by G T Almasi
REICHSCHANCELLORY, BERLIN
We find the bunker’s exit and ascend to street level. I shove the heavy door open then emerge into a boiling storm of shell and rocket fire. We’ve found a courtyard within the Reichschancellory, entombed on all sides by six stories of incredibly tasteless High Brutalist ÜberSpeer. The massively overbuilt structure provides great protection, but our situational awareness is limited to whatever flies directly over us.
I comm, “Patrick, what’s happening?”
My partner looks at the thick smoke drifting overhead. He comms in for an update. “Arizona, this is Darwin and Scarlet, we need a sit-rep. We’re in Wilhelmstrasse with Scorpio.”
“Bzzt-bzzt, Darwin,” a voice comms back. “Bzzzt.”
“Arizona,” Patrick comms, “say again. Transmission unclear.”
More static. Something’s messing with our comm-signal.
Brando and I hunker down next to a heavy concrete ventilation shaft. My partner tries to examine Fredericks’s injuries, but Jakob is coughing so much he can’t stay still.
I’m not sure the bastard is really aware of what’s happening.
“Talon,” he rasps. “We have to get to tee four.”
Patrick, still waiting for our sit-rep, frowns when he hears what Fredericks says.
I yell over the ongoing thunder, “He thinks he’s on a golf course with Talon.”
“Tee four,” Fredericks continues. “We have to stop them.”
“No,” my partner says. “That’s something else.”
The hissing and buzzing in our commphones recedes. “Darwin,” a voice comms. “This is Front Desk Russia.” It’s Frank Bell, the guy with the office under Cyrus’s. “Are you receiving?”
“Yes, sir. Loud and clear. Go ahead.”
“Be advised, the situation is Berlin is extremely dynamic.”
A shell streaks overhead and plows into the far corner of the Reichschancellory. The ground trembles and three stories of walls, floors, and furniture crash to the ground.
Yeah.
Bell tells us Victor Eisenberg’s Loyalist forces are fighting to position themselves for a coordinated assault on the Staatszeiger positions. The SZ and their associated Wehrmacht supporters have been squeezed into three sets of fortified positions: the bullet-spewing Flak Towers, the government buildings along the main north–south boulevard, and the area around the towering Volkshalle.
Patrick comms, “Understood, sir.”
Bell asks, “What’s your status?”
“We’ve acquired Scorpio.”
Bell takes a moment to react. “Alive?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is he mobile?”
“Yes, sir, but he’s badly injured and noncoherent.”
“Copy that,” Bell comms. “Wait one.”
Fredericks, perhaps tuned in to our comm-call, says, “Tee four first.”
Brando leans toward our prisoner. “Director, what is tee four?”
Fredericks focuses on Patrick. “I know you. You’re Scarlet’s partner, Solomon.” The man looks back to the sky. “Should’ve called you Lazarus.”
Patrick’s expression darkens at being referred to by Trick’s call-sign. I turn to our captive and slap him across his ruined face. “Scorpio! Was die ficken ist tee vehr?” What the fuck is tee four?
Fredericks’s demeanor immediately changes. He drops his head to his chest and stammers, “T4 is a Gen-3…splinter program…at Number 4 Tiergartenstrasse.”
“Jah, und?” So what?
His answer is drowned out by another artillery shell striking the roof above. Dust and smoke fill the courtyard, stranding the three of us in a gritty, foul-tasting sandstorm.
I grab his suit jacket and shake him. “So what?”
“The w-world must…” He gasps for breath and stutters, “…n-never know. Carbon would be…ruined.” He clenches his arms around his knees and pulls himself into a tight ball. The onetime director of the Strategic Services Council, the “smartest man in D.C.,” rocks back and forth on the ground, raving about monsters and demons like an extra in a bad loony-bin movie.
I cover my mouth with my hand, partly because of the smoke, but mostly from trying to imagine whatever the fuck is happening at Number 4 Tiergartenstrasse. Patrick’s face, beneath the dirt and smoke stains, is very pale.
I ask him, “Whaddya think?”
“We’d better check it out.” He shudders. “I mean, it can’t be worse than Dachau, right?”
39
20 MINUTES LATER, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 12:12 A.M. CEST
TIERGARTEN, BERLIN
Our journey across the eastern side of the Tiergarten is regularly interrupted by incoming artillery—from which side, we can’t tell. They’re either overshots from the Loyalist cannons trying to disable the Flak Towers, or undershots from the Flak Towers returning fire.
Another barrage shrieks in. We hit the dirt to cower within the park’s disintegrating gardens. Fredericks follows our lead and takes cover, too. The ground rumbles under my stomach. The exploded air lashes at my back. Stately trees lose their branches with splintering crashes. Terrified squirrels race between the shattered trunks, seeking new hiding places.
The salvo ends. We bound toward the southern edge of the park. I keep hold of Fredericks’s unbroken left arm to drag him as quickly as he can stagger. We emerge from the burning forest then run across Tiergartenstrasse.
Before us stands a row of fancy townhouses. Number 4 is the second from the left. Number 6 has a fresh-looking hole in its roof, from which pours thick smoke.
Fredericks, oblivious to the fires all around us, stumbles toward Number 4. Patrick and I follow closely.
The damaged front door wags in the pulsing air. Fredericks plunges into the dark interior. I hold my hand out to keep the door from swinging into me. This slight pressure knocks the carved wooden slab off what remains of its hinges, and the panel thuds into the house’s foyer.
The house seems deserted, or everyone is hiding in the cellar.
Fredericks crosses the front parlor and ascends the main staircase. At the top he opens a pair of double doors and leads us into a room that occupies most of the second floor. This might have originally been the dining room, but the space now serves as an office. Four desks, each with a jackframe terminal, huddle in a tidy square under an ornate chandelier. Beyond them are vases with flowers in front of the cracked windows overlooking the street. Beside the desks, a row of antique filing cabinets patiently stands at attention. The drawers bear labels with dates from the 1930s through the 1960s.
My partner sits at the nearest desk and goes to work on the terminal. Fredericks leans against the filing cabinets. His color is terrible: splotchy red and white with two big Rorschach blots around his eyes. He breathes with his mouth open, watching my partner’s fingers fly across the keyboard. Tears well from his swollen eyes.
Fredericks turns to me and comms, “I’m so sorry for all this.”
Who am I now?
I comm, “Sorry for what?” I hesitate, then add, “Jakob?”
He doesn’t answer me directly. “I wanted to work with you, and not only because…well, you don’t need to hear that foolishness again, you were so gracious about it.”
I’m definitely not me.
His comm-voice grows softer. “Do you know I wrote those lines down? I had the pad in my pocket, I was so nervous. Silly, I know. A long time ago.” His breath rasps sharply in his chest.
A laugh? Maybe?
Fredericks continues, “After that evening, I began to notice how often you had to deflect men’s advances. You made it look easy, never embarrassing the poor man, like it was all a witty little play.”
For the first time in my life I see the cranky bastard really smile. Not that nasty leer of his, but a sweet, warm glow th
at spreads from his lips to his eyebrows. I wait while he visits his private la-la land.
Jakob’s light expression dims. He comms, “The Levels project was so important. We were going to save our country, the three of us. But those idiots on Capitol Hill. Always ‘faster,’ always ‘more.’ I should have said no. I should have…just let you go. But I couldn’t be a failure. Not after…” A coughing bout shakes his body like a bedsheet in a blizzard. Still gasping, Fredericks comms, “…after you died, Ellie.”
Jeez Louise, this shithead has been going crazy since before I was born.
By now Patrick has turned around in his seat. His jaw is clenched so tightly the muscles on his neck stick out like rebar in crumbling concrete. He hisses air in and out of his front teeth.
I say, “Tell me.”
His response is so quiet I can’t hear him.
“Say again?”
He switches to comming. “It’s worse than Dachau.”
40
1 MINUTE LATER, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 12:19 A.M. CEST
NUMBER 4 TIERGARTENSTRASSE, BERLIN
T4 is where Carbon put their craziest, most sadistic researchers. I can’t call them scientists, because there’s very little science to their fucked-up experiments.
T4’s initial charter was to explore the production of clones from multiple Originals instead of just one. T4’s positive progress allowed the parent program to pick and choose genetic traits from several sources. This is what we saw in the Dachau cloning lab with the three Originals.
But what to do with all these T4 practice clones? The experiments had focused on combining any traits, not necessarily useful ones. The few surviving subjects, living results, were cripplingly disabled or riven with illnesses.
These poor wretches never knew a moment’s compassion. The lab techs became so emotionally detached from their work they started referring to the clones as “logs.” The disposal of these “logs” entailed using them as lab rats for a shitload of insane tests. The researchers administered massive electric shocks to induce schizophrenia. They injected the clones with tuberculosis, syphilis, and smallpox to see what happened when these diseases went completely untreated. Technicians injected their subjects with plutonium isotopes, for God knows what reason.
The longer T4 was active, the nuttier it became. The surgical teams performed speculative organ removals, eye transplants, huge skin grafts, lobotomies, induced comas, freezing via submersion in liquid nitrogen, atmospheric pressure trials. They’d amputate limbs from several clones and swap them around. The lab techs forcibly mated clones to test for fertility, which led to the worst experiments of all because it turns out clones can make babies.
But not healthy ones.
The clones’ offspring were severely malformed: no limbs, fourteen fingers, extra eyes, two heads, internal organs in all the wrong places. These pitiful little monsters were injected with live cancer cells, subjected to experiments with biochemical warfare, and dosed with aggression accelerants like fenfluramine.
Not surprisingly, T4’s “logs” suffered extreme mental conditions. They had nervous breakdowns, mutilated themselves, went on homicidal rampages, or committed suicide. A few clones began eating human flesh, even their own, until they were exterminated.
I lean away from the terminal screen as though it were a saber-toothed tiger. Tears stream down my face. I press my palms to my mouth and suck air from between my fingers. If I’d eaten anything in the last twenty-four hours it would come right up.
“Brando, I can’t take any more of this shit.” I pull at his shirt sleeve. “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”
Brando’s face softens when he sees me crying. “Okay, Alix,” he says. “Let’s go.”
I drag Fredericks to his feet and we leave yet another half acre of hell. This mission has given me very mixed feelings about scientists. I have a lot of fun with my Mods and Enhances, and I think the tech my dad makes is terrific. I love my partner, whose birth was the most famous science experiment in American history.
That said, the shit these eggheads do when nobody’s watching is totally deranged. I’ve iced a lot of people, but it’s not like I forgot they were humans. They just happened to be gun-toting humans who got in my way. I admit this code of ethics is pretty medieval, but that’s life patrolling the frontier between upright civitas and slathering barbarians.
What pisses me off is I’ve protected some of the slatherers, too. I thought scientists were leading our species to our next leap. I’m sure some are, but too many of the bad ones have found their way into Carbon. Even my Dark Ages sensibilities have been shocked again and again by the Establishment’s greatest moral lapse since the Inquisition.
Patrick leads us to the street. My arms keep Fredericks on his feet while my eyes watch the smoldering sky for signs of incoming kaboomies. We’re halfway across the forestlike Tiergarten when a howl echoes across the city’s thick atmosphere.
We throw ourselves to the ground, seconds ahead of another artillery salvo. The staccato bangs quickly escalates into a continuous roar. We listen carefully to gauge when they’re coming at us. It seems like the less a shell’s whine fluctuates, the closer it lands.
During the brief gaps between barrages, Patrick examines Fredericks’s injuries. It seems the fink suffered through three rounds of torture: first from the Gestapo to make him cooperate with Protocol 8, next by the Faction to force Talon to surrender, and then the Gestapo again for supposedly teaming up with the Faction on purpose.
These abuses have left Fredericks an incoherent husk. Brando tucks the man’s right arm inside his suit jacket to act as a makeshift sling. The injured charlatan winces, but otherwise remains lost in his thoughts.
“All those…” he wheezes. “Those people.”
The shelling lifts away from our position for a moment.
“Arizona, Arizona,” Patrick comms. “This is Darwin and Scarlet. We need a dust-off for Scorpio. Southeast corner of the Tiergarten.”
What’s left of it, anyway. The forested park is quickly being reduced to blazing charcoal.
Frank Bell comms, “Copy that, Darwin. Wait one.”
As we wait, a young woman emerges from the conflagration. She runs east, toward the government district. She’s naked, screaming, and holds her arms out from her sides so nothing will touch her. The woman’s skin is swathed in huge, glare-red burns. Her clothes must have caught fire and scorched her flesh before she could tear them off. Fredericks turns his head to watch her.
“Darwin.” It’s Mr. Bell. “We can send a car to retrieve you on the north side of the park. Are you and your guest mobile enough to reach it?”
Patrick looks at me. I shrug. What choice do we have?
“Roger that, sir. We’re on our way.”
I lift Fredericks to his feet and we move out. Shell fire screams over our heads, on its way to a different target. The park’s center is so smoky, my optical visibility drops to less than five feet. I switch on millimeter-wave radar to lead my little tribe across the shimmering acreage.
Seventy feet ahead, a row of hard, green sticks mark the northern edge of the dying forest. They’re the fancy streetlamps lining the main east–west boulevard. I call to Brando to tell him we’re almost out of the park.
Still on the line with Mr. Bell, Patrick comms, “Sir, this is Darwin. We’re almost there.”
“Copy, Darwin. Transport will approach from your…right. From the gate. ETA ten minutes.”
Jesus, ten minutes here might as well be ten days. Brando scouts around for a safe spot to hide. I drag Fredericks behind me like he’s a lost child. Patrick finds us a cozy shell hole, and I lead my prisoner in with me. My partner and I crouch low in our dirt bowl, but Fredericks stands there looking at the fires behind us. I yank him down by his jacket.
Fredericks looks at me. His bruised, broken face shines with sw
eat. His eyes peer through the back of my head to some distant point. A few drops of saliva dribble from between his lips and roll off his chin.
I comm, “Darwin, should we sedate him?”
“I’m thinking about it. Can you carry him?”
I regard our drooling guest. Fredericks is tall, at least six feet, but his misadventures since scramming the States have thinned him out. He might weigh 160. More like 150.
“His legs will drag on the ground but, yeah, I can move him.”
Patrick passes me a DOSE. “You dope him.”
I frown at my partner. This is usually his job.
He answers my unasked question. “Jakob thinks you’re Talon.”
Right. I grab the self-contained injector and shift my stance to face Fredericks.
He’s gone.
I leap to my feet. Fredericks stands a few yards away from our ersatz foxhole and faces the burning park. He waves his arms above his head.
“Ellie!” he shouts. “Over here!”
I look to see who he waves to. Incredibly, someone is really there. It’s the same young woman from before. She must be running in circles. The woman falls to her knees and begins to crawl.
Fredericks’s eyes are wild with urgency. “Talon!” he screams at me, “Go get your mother!” He barks this order with such conviction I nearly follow it.
“Jakob,” I yell. “Come back! That isn’t Doctor…uh, it’s not Eleanor!”
Patrick tugs my elbow. “Incoming!”
The battle racket is pierced by a shrilling whine. The howl grows louder and louder, but doesn’t change pitch.
It’s coming straight at us.
My partner and I dive to the bottom of the hole then hang on to each other for dear life.
Fredericks bellows over the terrifying wail, “Eleanor! Please—”
A blinding flash punches across the ground. The soul-piercing eruption drowns out Fredericks’s voice and threatens to split me in half. All the cells in my body vibrate in different directions. I feel Brando’s breath on my neck, but whatever he’s saying is lost in the defiled air.