freezer. That didn't necessarily mean it was a requirement. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** No, you're right. I did make an educated guess. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Based on what? 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Your father seemed so guilty. I knew he couldn't be telling the truth. The way he told it, it wasn't his fault. 

//<Chief Ibanez embraces her where they lie.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Roz, there's a lot you don't know about how guilt works, and I hope you never do.

//<Dr. Okorie embraces her from behind.>//

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Flora aura.

**Drs. Astrauskas and Okorie:** [simultaneously] Shut up.

//<Laughter.>//

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

The following morning, the sun visibly rose over Puerto Extirpado for the first time. The haze had shifted from the horizon to the hills around the village, spores wafting in on the breeze.

After a brief vigil to observe this phenomenon, the villagers were evacuated to Facility-34. Dr. McDoctorate and his technicians prepared to return the Facility to baseline reality, with Leandro providing the requisite data to include the village's standing structures in the transference. Two hours before the scheduled transit, Ursula asked a favour of Chief Ibanez.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<The residents of Puerto Extirpado are milling about in the foyer and halls, the majority of their belongings in Institute-issue backpacks and bags carried on their persons. They are not unpacking, as the transit is expected to be over within the hour.>//

//<Chief Ibanez is watching Saray. The latter is holding the pommel of a sheathed SCP-6500-SWORD, and reciting a litany of her own accomplishments in the alternate dimension. Occasionally, a brief flicker can be seen from the exposed few centimetres of blade. She crows in delight each time this occurs.>//

//<Ursula approaches Chief Ibanez.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Everybody settled?

**Ursula:** Unsettled. But that's the idea, right?

**Chief Ibanez:** Yeah. Where's Pilar?

**Ursula:** And your father?

//<Chief Ibanez shrugs.>//

**Ursula:** Speaking with your wives.

//<Chief Ibanez grimaces.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Any chance you could break that up?

**Ursula:** I propose a trade of favours.

**Chief Ibanez:** Saving your asses isn't enough?

**Ursula:** You're doing that as much for yourself as for us, I think.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Ursula:** There is something I would like to try. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Shoot. 

**Saray:** Bang!

//<The adults look down at her. She grins sheepishly.>//

**Ursula:** I have never had a vision between worlds.

//<Chief Ibanez looks back up at her.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I've never had strawberry shortcake. 

**Ursula:** It's very good. I could make you some, if you like. Just need the strawberries.

**Saray:** What's a strawberry?

**Chief Ibanez:** What would be different about having a vision mid-transit? 

**Ursula:** On the other side, the visions are locked to the future of that world. I wonder if maybe...

**Chief Ibanez:** You can get something of more cosmic significance in between. 

**Ursula:** That's right. 

**Chief Ibanez:** You don't need to be somewhere to be somewhere.

**Ursula:** What?

**Chief Ibanez:** Nothing. What makes you so confident these visions are accurate? Nothing I've seen is falsifiable. It's all either vague stuff, or stuff we don't yet understand. 

**Ursula:** We have seen one thing which came to pass precisely as foretold. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Which is what?

//<Ursula looks down at Saray again.>//

//<Chief Ibanez puts her hand on the little girl's shoulders, and steers her away.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Go play in traffic.

**Saray:** What's traffic?

//<Chief Ibanez points at Dr. McDoctorate, who is attempting to pass through the throng without being drawn into conversation.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** That's traffic. Go get him.

//<Saray bounds off toward Dr. McDoctorate, who attempts to force a smile as he notices her approaching.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** One vision came true. 

**Ursula:** Yes.

**Chief Ibanez:** What did you see?

**Ursula:** The destruction of Zevala. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** No. 

**Ursula:** Yes.

//<Chief Ibanez sits down on the bench, next to SCP-6500-SWORD, then immediately stands up again and begins pacing.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** //No.// Don't tell me you knew that was going to happen.

**Ursula:** We did. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Who's 'we'? 

**Ursula:** Your mother and I.

//<Chief Ibanez stops in her tracks.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** She... you...?

**Ursula:** She was one of the seers, yes. We saw it together. 

**Chief Ibanez:** You knew the Insurgency was going to come. 

**Ursula:** Yes. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Did you know when? 

**Ursula:** No. 

**Chief Ibanez:** But you still could have stopped it. 

**Ursula:** Possibly. 

**Chief Ibanez:** And you didn't even try. 

**Ursula:** That's right. That was the last vision she ever had.

**Chief Ibanez:** When? 

**Ursula:** About a year before you were born. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** She knew she was going to die? 

**Ursula:** We didn't see the details. Just the fire in the sky, reflected on the bay. But we understood the meaning.

**Chief Ibanez:** How could you let it happen? 

**Ursula:** Because we knew we couldn't fail our responsibility to the future twice. We understood the rules too well. Reality would unravel.

//<Ursula wipes at her eyes.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** So, the attack was your penance. Paid by everyone I ever knew.

//<She glances at SCP-6500-SWORD, as though considering drawing it from its sheathe.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Did my mother...

**Ursula:** She wanted to flee. She thought about taking you all and running, maybe securing passage with one of the smuggler ships. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Why didn't she? 

**Ursula:** We had the vision together, but we didn't see precisely the same things. She said... she knew you needed to stay. You needed to be there for it. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Why? Why was it so important we be there when the sky fell?

//<Ursula shakes her head.>//

**Ursula:** Not all of you. Not your sister, or your brothers. Only you. And...

**Chief Ibanez:** What?

**Ursula:** If she defied the visions, where could she flee to? And what would she be leaving behind? She told me... she told me she couldn't destroy your world. It came down to that, in the end.

**Chief Ibanez:** My world was destroyed anyway.

**Ursula:** Not all of it.

//<Chief Ibanez clenches her jaw.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** If this is your attempt to convince me there's something to this bullshit, you took completely the wrong tack. 

**Ursula:** Trust your mother, Fina. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Fina is dead, and so is my mother. 

**Ursula:** She believed so strongly in you, she was willing to die just to give you a chance. A fighting chance. Do this for her. Let //me// do this for her.

//<Chief Ibanez sighs.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I just don't see why we need to give ourselves an obligation to the future. Feels like an unforced error.

**Ursula:** Delfina, our biggest mistake was forgetting that we //always// have an obligation to the future.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Fine. I'll ask Place if he can suss out how the handbrake works. But try to make it a nice vision, alright? I can't even keep all these god damn revelations straight in my head as it is.

//<Ursula places a hand on her shoulder.>//

**Ursula:** Tomorrow is a promise, but I'm afraid I can't make any.

//<Chief Ibanez pulls out her data pad, and scans a schematic of the Facility.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Guess we'll have to settle for making the future itself.

**Ursula:** You've been talking to Pilar.

**Chief Ibanez:** Listening. There's a difference.

[[=]]
@@ @@
[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

//<Ursula is sitting on a couch in one of the Facility-34 dormitories. The fabric is an unfamiliar polymer, and has not degraded through years of disuse; the Facility air recyclers have deposited a great deal of dust everywhere, but Ursula has made the room habitable with her novel discovery of a vacuum cleaner.>//

//<Chief Ibanez is sitting in a wooden dining chair, watching as the older woman crushes a single specimen of// N. cerritulus //with a stone mortar and pestle.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Place says running the stabilization cycle should be enough. We don't need to pull an actual transit for your vision. We should be partially de-realized now, and it'll last about twenty minutes.

**Ursula:** That's good. I'd like to be there with the others to witness when we finally leave home for good.

//<The door to the room opens, and Chief Ibanez turns to see Pilar.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I didn't tell anyone where we went.

**Pilar:** You didn't have to. You're the local celebrity. Everyone knows where you are.

//<She sits down on the couch beside her mother.>//

**Ursula:** You don't need to be here for this. It might get... strange.

**Pilar:** I hope so.

**Chief Ibanez:** You have something in mind?

**Pilar:** I want to share the vision.

//<Ursula stares at her.>//

**Pilar:** Well?

**Ursula:** I was going to tell you 'no'.

**Pilar:** You usually do.

**Chief Ibanez:** I thought you didn't do the visions anymore.

**Pilar:** She doesn't. I mean in general.

//<Ursula sighs.>//

**Ursula:** You're an adult, and it //is// your birthright. And we might learn something interesting if we try.

**Chief Ibanez:** How's that?

**Ursula:** She's not from Earth at all. She was born in Puerto Extirpado. It's possible she'll bring something even more foreign to the vision.

**Chief Ibanez:** It's //not// possible this could hurt her, though. Right?

//<Pilar smiles warmly at her.>//

**Ursula:** I wouldn't consider letting her try if it was. Your Rozálie tells me we're human, adults and children all. Nothing physiologically different. There are virtually no physical side effects to these plants.

//<She picks up a decanter of blue liquid from the coffee table, and mixes it with the crushed leaves.>//

**Pilar:** How do we do this?

**Ursula:** Draw your finger through the bowl, then place the mixture on your tongue. That's all.

**Pilar:** No mystical chants?

**Chief Ibanez:** We could pipe in 'Don't Cry For Me, Argentina' if you think it'd calm you down.

**Pilar:** What's Argentina?

//<Silence on recording.>//

//<Chief Ibanez and Ursula laugh.>//

**Pilar:** What?

**Chief Ibanez:** And yet she knows what Italy is.

**Pilar:** No, I just said I did to speed up your pointless metaphor.

//<Chief Ibanez raises an eyebrow.>//

**Ursula:** Are you ready?

//<Pilar straightens her back on the couch, and nods.>//

//<Ursula reaches around her daughter's shoulders and presses her down until she relaxes again, then holds the mortar out to her.>//

//<Both women draw a portion of the mixture from the bowl, and press it to their tongues. They sit back on the couch, and share a look.>//

//<Chief Ibanez looks back and forth between the two of them.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** When does it start?

//<Mother and daughter are still staring at each other, intently. Their eyes begin moving rapidly.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Oh.

**Ursula:** I see infinity.

**Chief Ibanez:** That's a lot.

//<Neither woman gives any physiological sign that she can hear Chief Ibanez.>//

**Ursula:** All is colour and brilliance. I can see farther than the farthest light. I can see each mote of dust. I am at the heart of all things.

//<Pilar winces, but says nothing.>//

**Ursula:** They are arguing.

**Chief Ibanez:** Who's arguing?

//<Ursula squints. She looks afraid.>//

**Ursula:** Oh, they are angry. They are both so //very// angry.

**Chief Ibanez:** I should have had Udo put her brain reader thing in your skulls.

**Ursula:** I can see you, Pilar, I think. I see a silhouette, watching them.

//<Still Pilar does not speak.>//

**Ursula:** They are apart. They have been //set// apart.

//<She smiles wickedly.>//

**Ursula:** It worked. It really worked.

**Chief Ibanez:** Your plan? The old plan? Why am I talking to myself.

//<Ursula suddenly starts. Her eyes roll back in her skull.>//

**Ursula:** I don't understand.

//<Chief Ibanez leans in, but does not ask another question.>//

**Ursula:** I don't... I don't //understand.// Why are you doing that, Pilar?

//<Pilar is twitching, and clenching the surface of the couch cushion she sits on.>//

**Ursula:** No!

//<Her eyes snap open.>//

//<She looks at Pilar.>//

//<Pilar is weeping.>//

//<Ursula draws her daughter into an embrace, and begins singing softly into her ear. Her voice is too quiet to be discerned.>//

//<Pilar awakens, and clutches desperately at her mother.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What did you see? Both of you?

//<Ursula looks at her, clearly troubled.>//

**Ursula:** Did you hear what I said?

**Chief Ibanez:** I heard.

**Ursula:** The stars were wheeling all around, and I was watching them fall. Not the stars, but //them.//

**Chief Ibanez:** The brothers.

//<Ursula nods.>//

**Ursula:** We had placed them there. I knew this. But there was something else out there, something hungry, and...

//<She cries out.>//

**Ursula:** We make it worse. Delfina, //we are going to make it so much worse.//

**Chief Ibanez:** You said you saw Pilar. Was she the hungry thing?

//<Ursula shakes her head emphatically.>//

**Ursula:** When we see each other, in the vision, we take the form of one of its subjects. That's all it was. It doesn't mean anything.

**Chief Ibanez:** Okay.

**Ursula:** It doesn't mean //anything.//

**Chief Ibanez:** Okay. What did you see, Pilar?

//<Pilar shrugs. Her eyes are haunted.>//

**Pilar:** I saw what she saw.

//<Ursula squeezes her tightly.>//

**Ursula:** The first time is always hard. You did well, Pilar. As I knew you would.

//<Ursula lets go of Pilar and stands, brushing her hands on her dress.>//

**Ursula:** I need to go see what Saray is doing.

**Chief Ibanez:** Good idea. She's too much like me.

//<Ursula smiles sadly.>//

**Ursula:** They both are.

//<With a meaningful look at Pilar, she leaves the dormitory, closing the door behind her.>//

//<Pilar shudders.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You lie to her very often?

//<Pilar stares at her, then bursts into laughter. It is high and almost manic.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What did you see?

**Pilar:** I didn't see any of what she saw. 

//<She takes a deep breath, and shudders.>//

**Pilar:** I was standing on the shore of a lake. It was blue. I've never seen a blue lake before, or a blue sky. But sometimes the sky wasn't blue. Sometimes it was red, and sometimes black, and there was no lake at all, and the world was just this endless mass of boxes on boxes on boxes, and sometimes everything //crawled,// and... I saw all of you. 

**Chief Ibanez:** All of who? 

**Pilar:** You. Your people. I've never seen them before, but I knew who they were. There were so many of them, but it was never enough. 

**Chief Ibanez:** It has to be enough. 

**Pilar:** It won't be. 

**Chief Ibanez:** I promise you--

**Pilar:** I saw you die. 

//<Chief Ibanez shrugs.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Okay.

//<Pilar's eyes widen, and her brows knit.>//

**Pilar:** Okay?! How is that okay?!

**Chief Ibanez:** I've never been afraid to die. The first time I realized I could, I didn't care. I haven't started caring since.

//<Pilar examines her sister's face.>//

**Pilar:** Is that true?

//<She shakes her head. Her breathing is rapid and uneven. She appears to be near to a panic attack.>//

//<Chief Ibanez reaches out and takes her hand.>//

**Pilar:** But it's not what I meant. Delfina.

**Chief Ibanez:** Then what did you mean? 

**Pilar:** I mean //I saw you die.//

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Pilar:** All of you. 

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

In final preparation for the transit, the Extirpadans engaged in their unsevering ritual in the foyer of Facility-34. There is no documentation or recording testifying to the nature of this ritual, as by their request no Foundation personnel were to attend the ceremony -- save for Chief Ibanez.

She declined to offer testimony about what she saw and heard, though she did make a few brief observations in the presence of Dr. Okorie.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Dr. Okorie is waiting in the hall when Chief Ibanez emerges, looking dazed. The Extirpadans are collecting their effects again, and speaking with each other in hushed tones.>//

//<Chief Ibanez spits a single blue seed into a trash bin by the door.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** You okay?

//<Chief Ibanez nods.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** What's wrong?

**Chief Ibanez:** It's just...

//<She staggers to the nearest bench, and sits down on it heavily.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** Del?

 **Chief Ibanez:** I already knew it, but know I... now I know it. I can feel it. For certain.

**Dr. Okorie:** What? What do you know?

 **Chief Ibanez:** That's why it left me behind.

//<Dr. Okorie waits for clarification.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I wasn't there for the ritual when they left me. I was still severed.

//<Dr. Okorie sits down, and puts her arms around her.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** But you stayed connected anyway. 

//<The two embrace.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** And you've been making more connections ever since.

//<Chief Ibanez sighs.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** And showing me up, in the process.

//<Chief Ibanez pulls back, and looks up at Dr. Okorie in confusion.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** I meet one long-lost sister, you've got to one-up me and find two.

//<Chief Ibanez laughs, then shoves Dr. Okorie back to her side of the bench.>//

//<Dr. Astrauskas rounds the corner, sees the two of them, and smiles broadly.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You want some too?

//<Dr. Astrauskas continues to smile, and says nothing.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** //What.// Am I wearing something of yours?

**Dr. Okorie:** Roz?

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Remember what I said about your Hume spirals being broken?

[[=]]
@@ @@
[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

//<With the ritual complete, all personnel reported ready for the TLP's activation.>//

//<Chief Ibanez stands at the controls to the machine, Dr. McDoctorate beside her and Drs. Astrauskas and Okorie behind with Leandro and Ursula Pelaez, and their daughters. The Extirpadans are holding hands.>//

**Pilar:** What about the bodies?

//<Ursula frowns.>//

**Ursula:** What?

**Pilar:** They're not alive, and they're... still biological. You know what I mean. The machine won't target them, will it? Are we leaving them behind? In the graveyard? 

//<Chief Ibanez glances back at them.>//

//<Leandro has difficulty speaking. His voice is hoarse.>//

**Leandro:** We're not leaving them behind, big fish. They're coming with us.

//<He raises her hand, and presses it against his heart.>//

**Leandro:** Always with us.

//<Pilar bites her upper lip.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** All green.

//<Pilar turns away from her father, eyes shining.>//

**Pilar:** Story of my life.

//<Chief Ibanez glances back at her, a glint in her eye.>//

**Ursula:** We can always come back, you know. It's not forever.

**Leandro:** No.

//<The entire group turns to look at him.>//

**Leandro:** This is the last trip.

//<He makes eye contact with Chief Ibanez as Pilar and Ursula hold his hands tighter.>//

//<She nods.>//

//<She turns back to the console.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Let's go home.

//<She presses the button.>//

//<As before, the TLP spins to life, and reality collapses like a television signal before abruptly reasserting itself. The process takes no more than one minute, though time is severely dilated.>//

//<The light subsides, and the machine spins back down. The group exchange glances.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Welcome back to b--

//<There is an earsplitting CRACK, and the floor shakes.>//

//<Chief Ibanez reaches for her radio as it crackles to life. The voice of Captain Seon Ji-Hun fills the air.>//

**Captain Seon:** Delta-6500, that had better be you.

//<There is a second CRACK, now obviously representing a distant explosion. The next is not so distant; the lights flicker, and one of the ceiling tiles falls. Pilar screams.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** What the hell is--

**Chief Ibanez:** This is Delta-6500 actual! Report!

**Captain Seon:** Aerial assault. Bombers with fighter escort. Lost contact with sentries in the forest, might be ground pounders on their way too. No positive ID yet. 

**Chief Ibanez:** Who else could it be? 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** It can't be. Not anymore. 

**Chief Ibanez:** What planet have you been living on? There's no not anymore anymore. This is just the way shit is now. 

//<She thumbs the radio again.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Hold the line, cap. We'll back you up.

**Captain Seon:** Never any doubts, Chief.

**Chief Ibanez:** You hearing this, Nasty?

//<Agent Koslova's voice comes over the radio.>//

**Agent Koslova:** Loud and.

**Chief Ibanez:** You and Georgiy get to the Zevala-side airlock. You're gonna have civilians to protect.

**Agent Koslova:** Roger roger.

//<Chief Ibanez gathers the scientists in a huddle while the Pelaez family look on, terrified and confused.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Roz, you watch the villagers. Use your juju to identify anybody who looks like they're gonna try and be a hero. 

**Dr. Astrauskas:** I can already see at least one.

**Chief Ibanez:** Place, the dome defence.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Still pooched. Take months to reverse-engineer.

**Chief Ibanez:** Then coordinate evacuation. You've got survey data for the gulch, right?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Right.

**Chief Ibanez:** There's a cave off the main drag, just a few hundred metres from the exit.

**Dr. Okorie:** Caves collapse.

**Chief Ibanez:** You can strengthen it on the way, while you close the gulley roof so we don't get torn to ribbons on the way out.

//<Dr. Okorie reaches for her reagents pouch.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** Too bloody right I can.

//<Chief Ibanez looks past the huddle, to the Pelaez family.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Pilar, you make sure everyone sticks together. Including Roz. And take care of your sister.

**Pilar:** What are you going to do? 

**Chief Ibanez:** Same thing I did last time. Only better. 

**Dr. Okorie:** You're not going to try make me stay, too?

//<Chief Ibanez catches Saray's eye. The little girl has produced one of her knotty green sticks from somewhere; she raises it over her head, and smiles.>//

//<Chief Ibanez grins at her.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Fuck no. I learned my lesson. This time the Warrior and the Warlock take one path, together.

//<She grabs Dr. Okorie's hand, and pulls her out of the control room in the direction of the armoury.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You and me are gonna rebaptize Zevala.

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

----

[[# anchor-16]]

**Addendum 8273-16, Battle of Zevala:** Chief Ibanez acquired a set of powered armour from the Facility-34 lockup, matching the set she donned during the original Operation TAILWIND KITE, before exiting the Facility with Dr. Okorie. They emerged into a battle already in progress between unidentified assailants and Foundation operatives, including the support personnel for Delta-6500 and first responders including MTFs Dseda-8 ("Desperta Ferro"), Delta-4 ("Minutemen"), Delta-45 ("Rolling Thunder"), and Sigma-9 ("Valkyries"). The battle had begun approximately one hour prior with the tracking of a large aerial force of unknown origin across the Andes Mountains and proceeding rapidly to Caleta San Roque. Immediate casualties on both sides were extremely high, with the attackers engaging in reckless, often self-destructive behaviour. The battle was complicated by the sudden reappearance of the entire village of Zevala on its former footprint, including the remains of the old Chaos Insurgency fortifications and a variety of new structures constructed in the interim; the attackers began indiscriminately firing on and bombing the Zevalan shacks as well, though they also began concentrating particular firepower on the gulch now containing Facility-34. A combination of Foundation resistance and geography prevented serious damage from being inflicted as the Facility resettled in baseline reality, though fighting continued to be fierce.

Dr. Okorie provided cover for Dr. McDoctorate to evacuate the Extirpadans from Facility-34 and secure them in the cave indicated by Chief Ibanez. She then joined the Chief at the mouth of the gulch, looking out on the beach and the bay beyond.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<The sun is setting, and the sky is streaked with smoke. Two high-tech aircraft, one a Foundation Valkyrie and the other a ramshackle amalgam of a variety of airframe components, collide in midair with an ear-shattering explosion. Pieces of melted metal and polymer fall into the bay, which is already sizzling with debris. The hulk of the// Northern Reach //groans as it resettles in the new geography, slipping deeper beneath the water; only the stern is now visible.>//

//<The bay is festooned with a dazzling array of painted metal shacks, though many of these are on fire or have been flattened by bombs. More bombs are still falling, impacting the table and the surrounding cliffs and throwing masses of earth and vegetation into the air. A cloud of green spores is rising from the shacks and their immediate surroundings, occluding visibility for the time being, though it is gradually mixing with the local atmosphere and dissipating. Foundation personnel in heavy armour are on the ground, setting up portable artillery emplacements and engaging in pitched battle with the unknown assailants, who are fielding ground troops wearing the uniforms of a variety of known military, paramilitary, and para-military outfits. Between the gunfire, artillery, explosions, collapsing cliffs and shouting, it is almost impossible to discern plain speech.>//

//<Chief Ibanez is outfitted head to foot in heavy ceramic armour. Servos can faintly be heard whining when she moves her limbs, or turns her head. She hands Dr. Okorie a portable radio, and speaks into her helmet mic.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Is there a thaumaturge classification past Class-4?

**Dr. Okorie:** If there is, it's classified, so I don't know! I don't think so?

**Chief Ibanez:** Then that's our goal here.

**Dr. Okorie:** What is?

**Chief Ibanez:** Make them make one.

//<Dr. Okorie stares at her, then grins and nods.>//

//<Planes whir overhead. A new squadron of attackers is approaching from the west, over the rim of the cliffs. Chief Ibanez points at them, then at herself, then up at the open sky.>//

//<Dr. Okorie blinks.>//

//<Chief Ibanez presses her helmet to Dr. Okorie's forehead.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Let slip.

//<Dr. Okorie's eyes widen as Chief Ibanez steps back, reaches over her shoulder, and draws SCP-6500-SWORD.>//

//<Dr. Okorie takes a handful of// vim harenae //from her reagents pouch, and sprinkles it on the ground. The soil is a mixture of the brown of Caleta San Roque and trace amounts of green from Puerto Extirpado. The red grains mix with the brown and green, and a mass of particles surrounds Chief Ibanez and lifts her off the ground.>//

//<Dr. Okorie turns to face the planes, hands raised, and flexes her fingers.>//

//<Chief Ibanez is propelled into the sky as the fighter planes align into a sloppy arrowhead formation. She draws SCP-6500-SWORD back as they roar toward her. Her suit telemetry indicates she is one hundred and thirty-one metres above the ground when she swings SCP-6500-SWORD, and an arc of blinding light strikes each of the planes at the moment they reach her longitude.>//

//<Two of the five planes veer off wildly, clipping each other's wings and spiralling down to strike the bay and the bayside cliffs. One pulls up. The other two begin to corkscrew, but maintain their courses. The particles around Chief Ibanez coalesce, cushioning her, and she is deposited roughly on the cockpit of the closest plane.>//

//<She raises her hands high above her head, and brings SCP-6500-SWORD down with tremendous force on the cockpit glass. The pilot's eyes are visible beneath their helmet; they are wide with terror and confusion.>//

//<The canopy shatters, and Chief Ibanez falls into the plane. She slices the pilot's harness with SCP-6500-SWORD, drives it into their chest, locks her boots onto the cockpit frame and levers them out of their chair. They fall, blood gushing out in spirals and body striking the left wing before pinwheeling down to the waters of the bay.>//

//<Chief Ibanez drops herself into the chair, standing on the seat to better access the controls. Her suit's onboard systems adapt to the interface automatically, and she is able to achieve fine control of the craft's course in a matter of seconds. She veers hard to the right, and just as she is about to collide with the dead pilot's wingman, she kicks off and out of the cockpit.>//

//<She falls for several metres as the two planes violently disintegrate; on the ground, Dr. Okorie is briefly distracted by the need to create a stone portico over the mouth of the gulch to protect herself from being strafed. Chief Ibanez screams, then stops abruptly as the particles coalesce around her again and arrest her descent.>//

//<There are now dozens of craft in the air. The attackers are chipping away relentlessly at the gulch. Captain Seon is heard over Chief Ibanez's suit radio:>//

**Captain Seon:** All assets, Code Pyre on grid 7. Code Pyre, grid 7.

//<A pillar of light appears, stretching from outer space to the surface of the bay. It is five metres in diameter. One half of an Insurgent troop carrier, the other half now nonexistent, is flung down into the sizzling hole as the waters refill themselves. Human forms tumble from the doors and leap from rear bay. Several attempt low altitude parachute deployment, but their chutes burn away immediately.>//

//<Dr. McDoctorate eases an outwardly-unresponsive Dr. Okorie into his arms. As he is doing this, a heavily modified black transport helicopter swings into position, and begins firing heavy rounds from a door-mounted rotary cannon. Dseda-8 personnel return fire, forming a protective perimeter around the mouth of the gulch, but many are mowed down where they stand due to the lack of cover. Rock faces burst from the ground to protect the casualties, courtesy Dr. Okorie, and medics move in to provide first aid.>//

//<Chief Ibanez is lifted toward the helicopter.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Not the door! My armour won't-- WHAT ARE YOU--

//<Chief Ibanez braces for impact as Dr. Okorie's particles fling her at the helicopter's undercarriage. Her momentum decreases substantially as she is pressed to the metal plates, and she swings SCP-6500-SWORD -- now glowing so brightly as to artifact on the camera feed -- to carve an entrance. Rivets pop and plates melt, and the particles press Chief Ibanez up through the helicopter's internals, hacking and slashing, to emerge in the centre of the troop compartment.>//

//<Camera feed is obscured by red. Sounds of screaming and shouting barely cut the din of gunfire and explosions. The rattling of the rotary gun abruptly ceases, and Chief Ibanez's view clears. She is wiping blood from her helmet visor on a set of combat fatigues attached to a headless corpse, which she pushes out the open window. The cabin is filled with dead and dying men. She grabs the rotary gun, raises it up, and begins firing on the nearest attacking aircraft. Two planes disassemble in midair, their components raining on the roofs of Zevala, before the helicopter abruptly banks and she is nearly thrown out the still-open door.>//

//<Chief Ibanez grips the nearest stanchion hard enough to dent the metal, and flings herself toward the cockpit. She swings SCP-6500-SWORD, severing both the headrests and heads of the pilot and co-pilot. Beyond, an attacking plane is flying directly toward the helicopter, guns firing. The cabin is suddenly filled with daylight from hundreds of machine gun holes. Chief Ibanez swings SCP-6500-SWORD again, harder, and a wave of red flame sweeps out from the blade's edge, shattering the cockpit glass and billowing out into the open air. She takes cover behind the remains of the co-pilot and his chair as the plane catches up to the wave of fire -- apparently unaffected by momentum -- which is sucked into the fuselage within and jet intakes without. There is a series of explosions from the aircraft's wings, and it begins to roll precariously. Chief Ibanez leaps back, grabs a handhold, and hurls herself from the open door as the craft's interior is consumed by flame and it continues to spiral. She is caught by a sheet of sparkling red and green particles, which gently slow her descent by increasing gradually in density as she falls. Overhead, the plane careens into one of its wing mates, and both erupt into a single brilliant ball of flame.>//

//<The attackers at the mouth of the gulch disappear as a second orbital cannon shot reduces a wide stretch of beach to gleaming green glass.>//

//<Chief Ibanez continues to fall, in the vicinity of the town hall and the remains of the pier. A massive cloud of dust rises up from the rim of the Zevalan cliffs, consolidates into the shape of an enormous human hand with long, delicate fingers, and swats three approaching bombers out of the sky, a trail of white fire streaking the red horizon.>//

[[include component:image-block
    name=http://scp-sandbox-3.wdfiles.com/local--files/harry-blank-8/Battle.jpg|
    caption= The Battle of Zevala. |
    width=700px|
    align=center|
]]

//<Chief Ibanez's camera feed telescopes, revealing Dr. Okorie standing at the mouth of the gully, Foundation agents in a protective circle around her and Dr. McDoctorate still supporting her weight. She rotates her wrist, and the particle hand follows suit, thrusting up into the clouds to intercept the next flight of attackers.>//

//<Chief Ibanez whoops, and her armour registers several hits from small arms fire. She laughs as the particles deposit her on the ground, and twirls SCP-6500-SWORD while a squadron of enemy infantry take cover around her position and continue to open fire.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Can't you do math?

//<She engages the belligerents, cackling as SCP-6500-SWORD catches fire and continues to burn for the remainder of the encounter, which lasts approximately twenty-two seconds.>//

//<Spores are rising from the burning structures in the village, and the horizon subtly shifts to a more complex spectrum incorporating magenta and gold.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Confirm evacuation.

//<Dr. McDoctorate's voice comes over the radio as Chief Ibanez heads for the nearest gun emplacement, where Foundation agents have been overrun by enemy troops in a wild variety of inappropriate camouflage patterns.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Almost everyone. Udo's unconscious.

**Captain Seon:** Opposing force in disorderly rout.

//<Another voice breaks in.>//

**Voice:** Valkyrie-1 here. We show armour moving in on the ridge around the Facility. Need orbital support, our rounds can't penetrate.

**Captain Seon:** Can't fire the OWP again without risking the Masq. Two was pushing it already.

**Chief Ibanez:** And we can't lose the TLP. We //cannot// lose that machine, people. Sound off!

//<A series of quick responses indicate that no Foundation personnel are available or able to intercept the new attackers.>//

//<Chief Ibanez has reached the gun emplacement. She beheads the nearest enemy, and his corpse catches fire.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** EYES CLOSED!

//<She raises SCP-6500-SWORD, still running, and a blinding flash is emitted. The attackers fall to the ground, clutching their eyes, and the surviving Foundation agents take full advantage. Chief Ibanez is still running; the servos in her leg motors are now whining loud enough to be heard through the din.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** I need ten minutes. Buy me ten minutes!

**Captain Seon:** That's a negative, Chief, no assets in the vicinity.

**Chief Ibanez:** Somebody! Place--

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I think she'll die if I try to wake her up.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Del!

**Chief Ibanez:** What?!

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Your dad--

//<Yet another voice cuts in on the same channel.>//

**Leandro:** Tell your planes to wave off! All of them!

//<Chief Ibanez is moving up the northeastern rise, pounding divots into the earth with the force of her footfalls. She is bounding, barely touching the ground, but she is not out of breath.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What are you doing?

**Leandro:** Did you know this place came with an instruction manual?

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Don't you fucking dare say--

**Leandro:** I burned it, with the flowers.

**Chief Ibanez:** What are you //doing?//

**Leandro:** Exercising my Directorial privilege. Are you running right now?

**Chief Ibanez:** Of course I'm fucking running!

**Leandro:** Stop.

//<She runs faster. Her HUD shows internal stress and rising heat levels as the motors struggle to keep up.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Never do.

**Leandro:** It's okay. I need you to stop running before I do this.

**Chief Ibanez:** Not on your life.

**Leandro:** Fina! STOP!

**Chief Ibanez:** NO!

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Ow! Jesus!

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Oh my god...

//<There is a sudden gust, and a wall of soil erupts in front of Chief Ibanez. She bursts through it, then another, then another, and although she does not stop running, it does slow her momentum. The dust forms into a hand, much smaller than before, and guides her to a halt against the cliff face.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** [weakly] I've got you.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Udo!

**Chief Ibanez:** What's wrong? I can't see! Roz?

**Leandro:** Is she stopped?

**Dr. Okorie:** She's stopped...

**Leandro:** Good.

//<A sudden whine fills the air, audible across the bay.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Dad...

**Leandro:** I told you, Fina.

//<The whine rises in intensity, and the final message can barely be discerned.>//

**Leandro:** This is the last trip.

//<A pillar of superheated plasma rises up from the terminus of the Facility gulch, catching a stray enemy airbus and obliterating it instantly. An electromagnetic pulse rebounds from the centre of the explosion, and all electronic devices in a wide radius immediately cease function. The attacking armour stop abruptly, at the lip of the gulch, then tumble down into the white-hot pit that has formed where Facility-34 once stood. The surrounding cliffs collapse.>//

//<Chief Ibanez's HUD flickers out.>//

//<She is weeping.>//

//<Behind her, the// Northern Reach //slides silently beneath the surface of the bay.>//

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

----

[[# anchor-17]]

**Addendum 8273-17, Aftermath:** Minutes after the destruction of Facility-34, a message was received at Foundation facilities across the globe. Taking advantage of a security vulnerability (since closed), all personnel were for a brief period able to access this message. A reproduction is appended below.

[[div class="chaos"]]
[[=]]
+ The sun is shining.

But your shadow thins on the dial, as we pass from the daylight hours. 
You turn to witness the final light, and we rise to deny you its closure.

The look on your faces!

[[=image CR.png]]

+ We are Chaos Resurgent.

No more daisies and dance steps. We bring an abyss. 

You deny us nothing: a charnel pit, and hollow men. 
He gives us everything. 

We deny you the pattern. 
He sees it still.

All prophets are used.

This sun will forget you.
The next will never know.

++ SIX. SEVEN. SEVEN.
[[div style="height: 12px"]]
[[/div]]
[[/=]]
[[/div]]

The Emergent Threat Tactical Response Authority is presently considering the implications of the above.

Chief Ibanez found her armour permanently disabled by the electromagnetic pulse attending the destruction of Facility-34. As such she quickly dismantled the suit, and made her way to the gulch and its attached cave on foot at a rapid pace. 

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<The Extirpadans, now Zevalans again, are clustered around the back of the shallow cave. Some are being treated for minor abrasions by Foundation medics, as are a large number of Foundation agents. Emergency lights have been set up throughout, though a great deal of firelight is coming through the open mouth of the cave; beyond, Caleta San Roque is plastered from east to west with the flaming debris of dozens of aircraft and littered with uncountable corpses.>//

//<Chief Ibanez appears, puffing, having run at a constant rate of speed across nearly half the length of the plateau.>//

//<Dr. Astrauskas waves from the eastern end.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Del!

//<Chief Ibanez approaches, still at a run. Her eyes are wild, and she is covered in a thick sheen of sweat. She skids to a stop, nearly slipping on the slick stone, and takes a knee in front of Dr. Astrauskas.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Oh my god.

//<She weeps as she falls on the prone figure of Leandro Ibanez, who is breathing shallowly and coughing. Beside him, Dr. Okorie is propped up on her elbows, grinning; Ursula, Pilar, and Saray are sitting on the cave floor by his head, also grinning.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Oh my god.

//<Leandro's eyes open, and he looks up at his daughter.>//

**Leandro:** Guess it worked.

//<Chief Ibanez presses her head to his chest, and wraps her arms around him tightly. He holds his hands out, hesitating; Ursula reaches down and places them on Chief Ibanez's back. He holds her tight, and closes his eyes.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Asshole.

**Leandro:** What?

//<She pulls him even closer.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Fucking //asshole.// I thought you blew yourself up.

**Leandro:** I thought so too.

//<Dr. Okorie places a hand on Chief Ibanez's shoulder. Chief Ibanez reaches up to entwine their fingers.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** [muffled] You getting electrolytes?

**Leandro:** I'm f--

**Dr. Okorie:** She means me.

//<Dr. Astrauskas pokes Dr. Okorie, who grimaces.>//

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Your wife shocked her own heart.

//<Chief Ibanez looks up.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** What?

**Dr. Astrauskas:** Her consciousness was still in the particles when she passed out. She defibrillated herself. Gave Place a nasty zap, too. 

//<Chief Ibanez glares at both of them. Dr. Okorie laughs, hoarsely.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** Well, it worked. You're welcome for saving your dad, and stopping you from pancaking in your armour when the EMP hit.

**Chief Ibanez:** Get over here.

//<Dr. Okorie scoots closer, and embraces Chief Ibanez over Leandro. Dr. Astrauskas follows suit. After a moment, Saray joins them.>//

//<Chief Ibanez reaches up to ruffle her youngest sister's hair.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Little punk.

**Saray:** What does that even mean?

//<Pilar puts a hand on Saray's shoulder.>//

**Pilar:** It's a compliment.

//<Saray kisses Chief Ibanez on the cheek. The latter's eyes widen in surprise.>//

**Saray:** You're a punk too, Fina.

//<Ursula laughs.>//

//<One by one, they withdraw to sit in a rough circle around Leandro's prone form. He sits up; Dr. McDoctorate arrives, and kicks a pillow under the other man's head.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Well, that's another scientific miracle blown to hell.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** There'll always be more.

**Dr. McDoctorate:** Right, because I'm going to build them.

//<He sits down between Dr. Astrauskas and Pilar.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** I'll design mine not to blow up.

//<Chief Ibanez takes her father's hand.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** You did that so they couldn't have it.

//<Leandro nods.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Even though it traps you here.

**Leandro:** Don't read too much into it. If they'd stolen the thing, we'd still be trapped here.

**Chief Ibanez:** Still, it was a nice gesture.

//<She winces.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** Even if it might have totally fucked us all.

**Leandro:** What?

**Chief Ibanez:** The vision. Without the Facility...

**Leandro:** What vision?

//<Ursula gently brushes his sweat-matted hair from his forehead.>//

**Ursula:** The future can wait another day. I have a more pressing concern. Who attacked us?

//<Dr. McDoctorate adopts a grim expression.>//

**Dr. McDoctorate:** It's who you think, more or less.

//<He takes a tablet out of his labcoat, and turns it so Chief Ibanez can see.>//

//<She glances at the message, and grunts.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** At least they're keeping to the theme, this time around.

**Dr. Astrauskas:** What do you think it means?

//<Dr. Okorie considers.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** Maybe they've decided they really do like chaos, after all.

**Chief Ibanez:** It's a lot worse than that.

//<All eyes turn to her.>//

**Chief Ibanez:** It means they've decided that chaos is going to win.

//<Pilar looks away. Ursula looks at the cave ceiling.>//

//<Leandro squeezes Chief Ibanez's hand, and she looks down at him again.>//

**Leandro:** I'll bet you've got something to say about that.

//<Chief Ibanez smiles at him. She releases his hand -- he is slow to reciprocate -- and struggles to stand. The others look up at her.>//

**Dr. Okorie:** Where are you going?

**Chief Ibanez:** To get my answer.

[[=]]
@@ @@
[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

//<Half an hour later, Chief Ibanez returns to the cave. The last of the living casualties have been brought inside, and Dr. McDoctorate is tinkering with the lights, attempting to get more wattage out of them.>//

//<This proves entirely unnecessary, as Chief Ibanez holds SCP-6500-SWORD over her head, and all present immediately shield their eyes from the intensity of its glow.>//

//<All save for Leandro Pelaez, who squints into the glare, and smiles.>//

**Leandro:** That's my daughter.

**Chief Ibanez:** You're goddamn right.

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

Task Forces Command has officially reactivated PTF Delta-6500 under the command of Chief Ibanez, with Drs. Astrauskas and Okorie as operational assets and Dr. McDoctorate as consultant, and granted it purview over the Foundation's response to GoI-003 ("Chaos Resurgent"). 

FP-15 has been reclassified from neutralized to an active Free Port, and the residents of Zevala have unconditionally accepted Foundation protection. Reclassification of SCP-8273 from Terminarch is pending, as she is no longer the last of her kind.

As her new duties allow, Chief Ibanez has been unanimously nominated by all involved parties as the Foundation's liaison to FP-15. She has accepted. Her sister Pilar will represent the Free Port.

The 'severing' ritual has not been reimplemented.

Operation CICLO is closed.
SCP-8273 (2)

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