- "Long Room Interior, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland - Diliff" by Diliff is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- The seismogram seen in "Music.jpg" was sourced from the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory's seismic monitoring website; being a part of the US Geological Survey, this data is in the public domain.
- Saltlakecitysunrise by Acp~commonswiki is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
All edits to these images were made by myself.
The floor rushed upward to meet Graham as the world around him melted into view. The pale green sky eclipsed to an ornate carved ceiling, the icy trees shimmered into walls of bookshelves, and the gap that Graham had emerged from took the form of a short, wooden door marked with a small plaque reading "Exit." A distinct smell coaxed his mind from the haze the Way had imparted during his transit: the scent of books, almost comforting in the distinct scent of their age.
To his right, the woman knelt beside the door and whispered something. The knob locked with a faint, corresponding click. Behind her stood Harry and Eric, their necks craning backwards as they took in their surroundings, awestruck at the sight before them.
They stood in a massive, arching library, the rows trailing away as though some of them went on forever, the further reaches were shrouded in a haze of sheer distance. All throughout ran intersecting aisles, and additional floors rising to heights that even seemed to impossibly pass beyond the intricate ceiling above. Far down the central corridor, the space opened to an even larger expanse, still filled with the gentle light that pervaded the rest of the place.
To his left he heard someone clear their throat. He looked up, finding himself staring down the length of a particularly sharp walking stick, the point of which veered unnervingly close to his throat.
"Taz, what was the one thing I specifically told you not to do?" inquired a gruff voice from above the point. The sound carried with it an accent that he couldn't quite place, like something out of a freshly forgotten dream. Graham's gaze rose further to meet the cold blue eyes of a stout man, dressed in a fine, almost antique suit. His features were plainly timeworn, partially hidden beneath the graying a la souvarov that crossed his face. An air of authority, like a school teacher or professor from one's academic youth clung to him. A curious pendant of hung around his neck, though most of it was obscured within the folds of his garments. The woman turned towards the man with a pinch of irritation on her face.
"Okay, yes, you said to lay low, but you know I couldn't just pass up an opportunity like this!" She stepped forward, gesturing to the three of them as though she were showing off a fascinating trinket at show and tell. "Not one, but two runners, and a Foundation agent!"
The man's uneasy blue eyes swiveled back, looking directly into Graham's own. "Foundation?"
"F-formerly," Graham stuttered, raising his free hand in surrender.
The man lowered the stick and peered cautiously at the him. "Fair enough. You wouldn't have even been able to get in here if you were still with them."
A sensation of anxious relief washed over Graham at the statement. His defection was official, at least in the eyes of whatever force governed this place. Though the thought was double-edged. He'd in the Foundation's sights from here on out, in one form or another. But he was out. He was free.
The man turned to Harry and Eric. "You two, what were your designations?"
Harry tore his gaze away from the architecture abounding. Eric shuffled beside Harry and found his words. "Designations?"
"Your SCP numbers," he asked almost scoldingly.
"5700," Graham groaned. "SCP-5700. Dash one and seven."
The man looked curiously at Harry and Eric then produced a small notebook and a pair of reading glasses from his pocket. He whispered into it, and the pages flittered on their own before falling open. The man scanned the book for a moment before looking back at the two of them. "The ecoterrorists?"
"Is that really the only thing we're known for?"
"As far as the people who know you exist are concerned. More importantly, aren't you supposed to be dead?" the man inquired, gesturing to Eric with his walking stick.
The woman stepped between the old man and Graham, pushing the stick down. "This is Quinlin, I'm Taz. There, introductions are over," she said rapidly, gesturing to the man and then herself. "Now let's get some medical for you all, you've had it rough the last few days." The old man furrowed his brow before nodding.
"The Ways have been a little antsy since you last came through here," he said gruffly. "Though we have had some success with one not too far from here," accenting the statement with a jab of his walking stick toward a connecting aisle. "Third door past Americana Esoterica, across from the ostrich painting. Ask the Front Desk if you need specifics, but you'll know it when you see it. It's been… temperamental lately, so you might need to give it a minute."
"Thank you kindly," Taz replied, her voice flat. She stood beside Graham and extended a hand to him. He hesitantly took it with his intact arm. As he wobbled to his feet, she held out a strip of shredded fabric, apparently torn from her own bullet hole-ridden hoodie. "Make sure you keep pressure on that wound," she advised, beginning in the direction indicated by the older man. "And please try not to get blood on the floor. We do our best to be good patrons here."
Harry scoffed. "Here being?"
She turned towards them, continuing backwards in the same direction. "Oh, right." She held her arms wide, a pompous yet excitable expression on her face. "Welcome to the Wanderer's Library!"
Katla's eyes were torn from the pages before her as the computer rang out with a sharp beep. She thumbed the page of her novel and slowly sat up, tabbing out of her email and over to the computer's other window. She cast a glance at the time in the corner. 12:09 A.M.
The SCP Foundation's Geological Division insignia flashed to life in the center of the screen, underlined by a plain label reading "Yellowstone Region Seismography Report." Katla squinted at the bright layout casting a harsh glare throughout the darkened room. Even with all the resources in the world, the Foundation couldn't be bothered to put a dark mode on this thing, she lamented.
A topographical map of the Yellowstone region quickly loaded in, dotted with a spattering of hexagons and triangles, each representing a different environmental monitoring stations. Her eyes focused on the small orange triangle south of the lake, labeled "The Promontory," a red notice symbol blinking on the location. She clicked, and a pop-up window appeared, displaying the station's seismograph data.
Katla was intimately familiar with the seismology of the region. A subtle geological hum, seen as a rigid yet delicate rhythm on paper, accented every so often by bursts of activity. In many respects, it was not unlike a music sheet depicting the Earth's silent, tectonic song. Even in the years before her recruitment into the Foundation she had studied it and become deeply attuned with its behaviors and attitudes.
But what she looked at now puzzled her. The greater harmony was there, but another chord appeared to have introduced itself with a cunning subtlety. A spike had appeared in the graph, recurring at a constant interval, and beginning just hours prior. At first so quiet as to be drowned out by— or hiding within— the ambient lay, the new beat had become more and more prominent with each count. Soon enough, other monitoring stations were reading out with their own detections of this abnormal activity. Lake Butte, Grant, Pitchstone, even Old Faithful all began to blink with little red dots signifying that something was off.
Katla folded the page corner of her book and threw it to the side, now fully at attention. For the next several hours she remained fixated on that note, now registering at several other sites, and repeating at increasingly short intervals. An hour, fifty minutes, thirty, ten, five; each strike resonating faster and louder than the last.
It wasn't until the pulsations were occurring every two minutes that they finally stabilized in frequency and power. Still far below the magnitude that could be felt by humans, but strong enough to appear on half the seismographs in Yellowstone. Katla stared at the screen as each graph ticked on and on, wondering what this abnormality even represented. Such a peculiar rhythm, so quiet at first, yet now awakening, growing into an accelerating overture or pulse, almost like a—
Her blood ran cold.
A heartbeat.
"So you were around for disco, right?"
"Do we really have to do this now?"
"Just passing the time," Taz said as they walked. "Plus, it's not every day I get to meet an immortal. At least not one who's been around nearly as long as you have."
Harry shook his head. "I'll answer any question you want after we get eyes on Eric."
Taz shrugged discontentedly, continuing forward.
"So tell me," Graham began, breaking the brief silence. "You said you had an idea of where we were back there because of the Task Force's comms, but what about that Way you used?"
"Ways are nearly impossible to predict, but if you pay close enough attention to some, you can begin to glean just a bit of their rhyme and reason," she replied over her shoulder.
"In what manner?" Graham probed.
"It's hard to explain. I suppose the more I've used certain ones the more I've come to… know them. The hole in the tree back there, for example. It's just glimpses, but I see a young boy. Books are his escape, their stories bring light to his dull world. A thirst for stories so deep that the stories themselves seek him out. A familiar childhood tree, the door; his favorite passage, the knock. The rest is history."
Graham pushed down further questions, knowing better than to expect any straightforward answers from the woman.
The group continued down the halls of soaring bookshelves, the woman in the lead. The layout of the area, while possessing something of a sense of organization and structure typical to libraries of Graham's native reality, was still erratic at best. Aisles curved and crisscrossed in some sections, while others stood in rigid, latticed rows. Books, tomes, pamphlets, scrolls, and even etched clay tablets cluttered the shelves as far as they could see, both before and above them. Graham silently marveled at the scale of it all, feeling a low thrill at the thought of something powerful enough to have amassed and organized the great exhibition in the first place.
Graham took particular note of the other patrons as they walked. He'd heard the stories, of course, but word of mouth can scarcely prepare one for the real thing. Many were generally resemblant to familiar humans, though bearing noticeable differences. People with bright and colorful patched skin, additional animal-like appendages, metallic augments of sorts, and more. Others still were more alien in appearance; robed figures with snail-like eyestalks in place of heads, blobs of goo grasping books with pseudopods, upright frogs standing well over ten feet high. They even passed what appeared to be an animate Tyrannosaurus skeleton casually reclined in an armchair, perusing a book on philosophy.
Harry could feel other patrons throughout the labyrinth, each milling about in nearby rows. After getting over the initial surprise of their unusual forms, he had come to dismiss them. Though it was upon noticing the apparent lack of any stairways, ladders, or similar apparatuses in this wing of the Library that the signatures meandering high above them suddenly puzzled him. Harry looked up. The upper reaches of the aisle were nearly lost in a haze of distance, though he could make out movement.
Suddenly, a blur shot from the wall above and plummeted downward before latching onto a shelf just fifty feet above the group. The impact was surprisingly quiet, though still enough to draw the attention of everyone present. Graham started with a yelp of surprise at the thing. Its eight bowed limbs firmly seized the bookshelves as it crawled along. Pale chitin clung to its black, fleshy body like porcelain stuck in tar. It's face lay hidden beneath a white mask, circled in a detached ring.
The head rotated completely around to face them. Eric and Graham scurried behind Harry. The hunter instinctively took a defensive stance, reaching for his pistol. He stiffened as his grasp merely found his hip. He must have dropped it during their escape from the valley. Taz turned around with a look of surprise.
"Right, first time here. That's a Page, don't worry about them," she said plainly. "They're just locals. Every library needs librarians, after all."
The trio slowly backed away from the creature, which had quickly resumed its work of depositing and withdrawing books and other strange items that must in one way or another pass as forms of media. It's head perked up as though it had heard something, then went skittering around a bend in the bookcases and out of sight. The three of them relaxed a little.
"Are they all like that?" Eric asked.
"More or less. Different Pages for different sections of the Library. And actually, if we're seeing that kind specifically, that means the Front Desk isn't far. Come on."
Her pace quickened. Soon they passed through an arched shelf and the high walls of books fell away, opening to a vast and grand hall. Desks, benches, tables, chairs, and other structures of vaguely similar but otherwise alien composition dotted the area. Patrons lay scattered about the place, browsing stacks of media, some taking notes of their own, others enjoying beverages whose fragrant aromas wafted through the air.
In the center of the chamber descended a massive pillar, terminating atop a rounded kiosk. A few figures sat within, beneath a sign reading "Front Desk." At least that's what the three of them could tell it said. Whatever language it was written in, they hadn't the foggiest idea, but it was one they could understand all the same.
"You again," buzzed one of the figures as Taz approached. The sound appeared to come from a vaguely humanoid mass of mushroom caps and fungal growths that sat behind the desk. It tilted its head. Or heads. It was hard to tell. "What'll it be this time?"
"Americana Esoterica, please."
The mushroom leaned toward a small device resembling a typewriter resting on the counter. The buttons clicked away on their own for a moment before a small paper ejected from the top of the machine. The mushroom seemed to squint, or whatever passed as squinting for something without eyes. It raised a porous stalk, pointing to its left.
"North corridor, make three lefts—not one right—then follow along until you reach the noodle shop. The section you're looking for'll be on your left," it buzzed, handing her the sheet of paper.
"And one more thing," Taz said, glancing back at Eric, who was still supporting himself against Harry. "You have wheelchairs here, right?"
None of the men thought they had ever seen such an exasperated look on something that lacked a face. "Of course. Accessibility to knowledge is the whole reason this place exists," it buzzed.
"Right," Taz answered. A surprising note of annoyance tinged her voice. "I've just never needed one in my time here."
"Aren't you lucky for that," it replied. It peered past Taz at the others. "Anthropoid model?"
"If you would."
The fungi somehow snapped its fingers. With a weak flash of light, a plain wheelchair popped into existence beside Eric. "Now if that'll be all, run along. I've absolute heaps of work to do," it droned, resuming a book that had been thitherto concealed beneath the counter. "If you need anything else, ask a Docent first."
Taz turned from the counter with a sigh, examining the paper in her hand. Harry had already helped Eric into the chair.
"Lead the way," the old man groaned.
The sun was just beginning to peek over the Uinta Mountains to the east when the dull thud of a car door closing outside announced the arrival of help.
No sooner had the hurriedly-set up coffee finished brewing when a man burst forth from the stairwell, briefcase gripped in one hand and a worn travel mug in the other. He was panting heavily, little wonder, Katla noted, given the man seemed to have just scaled the seven flights of stairs to this level of Site-72 in scarcely over a minute.
"Ms. Larsen," called Dr. Miguel Jaskes, throwing off his windbreaker and hurriedly striding over to Katla's work station.
"Good morning, doctor," Katla replied with a nod.
The man waved a hand dismissively, taking a large swig of his coffee. "Just call me Jaskes," he said, wiping his wrist across his mouth. "And honestly I wouldn't even call today a good morning with the way things are going. I read your report, have there been any significant changes?"
"Nothing yet," Katla replied, opening the seismography map on her monitor. "Pulsations were first detected around midnight last night, then stabilized around six this morning, recurring at intervals of about two minutes. Now nearly half the seismographs in Yellowstone are reading out the same thing. Based on that, I've triangulated the point of origin to somewhere roughly 100 kilometers belowground."
"A hundred kilometers. Dammit…" Jaskes muttered, taking the mouse and examining data further.
Katla could feel her own pulse in her throat. Fresh Foundation recruits always heard of countless rumors and stories early on in their tenure. Everything from nightmarish monsters, to other dimensions, to hostile gods. Among these always rose whispers of some highly classified danger sleeping beneath one of the largest volcanoes on Earth, both inactive yet inevitable. Considered alongside the other tales Katla had absorbed over the years, and even after she had finally been cleared to officially know of its existence, the idea of an unstoppable volcanic apocalypse had become less of an imminent threat and more a far-off— if not still ominous— boogeyman. But here she was with her finger on the literal pulse of that boogeyman, just beginning to stir from its slumber.
With an effort, Katla dislodged the question that had been stuck in her throat since last night.
"It's 4997, isn't it?" she asked quietly.
Jaskes cast a glance around the empty room. "What's your clearance level?"
"Three, I'm cleared."
"Alright," he breathed. "Yes, we suspect these seismograms are from 4997. Are you very familiar with it?"
"I read as much as my clearance allows," she replied. "Still locked out of the higher clearance section, but I have a basic understanding."
"Then you can begin to understand the gravity of a development like this," Jaskes said grimly. "This is still most likely the very early stages of its wake-up process."
She took a deep breath. "How long do we have?"
Jaskes took another large swig from his travel mug. "Theoretical models we compiled a while back project that it will still take a while to become fully active, a few months at least, and more time to actually make its way to the surface. Regardless, the clock is ticking and it's on us to act."
"Against something of this magnitude?"
A glint of something bordering on defiance flashed into Jaskes' eyes.
"Don't presume us to be so helpless. Greater threats than this have been dealt with before, and regardless, we have contingencies in place to deal with things of even this severity," he replied. His expression softened. "We will do what we always have. We'll secure, contain, and protect."
He rose from the terminal and turned towards the main office space, casting a glance at his watch. "Excellent work here. I know many others in your rank that would have let this slip under the radar until it were nearly too late. Wrap up here, get yourself home, and rest up. I'll be transitioning your role to a day shift starting tomorrow morning. We're going to need the sharpest people we can get if we're going to secure this situation properly." At this point Jaskes set off toward the smell of fresh coffee wafting through the office, motioning for Katla to follow.
"Not to mention, the position does come with a little pay bump. Oh, and before I forget." Jaskes produced a phone from his pocket, quickly punching something as he refilled his mug with his other hand. The man muttered a security phrase into the device and hit send before dropping it back into his pocket. A moment later, Katla felt her phone vibrate in response.
"Welcome to Clearance Level 4-4997," he said, screwing the lid of his travel mug back on and turning towards his office. "The remainder of the file should be available for you now. Catch yourself up on it all, then report back here at eight o'clock clock tomorrow. Details'll be in your inbox by later today."
Katla blinked, finding her words. "Thank you, doctor."
"Thank you, Ms. Larsen. Not that you haven't proven yourself qualified with all of this, but the position was freshly vacated anyway, and I needed new blood on a project of this importance."
Freshly vacated. She rolled the phrase in her head for a moment. "What happened to the last person?" she ventured, genuinely curious.
"That one had to go and get himself tied up in…" The man paused, eyes flicking away in thought as he selected a proper response. "…extracurriculars," he muttered, the thought of her predecessor inspiring obvious disappointment.
A second of silence passed between the two of them. Then another. "I'll, uh, see you then, sir," Katla finally said, the tone of a question lingering at the end of her reply.
Jaskes nodded to her mid-sip, and swallowed. "Glad to have you with us. Now go get some rest, we've got an apocalypse to kill."