SCP-4007 Archival Notice 1: On 5/4/2003, SCP-4007 Head Archivist Deping Zhang submitted the following report to the attention of the O5 Council.

During scheduled archival of an old storage facility containing World War II era Foundation documents, my team stumbled upon the old SCP-4007 document, written while we still used paper records for containment procedures. The full document has been attached, but this is a particularly troubling section:

Item #: SCP-4007 Object Class: Keter Special Containment Procedures: SCP-4007 is currently at large. All attempts to track down the anomaly are to be directed through MTF Phi-51 (“MacArthur’s Dogs”). Live capture procedures are in effect, as it is believed that SCP-4007 may contain high-value intelligence concerning Japanese anomalous operations and weapons development during the war. Description: SCP-4007 (real name: Shigeru Matsui, discovered 03/14/1945) is an anomaly…

The description of the anomaly matches our description for SCP-4007-4, but the discovery date is well over a year before our first recorded interaction with an SCP-4007 instance, which we now know as SCP-4007-1. Moreover, this document suggests that SCP-4007-4 was the only known SCP-4007 instance at the time, which doesn’t match the order in which we have them catalogued at present. I’m not sure where this discrepancy comes from, but it merits further investigation.

Investigations were launched into potential reasons behind the discrepancy, and several members of MTF Phi-51 were questioned, though none could offer any reason for the apparent loss of knowledge concerning the anomaly in between 03/14/1945 and 06/10/1946. During the course of discussion, O5-3 raised the following point:

Obviously, there must be some kind of tampering going on, because this kind of information does not simply disappear. While we’ve been discussing this though, I can’t help but wonder at two other discrepancies that seem awfully hard to dismiss as coincidence in light of recent developments. First, there seems to be a peculiar recurring theme in SCP-4007 containment efforts, and how often they end in a terminated anomaly. Since when did we turn into the GOC? This many failed missions would be unacceptable under any other circumstance, but it seems as though it’s been relegated to the status of a clerical error here. Second, on the subject of this report, we’ve spent several days discussing how exactly this report fits into the big picture. How did this information get tampered with? Does it affect our continuing containment of the anomaly? How do we confront 4007-4 about this, and so on and so forth. Excellent questions all, and no doubt we should be concerned about our primary source of intelligence on an anomaly being compromised. That said though, does it not concern anyone else how helpful SCP-4007-4 is? And does anyone remember how our present arrangement with SCP-4007-4 began?

Special Report Alpha - SCP-4007: At the request of O5-3, Dr. Efren Domingo was appointed as the Special Investigator for SCP-4007, and submitted the following report to the attention of the O5 Council.

We haven’t turned up much about SCP-4007-4 yet, but the pattern of missing knowledge is consistent with some kind of cognitohazard. We’re conducting a lot more research into what exactly could be happening, but there’s another development. I pieced together the following map of where we’ve encountered SCP-4007 instances, to date, and took the liberty of making a slight edit. I’d ask why no one’s done this before, but well…cognitohazards. It’s clearly not a coincidence where we’ve been “accidentally” stumbling upon members of the Pingfang 5, and if 4007-5 is still out there, it’s undoubtedly somewhere in northern Malaysia. What alarms me however, is the ritualistic significance of that shape. Pentagons (or more specifically, pentagrams) are popular shapes for channeling thaumaturgical energy. One especially common use for them for is invoking containment rituals that seal something inside of them. It’s a powerful arrangement, but it needs active maintenance by the pillars at each corner. This, of course, begs the awful question: What could they possibly have been trying to contain?

MTF Phi-51 Deployment: Following this report, on 11/03/2005, MTF Phi-51 was deployed to the region where SCP-4007-5 was predicted to be located, with orders to investigate and make contact with the anomaly if possible.

After 3 weeks of investigation, Containment Specialist Chunfeng Xin had an encounter with an individual believed to be connected to SCP-4007-5. His debriefing session is included below.

Debriefer: So tell me again, how did this individual make contact with you? Xin: It was a few weeks after we had arrived in the area. We were making attempts to infiltrate the population and passively listen for any potential signs that someone had information concerning SCP-4007-5. One day, while I was out in a local village, this man came up to me. Maybe mid 30s, plain face, average build. He simply walked up to me, and struck up a conversation very casually. Debriefer: About what? Xin: The war. That’s what tipped me off that he wasn’t just an ordinary person. Debriefer: And what happened next? Xin: It…it seemed like he was getting more agitated as the conversation went on. Like I wasn’t saying what he wanted me to. By this point, I was getting a little suspicious, but I didn’t want to clue him off. So I tried to milk the conversation as best as I could, see if I could get anything else out of him. Debriefer: And that’s when he fled? Xin: Right. I…I probably shouldn’t have, but I tried alluding to what SCP-4007-4 had mentioned, about the need for weapons. Figured he might think that I was a friend. Instead, that line made his face turn pale. He ran off quickly, but he muttered something to me before he left. Xin pauses. Xin: He said, “He’s made you forget me again, hasn’t he?” Xin pauses again. Xin: We lost sight of him, and he slipped away. Spent hours combing the place, but never found a trace of him. We’d spend the next few weeks looking, but no one had ever seen the description that I described. That night though, when I went to bed, I found a note in my room. Xin produces a crumpled note written in Japanese, and smooths it out on the table before reading. Xin: “Do not remember me. Do not trust the traitor's words. And most importantly, do not forget what he has stolen in his misguided attempt to fulfill our mission.”

Testimony Concerning SCP-4007-4: The following testimony is from Dr. Efren Domingo, continuing on his previously mentioned investigation.

It’s subtle. It’s effective. And God damn it, because it’s brilliant. We’ve been duped this whole time. We thought that Unit 731 was a bunch of butchers, more or less conducting anomalous meatball surgery in an effort to see what sticks, without any subtlety in approach at all. From that basic perspective, it was easy to underestimate each SCP-4007 instance as a one-trick pony anomaly. But the data we’ve collected suggests that Unit 731 may have been far better at grafting anomalies than we previously thought. SCP-4007-4’s primary ability is much more subtle than simply vanishing from sight. We assumed that SCP-4007-4 was simply becoming invisible through some unknown method, and hand-waved it as “anomalous mumbo-jumbo.” But we know how it works now. SCP-4007 is not actually becoming invisible, and it’s not an optical anomaly. It’s an amnestic one. SCP-4007-4 does not become invisible, strictly speaking, rather, it becomes invisible to the mind. By utilizing a very, very subtle anti-meme, SCP-4007-4 manages to erase its image from a viewer's brain, while not tampering with the memory of the anomaly’s existence in and of itself. Additionally, we think that 4007-4 can tweak this cognitohazardous effect, sometimes strengthening it, and other times lessening it, making its effect extremely selective, acting like a surgeon's scalpel and excising only the exact portions necessary, while leaving others intact. Effectively, it can make a viewer forget exactly what it wants the subject to forget. Nothing more, nothing less. It's brilliant, because your garden-variety cognitohazard is so blatant that we would have recognized it nearly immediately. The only reason we noticed at all is that we noticed IR heat camera recordings of 4007-4 still register the anomaly's presence when viewed later. Nothing on tape that we have is being affected by it. In other words, while 4007-4 can affect our memories, it cannot affect any existing records of its existence, such as recordings, ledgers, or as you might have surmised by this point, outdated containment procedures. The data we have is, to put it lightly, alarming. According to our analysis, all members of MTF Phi-51, along with 60% of research staff assigned to SCP-4007 have been subjected to SCP-4007-4’s amnestic effect. All of those not affected have either never directly interacted with the anomaly, or haven’t worked long enough to actually have come into contact with it. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a lot of us have had our memories wiped at different points, or otherwise tinkered with to the point that we could be misremembering large swaths of our history with SCP-4007. The worst thing is, we have no idea what any of this could mean. What exactly is SCP-4007-4’s endgame? What has it done that we don’t know about? What have we done that we don’t know about? There are a lot of questions, and I’m not sure where to begin in order to answer them. However, we should probably start with the big one: What else have we forgotten about SCP-4007?

SCP-4007 Expedition 01/03/2008: After noting the arrangement of SCP-4007 instances in a pentagon shape , Dr. Efren Domingo recommended an expedition be taken to the center of the pentagon in order to investigate the potential purpose of such an arrangement of SCP-4007 instances.

The SCPF Peregrino was launched on a mission to the region off the shore of Vietnam, and launched several diver teams to search the region for any signs relating to SCP-4007. Dive Team 5 made the first discovery when it found the wreckage site of several World War 2 era ships. A transcript of their recording is included here.

Dive Team 5 examining the wreck of the Umigiri.

Camera footage is from Dive Leader Binh Ngo. Ngo was accompanied by fellow divers Brian Riemann and Jose Millares. The feed begins with the team arriving at the wreckage site. Scraps of metal and twisted ruins of several ship hulls are littered throughout the seafloor. Diver Millares swims up to the camera, holding a piece of metal. He brushes off the layer of sand on it, and holds it up. The word “Umigiri” can be seen on it, along with the flag of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Ngo turns to point at several different visible ship hulls, naming them as he goes. Ngo: Yamagiri. Taekaze. Satokaze. Ngo: An entire squadron, sunk. More ships that we can’t find the names for. Ngo swims down to the seafloor, and sifts through the sand. He reaches through the cloudy water, and pulls out a skull. As the sand clears, dozens more can be seen buried in the sand. The entire seafloor is covered in bones, most of them still wearing scraps of Imperial Japanese military uniforms. Ngo: So many bodies. And not just sailors, army soldiers too. Pilots, even. By our estimate, there have to be thousands of them. As far as I know, none of these wrecks were claimed by Allied navies. But this is the most alarming thing of all. Diver Riemann swims to the camera, holding up a small section of ship hull. It is warped nearly beyond recognition. Ngo: These ships weren’t bombed or shelled. Not scuttled either. None of those things would cause this pattern of metal damage, and we don’t see any signs of blackening from explosive ordnance. Whatever it was that sunk these ships, it wasn’t conventional. Ngo traces his hand down the side of the hull fragment. The piece has almost been split in half, as if it were torn apart. Ngo: Something sank an entire Japanese naval squadron. And I’m not sure that we’ve ever seen anything like it before.

On Pentagrams as Containment Devices: Dr. Domingo submitted the following research note three weeks after the above discovery of the wreckage from the 5th Southern Expeditionary Fleet.

I know that I advanced the theory of the pentagon being a giant containment ritual, but I almost wish that weren’t the case. After consultation with thaumaturgical and other esoteric containment specialists, the consensus is that if SCP-4007 was indeed maintaining some kind of thaumaturgical ritual, the size of this particular arrangement tells us two important things. First: Whatever they were trying to contain must have been absolutely enormous. Strictly speaking, you don’t make thaumaturgical diagrams any bigger than they have to be, because the power needed to maintain them scales proportionally. Which brings me to my second point: This ritual? Would have been a monstrous cost in terms of energy to maintain. In fact, with something this large, you’d probably need to do a regenerative ritual at one of the corners every day just to keep the whole thing together. All five would be preferable, but just one would be sufficient for the bare minimum. Without it, this whole structure would collapse within a day, releasing whatever’s inside out to our material plane. What alarms me though, is that this ritual structure is presumably half a century old. Not many rituals of this specific type can survive that long even with constant regenerative rituals. After a certain point, they’re simply too worn down to keep going for that long, and the ritual will fail regardless of what you do. Because of that, it’s smart to be prepared to confront whatever you have within the zone. And Lord help us, because we better be prepared for that day.

SCP-4007 Archival Notice 2: On 02/12/2008, Head Archivist Deping Zhang submitted the following notice to the attention of the SCP-4007 investigative team.

In our continuing efforts to uncover additional information concerning SCP-4007, we have recovered two documents that are of interest. The first is another set of outdated documentation for SCP-4007, but it's of a more recent vintage. Curiously, however, the only major differences we can attribute to anomalous interference relate to the personnel information for instances 4007-1 through 4007-3. It seems as though a single line has been removed from each of the entries of the instances that were terminated. A glance at the content seems to show a recurring theme in the deleted message. When the fire had burned out, SCP-4007-1’s body was found within the zone, and believed to have expired due to smoke inhalation. During the recovery of the body, however, it was discovered that SCP-4007-1's body had been cut open shortly post-mortem, and was missing several organs. The incident was ruled an acceptable outcome. In the aftermath, SCP-4007-2 was discovered dead on the island, though cause of death was ruled to be a lethal shock of electricity. Cause of death determination was made more difficult by the apparent removal of large sections of SCP-4007-2's skin, which could not be explained by the recovery team. The incident was ruled an acceptable outcome. Curiously, an examination of the home revealed several recently spent shell casings and compacted bullets, indicating that SCP-4007-3 had fired a gun at an unknown target, but further investigation yielded no clues. Additionally, an autopsy revealed that SCP-4007-3's corpse was missing its tongue, for reasons that remain unknown. The incident was ruled an acceptable outcome. Why these lines were deleted is something of a mystery to us, but the natural hunch is that SCP-4007-4 is involved somehow. We believe that the other document we recovered might yield some answers though. The other document is something a little different. The archival notice attached to it says that it was a letter discovered in SCP-4007-3's home, believed to be written by SCP-4007-4. Without knowing the context behind it, however, it's hard to say what exactly it means, but it's been included here for your review:

Brother, Forgive me for not writing to you sooner. After Takashi's passing, I needed time alone to meditate and regain my strength. In the end, he did not see my way, much like Mitsuo before him. But it is not too late for you to see the truth, brother. He will break free. That much I am certain of. No matter what we do, his coming is inevitable, and no amount of prayer or ritual will stop him from finishing his terrible mission. To continue in our ways as we have for so long is giving in to fate. Thus, it is as your brother in arms that I write to you to reconsider your stance. We must fight him, on our own terms. The longer we wait, the stronger he gets, until this sleeping giant is all but unstoppable. It is our duty, as dutiful men and as loyal soldiers, to act while we still can. If we attack as soon as the ritual is broken, we have our best chance at stopping him once and for all. There is no other alternative. It was too late for Mitsuo and Takashi to realize the truth while they lived, but I have hope for you. To fight once again with my brothers in arms is what I long for, but do not mistake this dream for mercy. I will stop him with your help, one way or another. It is up to you to decide how that help will be given.

Updated Containment Recommendation for SCP-4007: The following note was penned by O5-3 following the conclusion of the internal investigation into SCP-4007.