Revelation

In the sublevels of Site 10, Dr. Yara Mirski raised the gemstone to the light with a gloved hand, in a gesture she'd repeated a hundred times before. She admired its black contours, broken up by the mottled white pattern and the golden filigree that wrapped around its exterior.

SCP-001-Delta. The fourth SCP item considered a 'prime', or '001', item. One of several that had a hand in the creation of the Foundation. And, in Yara's opinion, by far the most frustrating.

For one, there wasn't much else to know about Delta at Level 5 clearance.

Most of the other 001 items had a great deal of falsified information attached to them, the better to confuse ever-curious researchers. Some versions were altered beyond recognition. Like Iota, Yara's favorite. Some meta-humor to give snoopers an existential crisis. Some were fabricated entirely — notably, Beta, which was a little surprising, since it was just an ordinary monster. What was so unusual or startling about that, compared to Keter cakes or Project Rho? But Beta was an invention from whole cloth; everything about was fiction besides its ancient classification system.

Not so with Delta. Delta was strange enough on its own that people always assumed the files they had unearthed were altered. They were wrong. Delta was the most straightforward 001. A lock that appeared to literally "contain" our universe, and also something called "Apakht." It seemed like a joke from several cartoon shows, a joke made worse by the fact that it was true.

And Delta, the Lock, was still missing its Key. Not that the O5s hadn't tried to crack it open, especially the skittish ones who didn't like the idea of anyone containing anything but them. One of them had it in her head that Delta unlocked Heaven. Kept rambling on about something called the Thaumiel Initiative. It didn't matter. Not even SCP-005 could pry that lock open, and no megaton bomb could crack Delta's shell.

Yara felt the warmth of the Delta stone through her gloves, and reflected that it was perhaps fortunate that every attempt to unlock Delta had failed.

She was still reflecting on this when the first klaxon blared.

---

The Harbinger hated its code name.

"The Harbinger." Really. So fucking over-dramatic. They wouldn't stop using it, either. Security, they said. Harbinger. Harbinger. Harbinger? Harbinger, Harbinger, Harbinger. It wanted to kill the fucking person who came up with that.

Yet… as long as it was on the premises of Site 10, it was not going to think of itself by any other identity but Harbinger. Not its name, definitely not gender. The Harbinger was an it, now, and would stay that way until this was over.

Sure, the Foundation's ability to read minds was not precisely A-grade, but considering the stakes, it wasn't planning on taking extra risk. Especially not with an 001. Especially not with Delta. The Harbinger was familiar with Delta's containment procedures, listed and unlisted, maybe too familiar… no, better not to think about that either.

The Harbinger tore through the outer containment shell around the Primary Archival Vault, wincing slightly at the ease with which the steel alloy peeled apart. The auto-defense turrets came next, followed by the chemical bath. The Harbinger's glowing white form withstood the punishment and it destroyed the turrets with a wave of its hand.

A battalion of carefully crafted containment procedures, made useless in moments. The Harbinger carefully pushed back the memories sifting up in its brain.

The Harbinger reached the Vault, the massive, aptly named octagonal prism-shaped containment chamber, custom-designed precisely for the purpose of containing SCP-001-Delta. Until now, it had done a very good job.

It was made of reinforced concrete and steel, with a time-locked access portal in the ceiling. Pretty much nothing could get through that portal.

The Harbinger grimaced. The Foundation just did not reckon with power on the right scale. That would have to change—quickly.

The Harbinger left the portal alone and ripped off the entire front side of the vault.

It walked forward two steps and stopped.

The Vault was supposed to be empty… It wasn't.

In point of fact, there was a woman sitting in it. The Harbinger recognized her. Dr. Yara Mirski. Research lead on 001-Delta.

A dangerous thought, the thought of her, bubbled up into the Harbinger's head — quickly suppressed — but it was a distraction for a key second.

Mirski was holding what appeared to be a harpoon gun on steroids, aiming it forward. She did not appear surprised to see the Harbinger, not at all—

She pulled the trigger.

God damn it, the Harbinger thought, as the bolt impaled it through the chest.

---

Yara Mirski hadn't known what to expect the invader, the "Harbinger", to look like, and she wasn't going to let it phase her now that she was seeing it.

But it really did look very startling.

It was shaped like a person, glowing entirely, uniformly white. She couldn't make out any features on its face. Couldn't tell whether it was male or female.

And there was something else about it — some sense about it — that felt purely otherworldly, made it hard to look at. It wasn't just the hundred wings sprouting from its back. She was reminded of the Bible stories that she'd heard in church growing up, the ones involving angels. How unwitting mortals would fall to their knees in worship, only for the angel to stop them, pull them to their feet, and rebuke them, because you should only be directing your worship to the one true living God.

There was also, of course, the harpoon in its chest, but she'd put that there. She'd almost forgotten, staring at the Harbinger's visage, until its glow started to dim and some of that intense white energy started spiraling into the harpoon.

Thank God, she thought, it's working. Then she laughed at the irony.

The Harbinger never moved its gaze from her. Only its hands moved, rising to the harpoon. She knew it couldn't remove the fully powered harpoon bolt, not while it was leeching away the being's essence. But the Harbinger didn't try.

Instead, it dismantled it. Tore open the casing, unwrapped the internal wiring, got to the power source and cracked it open with a pinch of its fingers. Immediately its light returned to full strength.

The Harbinger tossed the remnants of the now-useless harpoon aside and walked towards her. It lifted the Lock from her nerveless fingers.

Yara Mirski fell to her knees.

"Oh, cut that out," the Harbinger said. "I'm not going to kill you."

Its voice startled her back to her senses. It was mellifluous and otherworldly, still without discernible gender, but casual, undramatic. And… weary.

"Don't be too hard on yourself," it said. "Really."

She sized up the Harbinger again. No wound was visible from where the harpoon had pierced its chest. There should have been a gaping hole. There was nothing.

It didn't look at her. It was examining the Lock.

"That was very clever," it said. "It almost worked. Another time, another place… maybe it would have."

"Why didn't it?" she asked.

"If I told you that," the Harbinger said, "…well, then you'd know."

She couldn't think of a response to that.

The Harbinger reached into its form and drew from its… robes? … the item that, somehow, Yara knew it would have. A small ornate object, resembling a key. Exactly as it had looked in the recovered sketches.

It looked so tiny. So ordinary.

"Stop," Yara said. "Wait. Please. I know you've … You obviously want to do this. But think about it, please. Do you have any idea what could be in there? Do you know—"

"Actually…" The Harbinger seemed to chuckle a little. "I know exactly what's in there."

Yara felt a little cold. Spell of containment… "Apakht," she said.

"Apakht," the Harbinger agreed. It inserted the Key into the Lock, and turned the Key.

There was a small flash, and something about the world was irrevocably changed.

For a brief moment, the Harbinger wasn't a glowing hundred-winged angelic being. It was nothing more than an ordinary human.

Their eyes met.

"I know you," Yara said, without thinking. "You're—"

She couldn't finish the words. She couldn't even think the thought in her head. It — it — the Harbinger was doing something to stop her.

"Sorry," the Harbinger said. Its glowing radiance had returned in full. "Nothing personal." It looked at the Lock, as if watching. Or listening.

"What did you do? What is it? What did you unlock?" She could feel something vibrating in the back of her brain. Her eyes kept being drawn to the lock. It looked exactly the same, visually, but it was also incredibly different. "What's Apakht?"

"It's the End," the Harbinger said.

The fabric of reality began to unfold before their eyes.

---

Yahweh awoke in His human form in His room at Site 17, knowing that the hour had arrived.

In an instant, He was at Site 0. The personnel in the control room, some half asleep, leapt to their feet as He appeared. He took a moment to watch the dawning look of comprehension on their faces. O5-14 staggered to his feet.

"The Time has come," Yahweh intoned.

In another eye-blink, He was at the Gate. The being that the Foundation called SCP-001-Gamma bowed in front of Him, lowering its burning sword, its four flaming wings spread in reverence.

"Uriel," Yahweh said. "It is Time. Open the Gates. Lead My armies across the Earth."

"I HEAR AND OBEY, MY LORD AND MY GOD," Uriel said.

The Gates began to creak open. Behind it was an army of angels, thousands of bright creatures, many-eyed, burning with pure red light. They raised their white swords, singing a chant of war, and the rustling of countless brilliant wings filled the air.

---

The thing inside Site 10, the singularity that was, was not, had always been, and had never been a part of the Lock, unfurled itself like a flower.

Site 10 was demolished in an instant. No one inside had any moment for last thoughts before their deaths.

Then they were all alive again, shaken, deposited somewhere in New Hampshire. Along with Site 10, intact, aside from the destruction the Harbinger had dealt to it.

Meanwhile, the ruins of Site 10 and the corpses of everyone in it were buried deep within the vast valley that had never existed before on the planet Earth, and yet, now, had always existed, displacing a few thousand miles of desert in the Middle East. It was still both there, and not. Either way, it was.

Waves of blue and green energy washed about, and the valley filled with plants and animals the like of which had never been seen before.

In the very center, orbiting in a wash of iridescent rainbow color, the Lock hovered in the center of a tiny singularity. Open, at long last. Sending out its signal.

---

Dr. Everett Mann was in the middle of dissecting a recently dead instance of SCP-098 when its legs started to twitch.

Everett paused his scalpel in mid-cut and watched with curiosity. This had never happened before.

He looked over at the cage of live SCP-098 specimens. They were also acting oddly. They were stock still. Not a single red-orange limb was making so much as a twitch. SCP-098 were not exactly the calmest species of anomalous crustacean, and Everett had never seen them behave this way.

They appeared to be… watching. Waiting for something.

The dead 098 instance kept twitching.

"Hmmm," Everett said.

His cell phone vibrated in his lab coat. This was the secure cell, the one that only rang in serious emergencies. Everett put down the scalpel and picked up the call.

"Everett Mann, Site 2036, status five," he said.

"The sword falls and rises," the voice on the other line said.

"But it kills in one stroke," Everett replied.

"Emergency Order Patmos is now in effect," the voice said. "995 has breached containment. 616 has opened. We are awaiting report from 001-Gamma. We are securing 073 and 076…"

"And you want to know about 098," Everett said.

"Have SCP-098 activated?" the voice asked.

"I am sorry to disappoint you. They are acting a bit odd, but I cannot say…"

The dead 098 instance froze, then burst into pale orange flame.

After another moment passed, the other 098 specimens burst into flame, all at the same time. Little slots in their shells opened, and delicate, vibrating, dragonfly-like wings sprang out. As far as Everett could tell, each 098 instance sprouted as many wings as they had limbs. Even the dead instance. Which was now looking significantly less dead.

They breached the sides of their cage in an instant, all chittering at once in some alien language. They ripped through the plate glass window of the sealed experiment chamber and swarmed away through the site, demolishing the walls that got in their way. Everett stared after them.

"Never mind," Everett said to the voice waiting on the other line. "I'd say that probably counts."

---

Yahweh appeared to the entire remaining thirteen members O5 Council at once in thirteen different locations. He did not appear, of course, to the Administrator, because the last Administrator had died years ago and had not been replaced. O5-14 no longer voted on Council matters, and therefore the Council no longer need a tiebreaker vote. But to all the rest, He appeared. They were all His, and had always been His. Even the non-believers, who thought of him as nothing more than a reality bender with a god complex, would have no choice but to go along. They were all His, as sure as the hands attached to His Body.

Thirteen people leaped from their seats, from their beds, fell to their knees, tripped and fell to the ground.

"Uriel, my servant, once told your Founder to prepare for the great and terrible day of the Lord," Yahweh said in thirteen voices at once. "This day now approaches. Make your final preparations. There is nothing else you will need to do but wait. My armies ride across the Earth. Soon I will call the Four Horsemen. Once the last judgment has been unsealed, then shall the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And then all will have Paradise."

He returned to a single human body, without waiting for a reply, returned to a slight feeling of vertigo. He might have been an omnipotent super-being, but it would not have done to cram everything into this tiny human body that He'd elected to stay in until the End of Days was over. Because of that, He hadn't recently made a practice of existing in several places at once. It came naturally, like breathing, but still felt unusual, like breathing for the first time after spending long minutes underwater.

Actually, there was something odd… some little twinge of memory, triggered by what He had just done…

The thought slipped from His grasp. That was the downside of human frailty. This was a perfected human body, but even a perfected human body was still flawed compared to true omniscience.

He knew the next step, as he always knew. He would return to the ancient Valley with no name. The first place He had ever created, the precursor to Eden. The Valley where none had ever set foot but Him, and never would, not even after the End of Days.

He took a step, and was there.

And…

He wasn't alone.

---

Klaxons blared in Site 2036. Everett Mann listened, bemused. Emergency Order Patmos or no, there was no need for all that racket.

He stepped out of the former auxiliary research and containment chambers for SCP-098, into a mob of personnel. No one stopped to give him the time. Fairly rude, Everett thought. 098 wasn't even killing anyone. Just… leaving. The holes in the walls and ceiling could be rebuilt.

He spotted Gears in the crowd and made his way over. Another person who could be trusted to deal with situations in a reasonable fashion.

"It seems we have a massive containment breach," Gears said.

"Yes, SCP-098," Everett said. "I hear 995 and 616 have breached containment as well. But I don't see what the fuss is about. We've stopped XK-class scenarios before, we can do it again. The only difference in this case is that we might have to deal with O5-14 putting up a fuss—"

Gears held up a hand. Interruption was not his style, Everett knew, which is partly why he could stop anyone in their tracks with that gesture. "I'm not speaking of Patmos," Gears said.

"Oh?" Everett raised an eyebrow. "What else has gotten out?"

"A whole damn lot," Gears said, perfectly calmly, swearing for the first time that Everett had ever heard.

---

Yahweh walked into the Valley, more astonished than He could ever remember feeling. An astonishment beyond words. He had never been at a loss for words.

The Valley — His Valley — was crowded. A massive flood of spirits, of winged things, of crawling things, of monsters, of people, of… of…

Of others.

A spirit whale swooped overhead. A gigantic furred thing lumbered its way over a distant mountain. A cadre of tiny glittering blue humanoids blew past His face, giggling, and were gone. A pure black humanoid figure appeared, blinked at Him, and vanished again. A massive not-centipede skittered by, giving Him a passing glare.

Almost in a stupor, Yahweh made His way down towards the humanoid crowd, feeling, for the first time He could remember, the instinctive need to be near others like Him.

As He approached, a figure detached itself from a crowd. A poised, brown-skinned woman with piercings in her lip, and long dark hair. For a moment Yahweh found Himself oddly attracted—

I am not a man, to wish for carnal knowledge—

"El!" the woman said.

"Who are you?" Yahweh asked, before He could register the impossibility of the question in His Head.

The woman looked at him funny. "I guess it's not surprising you don't remember. We've all forgotten a lot in the past few thousand years. But you especially."

Yahweh could think of absolutely nothing to say.

"Asherah," she said. "It's Asherah. I was your consort for several hundred years."

There were strange stirrings inside his head, alien memories that He could not comprehend—

These were other gods, they were the false idols of the ancient times, He remembered being a god of the wind and a god of storm and a god of the sun, a parochial, jealous deity, He remembered creating the Heavens and the Earth in seven days, He (he) remembered being a completely non-divine yet unspeakably powerful boy born into suffering and pain, He remembered being someone else forced into the shape of an artificial god, He remembered a feeling of exultation upon realizing He was the last god standing, the last god who had not faded away, and the future of Earth was His forever, He remembered having no parents, He (he) remembered his grandmother's smile, He remembered a million impossible contradictory memories, and they were doing it, this cursed human form had let them in, it was them—

"Enough!" He roared.

Yahweh raised His hand, looked at the crowd of creatures trampling through His Valley, and with a wave of His hand wiped all the false gods out of existence.

Or… He tried to, anyway. What He actually did was wave his hand, and then absolutely nothing happened.

"You know," Asherah said with an wry smile, "I may be your ex, but wiping me out of existence is a really rude thing to try to do."

She put her hand on Yahweh's shoulder without His permission, and did not explode into nothingness out of blasphemy.

"I know why you're here," she said. She pointed, directing His gaze towards the center of the Valley.

Yahweh saw it, a tiny object that floated in a rippling core of colorful light that moved like water.

It was a Lock.

"You're here to end the world," Asherah said. "And so are we. Everyone here."

"This is not possible," Yahweh said. He was feeling that vertigo again.

"To be frank," Asherah said. "I'm not actually sure I'm the Asherah, and I'm not actually sure you're the Yahweh."

"What."

"You might have noticed that you remember a whole lot of contradictory things," she said. "So do I. I remember both helping to create the world and being born into it when it was already ancient. That's just for starters. Now maybe this kind of thing is part of being a god, or maybe… Maybe it's just part of being more powerful than a human was ever meant to be." She looked back at the crowd. "Not all these things are gods, I know that for sure. We're just two of the beings that are "supposed" to end the world. Everyone in this valley is."

Yahweh turned His glare on her. "So you — all of you — are here to make war with Me? To come against Me, to stop My End of Days?"

"Well. Yeah." She looked a little awkward, like she was trying to explain something to someone who was being painfully slow. "It's not really about you… specifically. Really, I don't think half the, uh, world-enders here knew about each other before literally a few minutes ago. They can't fight here, but… Most of them aren't happy to find out that they've got competition. Not just you."

He tried to comprehend this. A thought that He was entirely unused to having. "Do you think you can stand against the might of the one true God? Do you think you can enact your own End of Days?"

Asherah shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe? I'm not going to try."

He blinked, momentarily baffled. "You are not going to try to end the world?"

"Me?" Asherah snorted. "Fuck no."

"You told me… Then why are you here?"

"I may have been called here, but not even that Lock can make me end the world. Have you ever tried the seafood in Singapore? Have you ever used a smartphone? Run through the jungle? Seen Cirque du Soleil? Flown on an airplane? Surfed the Internet? Watched tentacle porn? Seen Star Wars? Explored the Wanderer's Library? Been lost in the concrete mazes of the new human cities? No, I like the world the way it is, thanks. It may be fucked up, but tearing it apart isn't going to improve anything."

He stared at her.

"So no," she said. "I don't plan to end the world. I actually don't plan to let you end the world either, or anyone else." She paused. "Sorry."

Divine rage rose up in Yahweh again, and He opened His mouth, only to be once again interrupted.

"Pardon me," another woman's voice said.

The new woman's voice was not raised, or powerful, but somehow everyone in the Valley heard it. And all turned to look.

She was a dark-skinned woman, African, wearing a gray suit, walking into the Valley. Her body language said she was both unassuming and confident. Yahweh knew immediately she was an ordinary human, not like these alien creatures milling around him, but He did not recognize her.

He did not recognize her.

That should not have been possible, ever, not even in this limited human form. Yahweh knew all, and even if these false gods and "world-enders" were able to stymie Him somehow, no human should—

"I come on behalf of the SCP Foundation," the woman said. "Some of you know who we are. Some of you do not. The Foundation are the protectors of humanity. Some of you we have imprisoned, some of you we have bargained with, all in defense of humanity." She sat on the ground, cross-legged, formality inherent in her movements, some kind of ritual that Yahweh almost recognized… "I have come to talk."

There was a long silence.

"And what are you?" a crimson-skinned man asked her.

"I am a human," she said. "I am the Administrator of the SCP Foundation."

"Impossible," Yahweh said. "I knew all the Administrators. The last one died years ago, and you are not he. You are none of them."

"I'm protected from—" the woman started.

"You are not human," a panther-shaped entity shouted from the crowd. Yahweh seethed at the interruption. "If you were human, we would be able to touch you."

"I am protected," the Administrator said again. "But outside of my protection, I really am nothing more than a human. Like all the humans you plan to kill in your quest to end the world."

"Then what do you want, Human?" another world-ender asked.

"We can open the way to worlds free of sentient life. Many worlds. Enough room for all of you. You won't have to end this world. No humans will have to die. You will have a hundred others." She paused. "I want you to let this world live out the rest of its history in peace."

A clamor of voices broke out. Not all of it was verbal - much was broadcast by thought.

What are you saying—

Is this supposed to be an insult—

I come to save the world, I must end it to save it—-

This is not a human's place—

This is the end of days—

How did you come here, how did any of you—

All will burn—

This age is over, as the ages before it also had an end—

Who will deny me, certainly not a tiny thing like—

"What do you offer in exchange, Human?" a massive, fox-furred being asked, once the voices started to quiet down.

"In exchange…" The Administrator hesitated. Though He could not read her mind, Yahweh could tell that she was unsure about what she was about to say. Uncertain, even afraid.

"In exchange, we will not destroy you."

Silence. A few of the entities laughed. Most looked uncaring or simply baffled. Many began to move on, apparently losing interest.

"Will none of you consider my offer?" the Administrator asked.

No one answered.

"Very well." The Administrator drew herself up.

"Why do you not join us, Human?" an amorphous blue form called out from the crowd. "Take your Foundation and come end the world with us. In the new world, you will have anything you could wish for. Anything you could imagine."

"We are the Foundation," the Administrator said. "We will not worship you. We will not join you. We will not go back to hiding in fear of you. I hope you will change your minds, but we will stand against you, and alone, if we have to."

She looked at Yahweh, directly, and for a fleeting instant, Yahweh thought of Himself as SCP-343.

"All of you," the Administrator said.

Her form flickered, and she vanished from the Valley, leaving no trace behind.