Wind in the Sails

Link to article: Wind in the Sails.

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The most important part of deception is believing your lie wholeheartedly. Singer was right; after Katzin climbed into the ceiling and kicked out a loose panel, he found himself in a huge concrete pit. Above and below him, a patchwork of metal and concrete boxes outlined the actual structure of the site. The construction was efficient with their space, so going from floor to floor felt more like spelunking in a concrete cave.

On the floor with the laboratory, he found a dolly and a cardboard box for an old air conditioner. From that and the tuxedo he already wore, he divined a disguise.

Now, pushing the dolly and box, he continued to push himself into the disguise. He was no longer Agent Patrick Katzin of the SCP Foundation. He was someone else entirely.

Four scientists populated the dome-shaped laboratory. Two were having a conversation, one was mixing chemicals, and the other was reading a copy of a treatise on mathematics. Katzin didn't even acknowledge the scientists at first; he just walked up to the railgun and started unscrewing the cannon.

It took a minute for one of the scientists— the one with the buzz cut, who was reading the book— to speak up.

"I'm sorry, but what do you think we're doing?"

"I'm taking the cannon and moving it," Katzin replied without looking up.

"No, you can't do that," the scientist exclaimed.

"Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in federal prison, I'm doing it," Katzin stopped for a second and turned towards the scientist, making sure to speak with an air of authority.

"Federal prison? We have some experiments we need—"

"As we speak the FBI is launching a surprise investigation on this complex. Your experiments can wait."

"Barret would've said something if we were under investigation. Can I see your ID?"

"Listen, we can continue this conversation from inside an FBI detainment facility, or I can do my job."

One of the other scientists spoke up. "Let him do his job, Jacob. Peters pays us either way."

"Alright," Jacob exclaimed, "go ahead, take it. All this work for nothing."

"He's lying to you!" a voice rang out from behind, before the scientist could speak. Katzin whirled around, hand attached to the gun he kept in his jacket. He saw me. Quite understandably, he looked terrified. I was carrying my trusty Browning Hi-Power in my right hand and had my other one in my pocket.

Katzin backpedaled and drew his duty pistol. Before he could even point it at me, my reflexes kicked in. I raised my gun, pointed it, and shot. Simple as that. The bullet knocked Katzin's pistol right out of his hand. One handed, without aiming, I had made a one in a million crack shot.

One of the scientists screamed and started running. Another hit a button, sending an ear-splitting alarm throughout the entire facility. I'd picked it personally; if there's something happening, I want to know. The high-pitched beeping gave Katzin a potent headache. The remaining scientists backed themselves against the wall, watching the scene with a mixture of fear and fascination.

"Now put your hands behind your head and get on the ground," I said. Maybe I was being cocky, but can you blame me? Realistically, there wasn't much he could do to me.

Katzin did as instructed, feeling his knees fall onto the lab's tile floor. At this point, I heard a noise from the corner of the room. Katzin had come in with a backup plan. I flicked my gun to the side and fired one, two three shots into a set of wooden crates in the corner. I heard someone scream, and I recognized him as Horn, one of the security guards that had been rotated to the island complex recently. It made sense that we had a rat.

Katzin tried to reach for his final contingency: the gas in his pocket. But before he could even wrap his fingers around the gas canister, I had closed the distance between them inhumanly fast. Katzin found himself with a gun to his head.

"Take your fingers out of your pocket. Slowly."

As Katzin pulled his fingers away, he said: "You don't understand what you're doing, Peters."

I took some time to laugh. "I understand what I'm doing perfectly."

He took his fingers out. No knockout gas.

The last thing Katzin saw before he was knocked out was my charming smile, followed by the butt of my pistol.

Katzin had failed. I motioned for the scientists to leave the room while I attended to the man I'd just shot.

----

While all of the other kids were playing marbles in the neighborhood Cul-de-sac, Pat, age 11, was fighting for his life. He crawled under the rocks and through the rough Midwestern sand, all the while trying to slow his breathing. He could hear him if he breathed too hard.

Pat threw himself behind a rock and listened. He couldn't hear any footsteps. Could that mean he was gone? If Pat rushed, he could still make it too-

"Bang! Bang!" a voice to Pat's left rung out.

Pat swivelled his head and saw his father, pointing at him with a finger gun. Pat was supposed to lie down on the ground and play dead, but he was just too tired. He slumped against the rock and slid down onto his bum.

"You know, son, if I were a German, you'd be dead right now. Lights out." Pat's father's voice was gruff. He walked over and sat down beside him.

"Do I really have to do this, Papa?" Pat asked. He looked up at his father. "None of the other kids do this?"

"Well, none of the other kids' fathers are SOE agents." Pat's father scratched his nose. "Besides, this could very well save your life one day."

"I don't want to have to hide from anyone though."

"It's not about that. It's about being able to think fast, and not making the wrong decision at the wrong time."

Pat and his father sat there for a minute, staring out at the setting sun. In the brutal Midwestern summer, it seemed to glare at them.

"Son, you're going to have to make some hard decisions. The kind where you have less than a second to make them. I want you to be able to make those decisions."

Pat gave his father a quizzical look.

"Let's say you're standing on a bridge above a trolley track. You see that there are five people tied to the trolley track. You also see that there is an out-of-control trolley speeding towards the victims. There isn't enough time to untie everyone, and the trolley will kill all of them."

"What's a trolley?"

Pat's father continued, ignoring the question. "Standing close to the edge of a bridge is a fat man, unaware of this entire situation. If you push him over, onto the tracks, his body will stop the trolley. At the cost of his life, of course. But it would save the five."

"I'd just push the fat guy. Five minus one is four. That's a net positive."

Pat's father nodded. "I've taught you well. Remember, it's always harder to pull that trigger in real life." He smiled and ran his fingers through Pat's hair. "But you need to be able to, because if you're ever in that situation, you need to act fast and decisively. Be. effective." He stood up. "Let's get back home. Your mother'll be pissed if you miss dinner again."

Patrick Katzin would see his father two more times after that. The first was before he was shipped back to Germany on the next day. The second was at his open casket funeral. He ran out into the middle of the street and began firing his gun into the air, giving his squadmates the crucial opportunity to escape. He was the only one who died on that mission. The U.S. Army never gave him any posthumous awards.

----

The inside of the room was more akin to the guts of a mechanical man than an electronics hub. Wires and pipes ran across the walls like arteries. A generator was placed in the center of the room, permeating it with a soft whirring sound. Monitors mounted on the wall displayed live feeds of the compound and mansion, some of which Katzin had already seen.

"Welcome to the Hub Room," Horn said. "Singer, you know what to do with this better than I do."

Singer was already scanning the room, immersed in "the zone." In her head, she was making electrical diagrams.

"I'll cut that wire once you leave; that should ensure no one comes in. I can use the security console to shut off security cameras."

"Hold on, what's that?" Katzin asked. He pointed to one of the monitors. "In the corner, you can see a cannon. Is that SCP-6904?"

A balding scientist stood in front of the cannon holding a clipboard, jotting down some inconsequential notes. SCP-6904 sat there, clear as day, polish sparking in the fluorescent lights. The scientists, who Oblix spent a fortune hiring, had done well in maintaining it.

"Is that what they're calling it, now?" Horn asked. "Mhmm. That's SCP-6904."

"I should tell Stanley about this," Katzin muttered, taking out his radio.

"Will the radio work down here?" Horn asked.

"It should," Singer asserted. "Our transmitter is the top of the line."

"This is Hansel," Katzin said, "...reporting. Over."

"What's the easiest way to get in there?" Singer asked.

"I don't have the clearance to go down there," Horn, "so I wouldn't know."

"Tell me about new developments, over," Stanley replied.

"We've found security footage of his laboratory, over."

"Tell me more, over."

"Horn took us down to the hub room," Katzin said, "where all of the wiring goes. We found security tape, and we see the lab that the cannon, SCP-6904, is in. Over."

"Fantastic," Stanley replied, "Do you have a plan to extract it? Over."

"We're making progress on that," Horn stated.

"I think this entire complex is built like a Foundation site," Singer explained, "They dig a hole, line it with concrete, and then build the rooms separately in that hole. It's like building with //Legos//."

"Hold on, I just noticed something," Horn remarked. "Look at the wall over there. The one where the scientist is drinking something. There's a map there. It's been marked up with X's."

"There's more," Katzin added over the radio. "The cannon's integrated into a device that looks like a railgun. Next to that is a map they hung on the wall. It's covered with X's in certain places. Over."

"More the reason to get down there ASAP," Horn responded.

"Like I said," Singer continued, "the entire site's built like a //Lego// fort. If we can sneak out of the inside, we can just crawl around on the outside. All the way down to the lab."

"That's good thinking," Katzin replied, "I'm sure there's a weak spot somewhere around here."

"Is Peters planning targeted attacks?" Stanley asked. "Over."

"We believe so," Singer said, "Over."

"I've identified a route that will allow me to enter the lab chamber," Katzin explained, holding a map that he'd found in a drawer to the left of the console. "...box up the skip, and leave with minimal chance of seeing security. Over."

"Excellent work as always, Katzin," Stanley continued, "Over."

"Stanley's lying through his teeth," Katzin muttered, glaring at Horn, before reactivating the radio. "Report back to you later. Over and out."

----

At that point, Maxwell Daniels decided that he'd wasted enough of his valuable time with Peters. His attorney, a fellow by the name of Edmond Mecklen, proved to be slippery. He avoided Daniels' questions and made it nearly impossible for Daniels to find anything incriminating. Daniels had decided he'd rather talk to Peters not in his office, but inside of a Foundation interrogation chamber. Once CARD or a more competent team found SCP-6904, they wouldn't even need a warrant to carry out an arrest.

Before he walked out of the building to his parked company Mercedes, the secretary waved him down.

"Excuse me, Agent Daniels. There's a call for you."

Daniels turned his head towards the secretary with a raised eyebrow that demanded who it was.

"It's Agent Bob Stanley, sir. From the FBI."

God damn it. Didn't he have a mission to be running? What did he want?

Daniels angrily, yet gently, marched over to the desk and picked up the phone.

"We found it," Stanley spat out, "SCP-6904. Our agents are extracting it as we speak."

"Really?" Daniels replied. "Do you have proof? Do you have anything?"

"Not just SCP-6904. They have a whole lab underground on that island. It has enough anomalous equipment in it to fill an entire storage locker."

"And I'm supposed to say 'hey, we've invaded your little island, you're under arrest?'"

"We're the Foundation. The entire point of being removed from politics is so that we don't have to go through bureaucracy. You're the one who'd issue those warrants in the first place. It's now or never."

Stanley hung up. Daniels conceded that, yes, he was right. Then he turned around and marched right back upstairs. He took the stairs this time, since speed was a factor. But when he arrived back at Peters' office, he found it empty.

Daniels waited for a minute, assuming that Peters had gone to use the washroom. After ten minutes, Daniels felt disgruntled that Peters had slipped through his fingers. Had he really slipped out in that amount of time? Turning around, Daniels decided that he'd hand over the case to that brute, Magruder, and really show Peters a good time.

----

After the pistol whipping, Katzin came to about fifteen minutes later.

He was still in that same lab, hands and feet bound by rope. His blood and the blood of his fellow agents stained the previously clean tile floor. To his left, Horn was tied up in the same way. Peters was yelling at him, pistol in his hand. Horn's right shoulder was bandaged up, presumably from the gunshot wounds. To Katzin's right, Singer was tied up as well. Four, maybe five, security guards provided backup.

"Who do you actually work for, rat?" I asked. I kicked Horn, who visibly recoiled from the pain.

"You're making a mistake," Horn replied.

I squatted down to make eye contact with Horn. "Last chance, friend. Are you CIA? FBI?" I gave Horn a fake smile, trying to see through his lies. "KGB?"

Horn just glared at me, like it changed anything.

I let the smile fade from his face before I stood back up. "You three work for the SCP Foundation."

The glare on Horn's face turned from determination to fear as I pointed the gun at him. He pushed off of the wall in an attempt to escape, but it was futile. Reflexes kicked in, and my gun was pointing at his head. It was just a matter of pulling the trigger then and there. Horn was dead before he hit the ground.

"No!" Katzin shouted.

I turned around and pointed to the back of my head. I slowly took off the fake hair I'd attached, revealing what it was concealing. To give you an idea, imagine a small, brown, metallic object that was embedded into my head. It gave off a brown glow, which was concealed by the rug.

"My team put this together," I said. "If I knew it was so easy to make anomalies, I would've started decades ago. It uses an old energy source from Atlantis, and now I think 25 times faster than I did before."

I reattached the hair and turned back around, making direct eye contact with Katzin. Katzin tried to spit in my face, why? What was he trying to prove. I dodged it anyways. Just another projectile.

"What do you want with me?" Katzin asked. "Just kill me and get it over with."

Katzin was a pessimist, I imagined.

"I want to recruit you, Patrick," I continued, revealing that I knew Katzin's name. "I need hard-working people for my plans. My sources tell me you're not on the best terms with the Foundation, anyways."

"Are you crazy?" Katzin replied, shifting his eyes towards the map in the corner. "You're planning on using the cannon to bombard all of those citites. You're either insane or you have some way of making money off of this."

Did he really think I was here because I wanted to destroy the world? I can't believe he thought so little of me. I shook my head. "I'm neither of those. I'm trying to save the world."

"What are you talking about?"

"You've been in the Foundation, you know how rotten that bureaucracy is. It turns good people into backstabbers, looking for the best way to get one over on their colleagues. I've spent enough time in industry and government to know that it's the same there, too. Society's corrupt on all levels, because no matter what, everyone wants to be up on the next level. I'm just flattening everything, is all."

"You killed 1,500 people to blackmail the Prime Minister of Japan. Why should I believe you?"

"Just a stepping stone. The ends justify the means, don't they? I have specific targets here. The bastions of corruption, around the world. I figured that I'd give him a chance to resign peacefully before I took my shot."

"Your plan conveniently leaves you as the sole heir of everything."

"Obviously," I said, "I'm not resonating with either of you."

Katzin glanced sideways to Singer, who held the same angry glance he'd held until now.

I pointed his gun right at Katzin's temple. "I'm not trusting a disloyal soldier, so unless--"

I heard a //bang//, and what followed was the most agonizing pain that I've experienced in my life. The lights flickered off, and my brain was overcome with what felt like a hundred migraines at once. In a few seconds, I went unconscious.

When I came too, I was surrounded by my loyal security. The guards I'd brought with me were unconscious; knockout gas. Katzin and Singer were gone.

----

Before Daniels got into his car and drove away, he noticed something crucial. Peters' car was still there. The space marked "FOR TIM PETERS" still had a red Volvo parked there. Maybe he took the lawyer's car... but why? Then that little bit of information combined with something else that bubbled up into Daniels' mind, and that's when he decided to take immediate action.

He burst right back into the secretary's office, yelling "redial that number!" The secretary, surprised, fumbled with the phone a bit before hitting "redial." Daniels snatched the phone from her and held it up to his ear.

"Hello," the female voice on the other end chattered, "this is the directory for Sacramento Commercial Products. Who would you like to contact?"

"This is Director Daniels," Daniels exclaimed, "ID code 43920-21390. Patch me through to Director Stanley, I need to tell him something."

----

Do you know how hard it is to find internal radio logs? They aren't uploaded into the Foundation intranet like everything else is. In the best case, they're stored in vinyl and locked up in the archives. Sometimes, though, the only source of them is the tape that they were originally recorded on.

Most of the time, those tapes are stored in Archives as well. Stanley, for some reason, stored them in a locked file cabinet in his office. By locked, I don't mean a key; I mean the memetic and biological locks they use to secure their anomalies. All of this in the office of one of the most paranoid men in the world.

What I'm saying is, I spent a lot of money finding out what I'm about to tell you.

Katzin hadn't gone climbing in years, and it showed. He was still fit, of course. He just had trouble lowering his body through the maze of concrete and metal he'd found himself in. It was a welcome break to catch his breath when he heard something from his radio.

"Katzin, Singer, Horn, are you there?" Stanley asked. "Over."

Katzin dropped down onto the next floor and took out his radio. "I'm here, what's changed? Over."

"Director Daniels called. He thinks Peters might be wearing a Mekhanite Head Implant. Over."

"What's that? Over," replied Singer.

"It's something that you put in your head," Katzin said, "that gives you special abilities. We found some while we were in Siberia. The question is: why does Daniels think Peters has one? Over"

"His hair," Stanley replied. "He was wearing an obvious rug, but he still had a bald spot. Why would anyone do that to themselves? Over."

"Are we going to assume Peters found classified technology because he had a bad rug? Over." Katzin asked.

"Not only that. Daniels saw that he still had his car here. Remember how the Mekhanites were able to use their implants to travel over Ley Lines? Over."

"You think he's teleported here? Over."

"I didn't check until now, but the island's on a Ley Line. Over."

"Shit. If he just met with Daniels, he probably knows we're here. Over."

"How do we beat him, then? Over." Singer asked.

"The best way is to hit them on the back of the head," Stanley replied. "If you can't do that, an electromagnetic pulse will stun them. Over."

"There's actually some electromagnetic equipment in storage here," Horn said. "We're supposed to use it to corrupt the tapes if we're raided. Over."

"I can make it detonate on a timer," Horn explained, "and then deactivate the timer on our way out. Over."

"Just as an emergency plan," Katzin asserted. "Remember, we don't want anyone to know that we were here. Over."

"Of course," Horn replied. "I'll also come with you, as backup. Over."

"Sounds great. Over and out." Katzin finished.

----

They'd made good progress. I think Horn might've given them a map of the facility, because they took a freight elevator up to the third sub-level. They blended in well enough that no one questioned why two security guards were carrying an air conditioner out of the building. At least, they didn't bother to question. If I could do it all over again, I would've trained them to be more suspicious of people.

That being said, I knew the facility better than they ever did. I designed it myself, you know. Not to mention, I had the advantage of being superhuman. I leaped up flights of stairs and scaffolded my way up ventilation shafts. By the time I managed to catch up with them, they were talking to their superiors.

"Horn is dead," Katzin whispered frantically into a radio once he was sure the coast was clear. "We have the skip, but it's on a timer to fire itself. I can't defuse it. Over."

"It's the most complicated timer I've ever seen," Singer added, breathless.

"Understood," Stanley replied, "Were you intercepted? Over."

"We don't have time for this," Katzin asserted. He put down the box in order to push the supply cabinet out of the way. It seemed to have a little bit less give than it had a few hours ago. "Time is of the essence, we're on our way back to the boat, over." He rubbed the spot on his temple where Peters had struck him. He'd need a doctor to look at that--

The squeal of the alarm was broken by the threatening boom of a gun. Katzin instinctively dived behind a desk, just in the nick of time. A bullet grazed his leg, sending a stinging sensation throughout the entire lower half of his body. Ten more bullets ricocheted right off of the metal desktop.

Katzin turned and saw Singer clutching her right side. Blood oozed out of it. She slumped against the tunnel wall and started hyperventilating.

The speed at which that pistol fired was more like a machine gun. Combined with the giggle Katzin heard as he reloaded, he probably guessed that I'd gotten the jump on him.

//Now or never.// He thought to himself.

Katzin drew a security pistol he'd take from the guard he'd knocked unconscious, and popped up above the desk he'd used as cover. As he'd suspected, I stood in the doorway. Katzin had murder in his eyes, and so did I. Steadying his elbow, Katzin fired three shots into Peters' center of mass.

The implant whirred, and all of a sudden, the bullets were no longer an issue. I leaned to the left, letting the first one slip right by. Then, inhumanly quickly, I leaned to the right, dodging the second bullet. Finally, while pushing the magazine into the pistol, I stepped to the side, completely avoiding the third. All in a split second, while reloading.

Adjusting his aim and crouching down, Katzin pulled the trigger twice more. I threw my chest downwards, narrowly dodging both bullets, before lunging straight at Katzin.

Katzin made a split second decision. The cheap pistol would be useless at close range. He dropped it and drew the baton that the security carried. I pulled my arm back for a haymaker; my problem is always been that I telegraph my punches. Instinctively, Katzin angled the baton away from him and stepped back. Katzin could hear my punch displace the air by his head as my fist flew past.

Katzin stepped into me and brought the baton into my chin, sending waves of pain throughout my body. I recoiled and staggered backwards. Confidently, Katzin chased him down and tried to bring the baton down on his head. I raised my forearm to block. Simultaneously, I preformed an uppercut, slamming into Katzin's chin. Katzin himself recoiled backwards.

I took the opportunity to strike with another haymaker. While Katzin blocked that with the baton, my implant finally finished warming up. I used my other hand to slam a jab into Katzin's shoulder, probably dislocating it. Then when I followed up with a right hand cross, Katzin blocked that, but at expense to a left hook into his side, followed up with a punch to the chest. Each one sunk into his flesh like a knife and left a horrific bruise. Katzin simply couldn't react, I was too fast.

Out of desperation, Katzin threw his arm into an overhead strike, aiming at my head. He was probably trying to take out my implant. I resolutely blocked his fist with my forearm and pushed the baton out of Katzin's hand, leaving Katzin defenseless. I grinned as I saw Katzin stumble.

A left to the neck, a right to the chest, a hook into the chin, an uppercut to the shoulder. Katzin could only stand and take the blows while I unleashed a torrent right into Katzin's body. My fists moved faster than Katzin could see them, and each punch drove the pain further into his body. The only thing louder than the sound of flesh meeting flesh was the sound of Katzin's bones breaking.

I'm not a violent man, I always outsource that to people with a greater capacity for hurting than myself. That being said, I enjoyed that.

I ceased the flurry of blows; even modified, the human body can only take so much, and my arms had gotten sore. Katzin, excruciating pain echoing throughout his body, fell to his knee. When he tried to get up, I walked up and pushed kicked him down to the ground. Now on all fours, I kicked him in the stomach, breaking yet another rib bone.

Katzin coughed up a little of his blood onto the floor. I stood above him, readying another kick. He'd lost.

"Your Foundation's come to an end, Patrick. I'll make sure it starts with you."

"It's... not... //my// Foundation," Katzin struggled to breath out.

Katzin braced himself to receive the final blow, which I intended to deliver. But then Singer, who I'd shot, lunged at me with a metal pipe. She was obviously aiming for the implant. I raised his forearm and blocked the pipe.

"Nice try. I can see everything you do before you--"

Katzin jumped up and dug his hands into the hole where my implant was lodged. I yelped; it shorted out my brain. I tried to grab Katzin. Knowing nothing but the pain and desperation of the moment, Katzin started pulling. The attempted grab turned into a flail as Katzin placed his foot on my back for leverage. Katzin was grunting. I was screaming.

With a loud //snap//, Katzin tore the implant out of my head. My body went limp, and I stood there for a second. At that point, he'd essentially hit the "reset" button on my mind. I wasn't thinking. Then, I fell with a //thump// to the floor.

Katzin and Singer fell back to the ground. For the next minute, all they could do was catch their breath. Singer looked towards Katzin, who nodded in response.

By the time the security guard checked the hallway in their sweep a few minutes later, all they found was their comatose boss and a dysfunctional head implant.

----

"Look," Singer said, still wincing from the self-bandaging she had done, "there they are."

Katzin pushed to boat into its full throttle. The cannon was tied down to the boat's surface, and he was desperately hoping to find someone before it fired. With the sight of the helicopter, he slowed down. Within a minute, the helicopter floated on the water right next to the boat. Stanley and a few members of the bomb defusal crew came out.

"We've got a foreign timer attached to a skip," the crew foreman yelled. "No telling what'll happen once it stops."

As the bomb defusal crew worked, yelling out callsigns left and right, Katzin decided on a heart-to-heart with Stanley.

"Why am I here, Stanley?" Katzin asked. "Why am I on this mission?"

"Because--" Stanley said, before interrupting himself, "Horn told you, didn't he."

Katzin nodded.

"If it's any condolence," Stanley replied, "it's a win-win for both of us. Not your most covert mission, but I can pin it on Daniels, anyways. Idiot said too much. I keep my career, and you advance yours."

"Five minutes!" One of the bomb defusers yelled.

"Good men and women are willing to die for you, Stanley," Katzin asserted, motioning towards Singer. "Promise me you'll try to keep it away from your petty office politics."

"You know I can't promise that," Stanley said.

Katzin broke eye contact. "You're honest. At least I can give you that."

"It's over," the foreman revealed. "SCP-6904 has been deactivated."

"Fantastic," Stanley said. "Load it up on the helicopter. I'll stay with the agents on the boat. Radio the rig, tell them we need a medic."

The bomb squad got on the helicopter and flew away. Stanley sat down next to Singer as Katzin started the boat up again.

"What are you going to do from here?" he asked. "I imagine this is a life-changing experience."

"I'm staying," Singer mumbled, "everyone needs a little lead in them every now and then to remind them what life is." She giggled, then hacked up a cough.

"Katzin?"

"I'm leaving the Foundation," Katzin lamented. "Not sure where I'm going, but it has to be anywhere but here."

Stanley smiled. "Truth be told, I don't blame you."

----

Once Katzin and Singer made it back to Site-39, they were put through a round of surgery. Katzin had broken more than a few ribs; even if he hadn't filed his resignation, he'd never work on a mission again. The surgeons managed to remove the bullet from Singer's side; within a month, she had a clean bill of health.

Katzin filed his resignation form within a week. The Foundation tried to award him with a Kondraki Diamond, but he rejected it. In fact, he didn't even show up to the awards ceremony. After the amnestic treatment, he was convinced he'd spent the last 30 years working a nondescript military posting. After 20 more years as a security guard at a lesser-known nightclub, Katzin retired. As far as I know, he's never tried to get that lakehouse. I think I could block him, if he ever tried.

Singer went right back into CARD, and its new incarnation, SAR/COG. She participated in a great number of missions from that point forwards. Good at her job, too, from what I hear.

Oblix's executives denied all involvement. The island was stripped clean when the Foundation expeditionary force got there. Even thought I was in a coma at the time, I had people on retainer who specialized in cleanup. They never found anything that linked anyone, aside from me, to the project.

They never did find me again. All they found was a sum of $5 million dollars transferred from various cash accounts to a single shell company. That's where the paper trail ended. I'm still working. I still have my projects.

Where am I now? Wouldn't you like to know.

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