The Shadow War

by Lindsay Smith

  Phillip wet his lips, hesitant. “Engineer.”

  “Really!” Liam sat back with a grin. “Theoretical physics. Princeton.”

  Phillip let out a low whistle. “You study with Einstein? I usually don’t give you theoretical boys much credence, but I gotta say, his theory of relativity . . .”

  “How about you? Let me guess . . . Mechanical engineering?”

  “Electrical,” Phillip said. “Digital computing, radio waves, circuitry, I design it all.” Or he did, anyway. Dimly, he wondered if he’d ever have the guts to design something new again.

  “Frequency generation? I’ll have to pick your brain about something I’ve been working on later. I’d love to see—”

  “Enough.” Simone pulled up a chair from the projectionist’s desk and sat across from Liam, her rifle resting in her lap. “You said you had answers.”

  Liam exchanged a glance with Phillip, like he was asking for help. But Phillip knew better than to go against Simone’s will. Slowly, Liam nodded, clammy sweat gathering on his brow.

  “I do. But they aren’t gonna be answers you like.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  SIMONE

  Simone was not what she would call a patient person. Nor a particularly credulous one. And while Liam, the idiot American who’d attached himself to them like a nettle, was doing his best to explain, she only grew more impatient and fed up.

  “And these demons are crawling out of another world?” Simone asked. She’d seen the demons for herself, and yet. It was far easier to believe that he was as deranged as he appeared than that he was capable of summoning creatures out of the ether.

  Liam slumped against the wall with a tired smile. “They despise our world because of what Sicarelli did to them, so they’re determined to destroy every human they encounter. They’re especially attracted to the energy signature of fear and pain.”

  “Is there any other way to feel when confronted with a demon?” Phillip asked.

  Liam tipped his head, conceding the point. “But it’s not just the creatures. It’s the energy that suffuses their world. I can harness and channel it in interesting and painful ways.”

  “Dark energy,” Phillip said, with an eagerness that made Simone roll her eyes. “That unaccounted-for mass weighing down the universe. You’re saying it comes from the same place as those . . . those things?”

  Liam’s whole face lit up. “Yeah! I can show you the formulas. The energy passes between universes—there may be other dimensions, but our world seems to have the closest link to—”

  “I wonder how it affects Kepler’s gravitational equation—”

  “I wondered that too. I can pinpoint the years when Sicarelli’s bridge was open. It’s all observable in interstellar background radiation—”

  “Enough, both of you!”

  Simone glared at Phillip. He at least should know better. He had a mission, same as her. Phillip hung his head, chastened, but was still grinning with giddiness over a new scientific puzzle to solve.

  “So there are the monsters—those come from the other side. As does this energy you use. But what about when it seems to possess people?” Simone asked. “Like those guards that were chasing you.”

  “That’s what can happen when the energy works its way inside someone, corrupting them from the inside out. People who are already angry, hateful—the darkness has an easier time attaching to them because they’re primed for its corruption.”

  “Like the Nazis,” Rebeka said.

  Liam nodded, eyes narrowed. “Like the Nazis. As the energy suffuses them, they become stronger. Even more dangerous than they already were.”

  Simone pinched her nose, trying to fight back the tidal pull of her own anger. “And you want to meddle with these forces, why, again?”

  “Because of what that power can do. You’ve seen what I can do by myself, wielding it. Now imagine that on a massive scale. How it could help the Allies turn the tide of the war.”

  “Or make the Germans even more powerful,” Simone said.

  Liam’s head slumped. “Which is why I need to get Sicarelli’s book away from them. The book—it’s the key to drawing on an unlimited amount of that energy instead of the slow drip I can manage on my own. He supposedly stabilized a bridge between the two universes for a brief time, which means we can do it again.”

  Fine. She’d seen the results of this shadow world clearly enough, if not the world itself. The darkness that wore human skin, the shadows that slithered and screamed, and plenty of other kinds of monsters besides. There was no use denying it was real. But just because this boy could do these things didn’t mean she wanted him on their side.

  “The monsters. They were hunting you.” Simone rubbed at her temples. “They were calling your name. Why?”

  Liam went quiet at that. Of course. He drummed the fingers of his uninjured hand against his knee, a bundle of nervous energy. “Our universes . . . have a history,” he said carefully. “They resented Sicarelli for meddling in their world. I’m sure they feel the same about me.”

  “So by being here with us . . .” Simone cast her gaze around the balcony turned projection room. “You’ve put a target on our backs.”

  He shrank back against the wall. “It’s possible, yeah.” At least he had the good sense to act embarrassed. “There . . . there was an accident, once. Someone I cared about . . . I think the monsters recognize me.”

  Rebeka made a strange sound at that, but Simone ignored her, glaring at Liam. Whatever help this idiot sorcerer boy could offer the Resistance, whatever minuscule advantage, it couldn’t be worth all this hassle. “I think it’s time for you all to leave.”

  Daniel lunged forward. She’d forgotten he was there—the bloodied boy lurking in the corner, so quiet he might as well have been a cobweb. Now, though, he moved in front of her, fists raised, something like a snarl or a growl lodged between his teeth. He had the feral look of someone out of options. “We don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Simone reared back. “Get. Out. Of my. Face.”

  Her hands tingled with unspent energy. She was hoping for a fight. Let him try to swing at her. She stared him down, his tattered guard uniform and the freckles of blood across his face. She’d rather punch a Nazi, but she’d take what she could get.

  To her disappointment, his shoulders fell. “One night,” he mumbled. “You promised us one safe night.”

  She bared her teeth at him. “That’s before I knew you were bringing monsters with you.”

  It was, however, the four of them against Simone. She saw that plainly now. Phillip, poor Phillip, wanted so badly to do the right thing, and the two siblings looked so worn through it was a wonder they were still standing. She couldn’t imagine why they were following Liam, but if they’d survived in these woods this long, they were a damned sight more stubborn than she’d given them credit for.

  Rebeka squared toward her, fists tight at her sides. “I didn’t think you were out here because you were easily scared.”

  “Scared? No,” said Simone. “Practical, yes. If it does not help my mission, then I have no use for it. Or you.”

  “You want something useful?” Liam asked. “You saw the power that universe holds. It can shred through the Third Reich’s forces when it’s properly harnessed. Those ‘monsters’ are why we were able to face an entire outpost of Nazis and walk out alive.”

  “Barely,” Simone said.

  “In this war?” Rebeka huffed. “Barely is enough.”

  Simone fumed, but said nothing. The girl had a point. If they could contain those creatures, if they could harness that dark energy, it would be a great boon for Georges-Yves’s network. Possibly as significant as what she and Phillip were doing.

  Wait, was she actually considering it? This mission was going to be the death of her.

  “I just need to stabilize th
e hole between the universes. Make it more reliable. I’ve sustained smaller tears in the past, but they all had this . . . unfortunate side effect. The two worlds bleeding together in uncontrollable ways.”

  “Unfortunate side effect?” Simone laughed. “We were kilometers away from Siegen, and still we saw these . . . these rifts. Monsters crawling through the forests. If they can manage to get through small tears, I’d hate to see what a larger hole might bring.”

  “I can fix it, I swear—”

  “And if the monsters are after you, how is it safe for you to call on them at all? If that energy can corrupt the Germans, how long before it corrupts you too?”

  “I can still control it, in small doses.” Liam’s voice took on a fervent edge. His skin had a grayish cast like wet clay, with bruised crescents lurking under his eyes. “Once I can stabilize a rift, I’ll be fully in charge.”

  “M-maybe we can figure out how to do this without the book.” Phillip worried his fingers together like he was tapping out a code. “There’s gotta be a way to stabilize it on our own.”

  “Could be.” Liam dragged his gaze back toward the group. “Harmonic frequencies open the rifts. I can open a small one on my own, but for a bigger source of energy, I’d need a way to lock that opening in place.”

  Phillip gave him a crooked grin. “Well, you’re speakin’ my language.”

  Simone threw her hands up with a groan. “Just what you two needed—a peer group.”

  “You need something that can cycle the frequencies enough that they stabilize themselves,” Phillip said. “So you don’t have to do it for them.”

  “Yes. Exactly!” Liam exhaled a deep, satisfied sigh. “Someone gets it.”

  “Well, I don’t know what some old manuscript’s gonna tell you, but I’ve got something that might help.” Phillip reached down for his boots and began to ease open the heel of one shoe.

  “What are you doing?” Simone cried. “That is for our mission—”

  “Our mission is stopping the Third Reich, isn’t it?” Phillip plucked out a coiled, multipronged device. “I’ve been tinkering with this—it’s like a frequency jammer, but with a more sophisticated routing pattern, multimodal scattering . . . The goal is to fold signals on top of themselves so the Nazis don’t even realize, until it’s too late, that the signals aren’t syncing up. It’s not part of our official mission, but—”

  “Our official mission is none of their business,” Simone said.

  “You’re setting up secure two-way radio comms, aren’t you?” Liam asked. “Kinda obvious now that I think about it.”

  Simone’s headache blossomed so quickly she was sure she’d popped a blood vessel. “Don’t you dare breathe a word—”

  Rebeka glowered at her. “We’re on your side. Whether you want us to be or not. So try acting like it.”

  Simone surveyed the room. Liam, his eyes cold and dangerous, even with his shoulder bandaged and his skin pale as wax. Daniel and Rebeka, solemn and stormy, a unified front. And Phillip and his stupid device, ready to take on the whole damned German army like it was just some experiment. A pity. She was starting to tolerate him.

  “There is one problem, though,” Daniel said. “Sicarelli’s manuscript was moved to Wewelsburg for a reason. What if the Nazis know what it does?”

  The room went silent for a moment as everyone turned to Liam. “Dr. Kreutzer,” he said, and the German siblings tensed. “He knows. He must know.”

  “He was conducting experiments on people in Łódź,” Rebeka explained, looking at Phillip. “It’s exactly the sort of thing he would want.”

  “So you would still need to get this book, regardless. To keep it from him,” Simone said.

  Liam sighed. “If it isn’t already too late.”

  “I’ll go.” Daniel stood. “I can get it. Destroy it, if I have to. You know I can.”

  A look passed between Liam and Daniel that sent a phantom chill over Simone’s skin: familiar and painful, the press of an old bruise.

  “Please don’t,” Liam whispered.

  “If you’re going, then I am too,” Rebeka said.

  “No,” said Daniel. “Stay with the partisan girl. Go back to Paris with them when they’re done—”

  “Y’know,” Phillip said, “Wewelsburg’s on our list of resistance pockets to outfit.” He arched one eyebrow at Simone. “We can all go. Cause I don’t know about you, but this thing he can do?” He gestured toward Liam. “I don’t want the Nazis to have it, too.”

  She was outnumbered. There was no shaking sense into any of them. And just as she’d begun this mission, she’d end it: only the warm wood and cold metal of her rifle to pin her to this world.

  “Fine,” she said to Phillip. “Go play around in your shadow world all you like. Stay there, for all I care. But you ever feel like getting back to the task at hand—the one you were sent here to do—” Simone backed toward the door of the projection room, nearly tripping over film canisters. “Then you let me know.”

  The first time they’d fought about resisting was Lyon.

  Simone had never been to Lyon—she’d never been more than a few dozen kilometers outside of Paris, aside from a brief visit to a dying grandmother in Algiers now lost to the blur of childhood memories—but she wished she had been. Lyon was unafraid. Lyon killed Nazi occupiers in train stations, on the street, at outdoor cafés like they were pigeons just begging to be kicked. When the Nazis demanded Lyon cough up its resisters, Lyon refused, no matter how many the Nazis insisted on killing in their stead.

  That was the kind of stubbornness Simone admired. The foolhardy, granite-carved stubbornness that yielded to nothing, despite all good sense to the contrary. The stubbornness of the stump in the field, the one that remained even after the offending tree had been cut down. It was that stubbornness that got Simone her first apprenticeship, and that got her stuck with the most detested woodworking gig in all of Paris. It was that stubbornness that drew in Evangeline, and that same stubbornness that sent her away.

  Simone had to be hard, she had to be cold, because without that, she had nothing else. And if she died for it, well, at least she would die holding her convictions close. At least they would have to be pried from her hands, stiff, snapping away bone.

  Georges-Yves saw some of this when he recruited her and gave her the tasks others were too afraid or unskilled to carry out. Her final test was at the Hôtel Ritz on the Place Vendôme, the glamorous maison where all the clever monsters like Hermann Göring lounged. When they weren’t at sparkling soirées, or torture sessions at the Gestapo headquarters on Avenue Foch, anyway. Georges-Yves had access to the hotel’s rooms, cabinets, corridors. He knew of gaps in the walls; he’d measured all the empty space the hotel’s architects left behind. In true partisan fashion, he would turn that proletarian excess into his means of resistance.

  After Simone installed a listening nook tucked beneath the wardrobe for Göring’s many capes, she was brought deeper into the network: vetted, verified. Simone carried her secret in her back pocket, a bit of sandpaper to smooth out every irritation. The sight of SS strutting down the boulevard only reminded her of the secrets Georges-Yves’s people snatched from Göring every night. It made bearable the rumble in her belly while she waited in ration lines. Even Evangeline’s snide remarks had lost their sting, for Simone knew at least one of them was doing what they ought. It was intoxicating . . . and all she wanted was to do more.

  Georges-Yves, as it turned out, had been counting on just that.

  She was no longer content with little errands, collecting bundles of papers “left behind” at a bookstore or on a Métro seat. She wanted to be like the people of Lyon, picking off the vermin in the streets. Making them afraid. Finally, he took her to the range in the countryside with Sanaz and Ahmed and a few others, starting her with a snub-nose pistol but quickly moving up to the hunting rifle when
he saw how good her aim was.

  Shooting was easy. It was like carpentry in just the right ways: angles and trajectories, curved planes, a sharp, measuring eye. Simone wished she could say she only imagined Nazis on the receiving end, but she didn’t. Evangeline’s father, her own absent father, her brother and his informer friends, all the cowards and crusty worthless sycophants of the Vichy—they all lingered in her mind as she fixed the rifle barrel, let out her breath, and pulled the trigger tight.

  The first time she killed a man—a roadside convoy ambush on its way to Verdun—she didn’t feel much of anything at all. The soldiers’ angry shouts that she silenced. The wreckage of the German truck heaving and crumpling as it burned. It was only afterward that she felt the same satisfaction as completing a lengthy carpentry project. For a moment, however fleeting, it felt good and right for her hands to be still, accomplishment allowing her to rest.

  But really, all she wanted was to do it again.

  When she wasn’t aiding Georges-Yves, her hands became restless as ever. She shredded papers between her fingers over stilted coffee with Evangeline. Itched for cigarettes constantly. She tried to listen, tried to persuade Evangeline in her own bumbling, brute-force way of the value of resistance. But everything inside her was too much. Evangeline’s conviction, not enough.

  The assassins of Lyon were heroes, she would say, as loud as she could without letting anyone else hear. They died for it, but they got the work done.

  But Evangeline would only look at her coolly as she took another sip of coffee. If they were really such damned heroes, they wouldn’t have gotten everyone else killed, too.

  ILSE

  Ilse Weber’s morning had begun like any other. She unpinned the stiff skirt she’d worn yesterday from the clothesline and wriggled it over her hips, then uncapped her eyeliner pencil to draw thin lines up the backs of her calves. There was a war on—no silk or nylon to be wasted on such luxuries as stockings—but it was important to look the part. She had a terribly important role to play, after all.