Without any discussion at all, Jane and Cain moved closer together, blocking Garrus behind them. He started to move around beside Jane, but she shoved him back. The MTF's guns stayed trained on her and Cain, but no doubt they'd have snipers with a bead on Garrus. A turian was an unknown in a sea of unknowns, and these guys tended to live by the motto "shoot first and ask questions later".
"What are you doing?" Garrus hissed, shifting his weight back and forth anxiously.
"If you get shot in the head, will it grow back?" she asked calmly, not daring to take her gaze off the two dozen black holes staring at her. She could feel each one like a finger touching the places where the entrance wounds would be. Garrus didn't argue, but he wasn't happy about the situation at all. "Exactly. I told you to let me take point when I took you along."
"Drop your weapon!" shouted the operative closest to them. Jane opened her hand and let the gun hang upside down from her finger. "I said drop it!"
"We're not here to hurt anyone or cause problems for you," Jane said, raising her voice so that it carried all the way to the tree line. "There's a very serious situation brewing down there, so I suggest that you all get to it before the whole staff is turned into one big grease spot."
"SCP-4762 and SCP-073, you are ordered to surrender immediately or you will be terminated. Same goes for the turian hiding in your skirts, Shepard."
"Shepard?" Jane laughed and thought that if there was ever a time she needed her powers of persuasion it was now. She turned the charm all the way up to ten and let it roll over the assembled crew of hardasses. "I remember you, LaFratta. I thought we were friends."
The man was quiet for a beat, then said, "I don't make friends with skips."
"Oh, horseshit. You used to tell me all about your little boy . . . Rudy, wasn't it? He'd be about my age now. Man, it's been years since I've seen you."
"Same here, Shepard. Jane," he amended, and she saw the barrel of his gun drop an inch.
"You and I both know I'd never hurt anyone."
"I might have done, before Torfan." Jane paled a little at the mention of her greatest failing and LaFratta softened a little more. He'd obviously expected defiance and was met with remorse. "Look, Jane, I'd love to help you and your friends, but I've got orders from up on high to contain the area. That means you. You're still in the system as an SCP, even though you've been on the run all this time."
Garrus was staring into the trees with widening eyes. "Shepard?"
"Shhh."
"To your two o'clock."
She risked a glance in the direction she'd indicated and had to concentrate hard on keeping the shock from her face. "I see them," she breathed.
"Boss, we don't have time for this," said another operative near the periphery. "There're Keters on the loose in there."
"What he says is true," said Cain, who seemed almost totally unshaken by the guns leveled at him, as well as what was happening in the woods. Jane guessed he'd had enough firepower aimed at him in his lifetime, and enough reason to be unafraid of all of it. "The Sculpture is just inside that door. It got to Alto."
"Clef is dead?" LaFratta nearly shouted. "You sure about that?"
"I said it got to him, not that it killed him. Nothing is sure where Alto is concerned."
"You got that right." He seemed to consider their dilemma, but his military training kicked in and he leveled the gun at Jane again. "Sorry, I can't let you go. Now drop that gun or so help me god, Jane, I will fire."
From off in the woods there came a huge rumbling crash and a cloud of dust rose ghost-like over the trees. Five of the operatives (probably rookies, Jane thought) startled and turned to see what had made the sound and even before they could raise their weapons, SCP-1000 and his clan burst out of the trees and attacked. There was a flurry of brown fur and then the shouting began, but no one fired since no one could get a good shot. Jane and Cain watched as each operative was disarmed and incapacitated, but the huge hairy creatures didn't kill anyone. LaFratta and the two men flanking him had their rifles raised but didn't dare to take a shot; there was too high a chance that they'd hit one of their own guys.
"Goddammit, take them out!"
"I can't! You know what the sheet says about them, LaFratta."
"Oh, to hell with this." He sighted down on one of the creatures, who took notice and started toward him. LaFratta's finger tightened on the trigger, but Jane broke into a run at the last minute and fired two shots into the air to get his attention. Caught between Jane and the huge, lumbering man-thing, LaFratta hesitated one beat too long and before he even knew what was happening, his rifle was plucked from his hand. SCP-1000 tossed the gun aside like it was a plastic toy and stared down the other two MTF operatives that were still armed. They soon came to the conclusion that they really didn't want to find out if bullets worked on the creature and dropped their weapons, hands in the air.
Garrus was right behind Jane as she faced her saviors, roughly twenty of the biggest sapient creatures she'd seen, except maybe the geth primes. They formed a semi-circle around the three of them and parted slightly to let through one who stood at the back. As soon as she laid eyes on his face, Jane recognized him and a wide smile broke out on her face.
"Jane," he rumbled. "You remember."
"I told you I'd never forget." She wanted to throw her arms around him, the first truly good memory of her life, but she wasn't sure how his people felt about things like that. "You saved my life, twice. It would appear that I owe you."
"No, you owe us nothing. We help you because you see. No one else sees us."
"I don't follow."
"Your people, when they see us, they see this." He lifted up a lock of hair from his arm and let it fall. Then he pointed to the middle of his chest. "But you see this. So, we help."
"Thank you—all of you." There were nods of acknowledgement all around. "You know, I never did ask your name."
"Humans have names for us. We are Big Foot, Sasquatch-"
"No, I meant your name. What do I call you?"
"I am called the Pathmaker."
"Yes, I suppose you are," she said with a smile. "What will you do now? They're not going to like that you took out their team."
"The humans will wake soon. Go into the ground, put the other SCPs back in their cages. Our people, we know much of fighting. We wanted to talk to you about that, too. Fighting."
"What about it?" she asked.
"Long ago, when this planet was ours, we went to the stars and saw many great things. We saw cities made of light, and a giant star with five arms. Some of us lived there, most stayed here."
"You were space-faring?" she asked in disbelief. It was hard to imagine such primitive people cruising around the galaxy.
"Yes. Found the floating star-city, far away, with others that were not like us."
"Oh my god," Jane breathed. "You're talking about the Citadel, aren't you?"
He nodded solemnly. "Many words were lost in the old times, but Clef has taught us again. Told us of what is coming." He motioned for them to sit on the edge of one of the tanks, and they did, listening raptly. "We knew the Protheans long and long ago when they came to Earth, when we built the cities in the trees and your people stayed to themselves in small tribes. Small humans, and we were so big." The Pathmaker looked up to the sky with his old, brown eyes and Jane could see the longing etched there, like he remembered in some part of his brain what it was to fly through space. It was wholly unbelievable that his race could have once been so great, but Jane knew he wouldn't lie to her.
"The Protheans came with the news that the monsters from the dark—what you call the Reapers—were coming to Earth to kill us," he continued. "They wanted to take us away with them in their ships, save us, but we thought we knew better. We were so smart, then."
"Wait, the Reapers never attacked Earth in the last cycle," Garrus said. "There wasn't any threat here."
"When they came, we were not a threat. We made a plague, turned off the parts in our heads . . ." He made a frustrated noise at his own stunted speech, and Jane laid a hand on his arm. The Pathmaker smiled at her tiny hand on his thick, hairy arm and continued. "Made us animals. Not forever, but almost. Only now can we make words again, and we are starting to build again. It is good. We will soon be free of it."
"You did this . . . to yourselves," Jane murmured, and the other creatures looked on with a profound sadness.
"Yes, and we were left alone. Long and long we have lived in the forests, hunted by your people. Not forget our first enemies, though. We remember the Reapers, what they made us do. What they took from us." The Pathmaker gritted his teeth and balled up his fists in anger. "We remember."
"They're coming again. All of you are in danger, this whole planet is in danger. It won't be long—a year, maybe less—before they come back to finish what they started."
"No." He spoke with absolute finality, as though there could be no doubt. "When the Reapers come back, we will fight. My people, we know of fighting. We will hold Earth against the enemy."
"How many of you are there?" Cain, who had been silent until now, asked.
The Pathmaker gestured to the woods, a wide sweep of his big arm. "We are like leaves on a tree."
Jane's eyes widened in excitement. This was more than she dared hope for. "So, you'll fight with us?"
"No." He put a hand on her head, the heel of his palm on her forehead and the tips of his fingers nearly reaching to the back of her neck. "We will fight with you, Jane Shepard."
She nodded, unable to speak past the lump in her throat. Just then, Able stumbled out of the woods covered in mud and blood, and as soon as Cain laid eyes on him he flinched back and went totally still like a cornered animal.
"Ah, brother," Able said, still in the process of healing himself. It was progressing quickly; his shoulder set itself with a dull crunch as she watched. "Jane, Garrus. All the fun has been had without me, I see." There was such abject disappointment in his voice that Jane almost laughed.
"Sorry. We'd have saved you one if we knew you were coming. Mind telling me what the hell you're doing off my ship?"
"I thought you would like a ride back to the Normandy," he said with a non-committal shrug, then turned to Cain. "It has been too long, brother."
"I am not your brother," Cain said calmly, but his shoulders were tensed to grab Able if he tried anything stupid with the MTF.
"There is no word in this tongue for what you are. Brother." A gash on his cheek sealed itself, scabbing up and scarring over as he spoke.
Cain sighed and rubbed his stubbly cheek. "I assume your transport is nearby?"
"Yes." He waited for them to follow before heading into the woods. Jane waved goodbye to the Pathmaker and fell into step beside Garrus. He was silent, but not that brooding silence he'd tended toward before they'd taken care of the situation with Sidonis.
"I'm sorry, Jane," he said finally. "I . . . wasn't at my best in there."
"No, you weren't. But then, we were being attacked by a creature that can make the walls melt, so I wasn't expecting heroics or anything." She was trying to lighten the mood, but Garrus was having none of it.
"It's just, you always seem to know what to do in any given situation. You act decisively and make the right choices, and usually wind up saving people who wouldn't have a chance otherwise."
"You make me sound like a saint. I can assure you that's not the case."
"Just once I want to be the one to save you." He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. "That sounded a lot less petulant in my head."
Jane stopped and the crunch of dead leaves underfoot faded into the distance as the others went on without them. She took his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. "You already saved me a long time ago, Garrus. More than you know. I told you before that I wouldn't be able to do this without you, and I meant it. I wouldn't be standing here if it weren't for you." He still doubted her, but he looked a little better. Less shell-shocked, and the blue was creeping back into his plates. She traced his colony markings with her thumb and tried to make him see just how much he meant to her. Maybe it wouldn't kill her to be a little more vulnerable around him every once in a while; god knew it would do her some good to get things off her chest, and Garrus was always a willing sounding board. She wasn't used to being in a relationship, to being needed like this, and she knew that there were a lot of things she needed to work on to make this work between them.
"Why don't we bring dinner up to your cabin and we'll talk about it?" he suggested. Most of the time, she'd beg off and claim that she needed to finish up some reports or write up the duty roster, but this time she nodded, catching him off-guard.
"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I think I still have some wine left over from last time you came up; we could finish the bottle, if you want."
His mandibles twitched in a small smile and he let his head rest against hers for a moment before following the others.
Able's box was buried about two feet down in an impact crater but, other than being a little dirty, it was completely undamaged. The carvings on the outside glowed faintly in the gray light of dawn, and Able pried open the door to reveal the chained coffin within. Cain stayed well back from it, watching like a hawk, his muscles singing with tension.
"There is a button in here that, when pressed, will bring this box to the cargo hold of your ship, little Shepard," Able explained and she grimaced at the use of his pet name for her. "Being in contact with the box should be sufficient to allow you to travel with it."
"So that's how you got on board," Jane said.
"But if he's using a personal teleporter-" Garrus mused, "which, by the way, I didn't know existed until right now—then the box is probably attached to one half of the device, and the other half is somewhere on the Normandy."
Jane's eyes widened in sudden realization. She'd assumed that Able had gotten hold of a skip that would allow him to materialize anywhere he wanted. If it was tech, though . . . "So how did the other half get on my ship?" And is it even the ship that it's keyed to? was the question she didn't voice, but she knew Garrus had made that jump already.
"I do not know," Able answered, "but perhaps your Illusive Man can answer those questions for you." He swung the door shut and Jane, Garrus, and Cain gathered around the cube, holding on to it as best they could. A few seconds later, Jane felt a pulling sensation just behind her navel and her vision grayed out until she found herself back on the ship again. She dropped to her knees as the vertigo kicked in and she dug her fingers into the floor to keep from falling into the ceiling—or at least, that's what it felt like would happen if she let go. Garrus stumbled over to her and helped her up, and she faced Cain with as much dignity as she could muster while feeling like she was about to throw up.
"Welcome aboard, Cain," she said. "There'll be a debriefing later in the comm room upstairs, but for now you're free to roam around the ship and get acquainted with the crew."
"Thank you, Jane Shepard," he answered with a little bow. "May I request accommodations on one of the upper levels? I find that being around my . . . brother . . . is not at all agreeable."
"We're kind of full at the moment, but I'll try to work something out."
"That would be much appreciated." With that, he left to explore the ship, and Jane told EDI to keep an eye on him. She and Garrus went upstairs for their own debriefing, but before she could have more than one glass of wine, John was in her head with an urgency she hadn't heard from him in a long time.
*Jane, you need to see this.*
What is it?
*Right now.*
So she went into his head and saw through his eyes, and as she read through the files he showed her, the picture finally came clear and she covered her mouth with both hands. Vaguely, she heard Garrus asking what was wrong, but she couldn't answer; the revelation of what Legion had uncovered was too much. When she finally came back to herself, Garrus was kneeling in front of her with concern writ large on his alien features.
"What happened? You just . . . went away for a minute there."
"John—Legion found—oh my god, this whole time, it's been them the whole time . . ."
"What? Tell me!"
"I will. I'll tell everyone at once." She stood up and gestured for him to follow her into the elevator. She stabbed the button marked "2" and waited impatiently, tapping her foot in agitation. "EDI, patch me through to the Illusive Man, and put it on the comm. I want everyone to hear this."
"Commander, I am unable to place calls to the Illusive Man except in cases of dire emergency."
"This counts as a fucking emergency, EDI. Call. Him. Now."
With Able's box returned to the Normandy and Cain safely aboard the ship, John went to sit on a crate. His body felt heavier than normal and he just couldn't bring himself to go out and face the mission yet. For the first time, he took a moment to just shut off and power down his mind, which had a habit of racing off at breakneck speeds for every waking hour of the day, and he realized how exhausted he was. Between recruiting all these people on his team, running their let-me-get-some-closure errands, finding that his past was closer than ever before, and storming Site 25, he just couldn't find the reserves of energy necessary to get up. Some of that exhaustion was likely due to the brief but vivid vision he'd had inside that shadow-thing back at the Site.
Tali sat down next to him, not saying anything, and held his hand in hers. He squeezed her small, slender fingers gratefully and gave her a wan smile. He closed his eyes and his head thumped back against the wall. "I'll be okay, just give me a minute."
"Want to talk about it?"
"We could, but I think you know what you saw back there. No sense in dredging up a hallucination of a future that probably won't happen." Maybe. Hopefully.
"Okay." No poking at it with a stick, no prying into his past, just 'okay'. He didn't have words for how much he needed that right now, so instead he pulled her against him and she laid her head on his chest with one arm slung over his stomach. He kissed her head through her veil and just let himself be for this little pocket of time they had together.
EDI seemed to sense that they both needed a few minutes to decompress, so she waited until they were on their way out of the cargo bay before saying, "Shepard, Legion has requested that you meet him in the AI core at your earliest convenience."
"Did he say why?"
"He said that he had compiled the data you requested, but would not clarify."
"Oh, good," John answered. He'd almost forgotten he'd asked the geth to scan the files he'd picked up at Able's containment site on Halion. There could be some interesting information there, but all he wanted to right then was collapse face-first on the bed, and whether his boots would be off when he did was still up for debate. "Thanks, EDI."
"Logging you out, Shepard."
He and Tali parted ways and he leaned against the wall of the elevator, going over the runs they had yet to finish in a muddled sort of way, and so he didn't notice at first that the car had stopped on the crew deck. The doors opened and John cracked an eyelid to see Legion standing there, the plating around his flashlight head twitching in a way that would have suggested agitation in an organic being.
"Shepard-Commander," he said by way of greeting in that monotone synthesized voice of his. Its. Whatever.
"Hey, Legion." He pushed off the wall and shoved the thick blanket of fatigue off his brain. "EDI said you had that data I asked you for."
"Affirmative. We must also inform you that some of the files we were given contained potentially upsetting information. We thought it best to advise you before analyzing the data for yourself."
That got John's attention. "Potentially upsetting how?"
"It is our consensus that your trust in Cerberus' motives may be misplaced."
It's not like I ever trusted the Illusive Man any further than I can throw him, John thought, something he'd believed to be common knowledge. Still, Legions warning had dispelled the grogginess he'd been fighting, and he took the datapad with a word of thanks that Legion didn't acknowledge as he went back to the AI core. John wondered briefly what Chakwas thought of having a geth bunking in the room right next to the med bay, but figured she'd have said something if she was bothered by it.
He took the datapad into the mess hall and got a cup of black coffee, sipping it hot on the way over to the tables. Grunt was there, shoveling something that looked like fried fish heads into his mouth. Kasumi was sitting across from him, alternately watching Grunt with fascinated disgust and Jacob's profile, using the Cerberus operative's face as eyebleach, apparently.
"Hey there, Shep," she said before lifting some Ramen to her mouth with a pair of pink plastic chopsticks and slurping them daintily. The way she ate noodles was a kind of artform; she never got any broth on her face and she made slurping look as proper as an English tea party.
John settled in and powered up the datapad, waiting for all the data to load. There was a lot of it, and would have taken anyone else days or weeks to put together. Although this had to be the most motley crew anyone had ever served with, they all certainly had their uses. Kasumi, ever the curious little thief, leaned over the table to look. She glanced up at Shepard with a glint in her eye and a smirk on her lips.
"Mind if I see? No top-secret, classified files in there?"
"No, I keep those in my quarters." She smiled. "Which is locked." Her smile widened into a grin. "EDI will tell on you if you break in."
"Don't you worry your pretty little head, Shep, I have no intention of breaking into your cabin." That mischievous glint never went away, though, and he reminded himself to change his keycode. Again. "So, can I read over your shoulder or would that be weird?"
"As long as you only like me for my files, I'm fine with it."
"I wouldn't be into you for any other reason, if only because Tali would kill me with a shotgun."
"You mean there isn't any other reason? A certain tall, dark, and handsome Cer—"
"Shhh!" she hissed, clapping a hand over his mouth. Jacob appeared not to notice the exchange, though, blissfully oblivious as he chewed on a nutrient bar and talked in low tones with Miranda. "You've made your point."
John turned the datapad so she could see, too, and they bent over it to read. The index wasn't very helpful, consisting of a column of numerical sequences that gave no hint as to the data they linked to. He picked one at random and found a list of random SCPs with a basic summary of their properties beside a link to their respective entries. There was 093, the Dead Sea Object, which allowed anyone holding it to travel through mirrors into alternate realities; 184, the Architect, able to make any room it's placed in three times larger than its external dimensions would allow; 378, The Brainworm, which attached to an infected person's brain and took over bodily functions, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers-style. There weren't any connections between the entries that John could see, and Kasumi said the same.
The next file outlined the Mobile Task Force Omega-7 initiative, code-named "Pandora's Box", which involved having Able lead a task force of his own. This seemed to John to be a fuck-up of epic proportions, and there was an entire five-page report detailing what went wrong. More troubling, there was an addendum laying out what the Foundation could do to correct their mistakes and try again.
"Hang on a minute," Kasumi said once she'd finished reading (faster than John, but then she was probably used to skimming important info while under time constraints). "They tried to weaponize Able? Isn't that a bit like taking a thresher maw and strapping a grenade launcher to it?"
"That's . . . a fairly accurate analogy, Kas." He shook his head and stared at the datapad as if it could tell him exactly what was going on. Garrus came down from the battery then, his heavy boots clunking on the metal floor, and took Grunt's recently vacated seat with a tube of dextro paste. John shot him a look and Garrus put up his hands in defense.
"Hey, we ran out of my stuff yesterday. Tali has plenty of food left until we can restock at the next station." John nodded and turned back to the scrolling info feed. "What's got you so serious, Shepard?"
"Nothing, yet. And that's what bothers me." He sent copies of the files to Kasumi and Garrus' omnitools encoded with a kill that would delete them after two hours and they pored over them, searching for something, anything, that looked suspicious when Garrus said, "Shepard, check this out."
He pulled up the document he'd been reading and there, in the upper-left corner, was the SCP Foundation emblem, dated April 24, 2015. He flipped to another document, and the symbol had changed slightly—now it was just two concentric circles, the outer one broken in three places, this one with the date December 5, 2052. The next document, this one from July 30, 2138, showed a symbol that had evolved even further—a simple yellow hexagon with four arrows pointing toward the center at the diagonals.
"Look familiar yet?" Garrus asked, his face deadly serious.
"It's the same hexagon from the Cerberus logo," he said. Quickly, he scanned through his omnitool for any documents dated more recently, within the past five years or so, and found several. It was headed with the title, "Mobile Task Force Sigma, Codename: Lazarus." In the corner was a very familiar symbol, the same one currently decorating the Normandy's hull.
"Oh my god," Kasumi breathed. "They're the same? The SCP Foundation and Cerberus, they're the same organization?"
"That's what it looks like," John said through numb lips. His entire world was coming apart, but he had to stay focused and find out just how deep the rabbit hole went. But first . . .
*Jane, you need to see this.*
What is it?
*Right now.*
They all, accompanied by Jane reading through his eyes, read through any documents they could find about MTF Sigma and found that the Foundation had been planning to put together a new team to spearhead the new galactic fight for human survival and, eventually, dominance. After all, it was true that something about Earth caused objects and entities of unknown origin to appear and, without humans to contain them, the entire galaxy would be in jeopardy. With the Reaper threat looming, they had the perfect inroad to accomplishing that goal under the more innocent guise of sending much-needed aid to human colonies being abducted by the Collectors. The SCPs mentioned were ones they were considering for use in this endeavor, and John's name was right there in green alongside the others.
SCP-4762-1, John Shepard. (Somewhere in Jane's world was a similar file with her name on it, she was sure.)
GSY 2183: Deceased. Nominated for leadership of Mobile Task Force Sigma. Body recovered by [DATA EXPUNGED] from Alchera, site of the Normandy's crash.
Steps taken to use SCP-[REDACTED] and [REDACTED] to resurrect Shepard, considering others for use as well. Operative Miranda Lawson to head the project, although her knowledge of the techniques used, as well as the nature of Shepard's healing abilities, will be limited to galactically known quantities.
GSY 2185: SCP-4762-1 successfully resurrected, utilizing research data obtained during his incarceration at Site [REDACTED]. Shepard will be given command of a ship modeled after the Alliance frigate, Normandy, to defuse the Collector threat. A hand-picked team of standard organic beings of varying races will be recruited to serve under him, and SCP-076-2 will be integrated at a set point in their mission. Shepard's reaction to Able is unknown, but given his past records it should not prove overly problematic.
The Foundation Head has opted to oversee this matter personally, and will be making routine contact with all SCPs involved.
John looked from the information before him to Kasumi and Garrus and shook his head, eyes wide. "I swear to everything that's holy, I had no idea they were doing this."
"I know, Shepard, we all trust you," Garrus said, closing his omnitool and putting a hand on John's shoulder. "But we need to figure out what to do about this."
"Yeah, this is . . . whoo, this mission is turning into quite the adventure, wouldn't you say, Shep?" Kasumi said, only slightly less enthusiastic as usual.
The more John thought about it, the angrier he got. Use him, would they? And for what, to further their own agenda and further humanity's goals? The really horrible thing was that even though he hated what they were doing to him, he believed in the Foundation and what it was trying to accomplish. It had taken a long time to come to terms with that, but he had to admit that their cause was a noble one and was necessary for galactic survival. What he could never forgive was the involvement of innocent people, his friends, in this fucked-sideways suicide mission. That was unacceptable.
John stood up and stalked toward the elevator, Kasumi jogging along behind. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm gonna go give the Illusive Man a piece of my mind."
AN- GSY = galactic standard year
Since a few people have mentioned the Bigfoot revelation, I thought I'd post an excerpt from the SCP Wiki's entry on SCP-1000, Bigfoot:
"As you've already read, the apes we call SCP-1000 evolved alongside us. We walked in the daytime, they walked in the nighttime, our nocturnal siblings in the shadows.
But while we were still wandering hunter-gatherers, they… changed. Like we would, a few thousand years later. Tools. Weapons. Agriculture. Domesticated animals. Stable settlements. As humanity blinked in the Pleistocene sun, SCP-1000's population exploded across the night. They blanketed the planet in the tens of billions.
They made things that we still can't comprehend, even though we've thoroughly studied the surviving pieces. Organic technology. They made trees and birds of prey grow into fast-moving ships, herds of animals that became trains, bushes that became flying vehicles. From insects and pigeons they made things like cell phones, televisions, computers. Atomic bombs. The Children describe vast shining cities, stretching across glaciers and penetrating the deepest caverns, grown skyships of ivory and spider-silk, creatures tending them with hundreds of blinking eyes.
We were rare, like gorillas now, a few hundred thousand left at best. We avoided their settlements just like wild animals today avoid ours. SCP-1000 understood we were intelligent like them, but avoided us just as we avoided them, saw us as fairies, as gnomes, ascribed us supernatural powers, said we ate bad children while they slept in daylight. They fenced off our dwindling wild populations in conservatories, outlawed poaching but in the underground consumed our bones as aphrodisiacs.
Then their civilization fell. And we did it. By 'we' I don't mean the Foundation. By 'we', I mean humanity.
The story is muddy. Supposedly a trickster forest god showed humanity favor, showed us the master's tools and how to use them. Why we did it, we don't know. Perhaps they hunted us, perhaps we were simply afraid. Perhaps it was just that they fenced us in, unintentionally or not. We simply don't know what the truth is. Somehow we acquired SCP-1000's own technology, and with it, we instigated an SK-class dominance shift in which humanity became the dominant species of Earth."
This story offers a new view of what happened to the Bigfoot species, but it still follows the rise and fall of their race according to SCP canon. Thanks again to everyone who's reading this story, and for your kind words and reviews. I really appreciate it. :)
