by Frank Morin
At the bottom of the stairs, he knocked on the oak inner door. When the voice summoned him through, he stepped inside.
Adolf Hitler awaited him, flanked by his long-time companion and recent bride, Eva Braun. A handful of staffers hovered nearby.
“Leave us,” Hitler commanded his aids. “See to the defenses.”
They all filed past except for one. The young man was tall and strong, a perfect example of Hitler’s Aryan race. He was also Hitler’s favorite transfer vehicle.
Some people fell to addictions faster than others. For some it was smoking, for others alcohol or pornography. For Hitler it was soul transfers.
As soon as he had learned of facetakers, he had demanded a soul transfer. Once he tasted life in a perfect Aryan body, he could never go back. Had he lived in times before modern communications, it would have been a simple, if still expensive, process to affect the transfer and send him on his way. Unfortunately the world knew what he looked like so he couldn’t just assume a dramatically new body permanently, a fact he bewailed often in private.
So he had contracted for ongoing facetaker presence. Between major public appearances he would transfer into the body of an Aryan man. Gregorios was assigned his facetaker, and he grew to know the man far too well. At first it was just another job, one that guaranteed fantastic new wealth for the council and for Gregorios personally. Hitler pillaged Europe not just to fund his war machine, but to fund the staggering cost of transfers.
Over time, as the number of transfers mounted, Gregorios noted the telltale signs of mental dissipation. He tried to warn the dictator of the dangers, but Hitler insisted they continue. Some souls resisted soul fragmentation, and his will was strong enough that he could do so for a while, but no mortal could maintain that pace for long. Gregorios made the mistake of trying to frighten Hitler by explaining that his soul was fracturing and bits of the souls from the bodies he inhabited would filter into the cracks.
Hitler loved the idea.
Most souls rejected foreign contamination just as bodies often reject organ transplants. It was a natural reaction. Hitler was the only client Gregorios ever met who longed for those bits of soul to fuse to his. He hoped that over time he could assimilate enough from the souls of those perfect Aryan specimens to become one himself.
Delusions were a sure sign of mental dissipation.
Gregorios had planned to put a stop to it before Hitler became too unstable, but the council commanded him not to intervene. At the time he hadn’t understand their purposes but now, standing again in the Fuhrerbunker, it finally made sense.
Ordering Asoka to attempt to dispose of Gregorios was a preemptive measure to conceal the truth of their growing mental disability, but it was not their only action in Germany. They were using Hitler too. He was their test case. If he, a mere mortal, could successfully assimilate external souls, then they could do the same. If he could somehow beat the soul fragmentation and become something greater, they could find a way to extend their lives. In the days prior to Mai Luan’s fantastic machines, it was their best hope for staving off death.
The truth only fueled Gregorios’ anger.
So many lives destroyed in their quest to thwart their fate. Even if Mai Luan’s machines helped reverse their soul fragmentation, Gregorios vowed to terminate them, just as he should have decades before.
Hitler beckoned Gregorios deeper into the warren of small rooms. They stopped in a bedroom stripped bare but for two cots. Hitler and the young soldier both lay down.
The dictator gestured toward his face. “Proceed. There is not much time.”
“No, time is run out.”
Gregorios positioned himself above Hitler’s face and a wave of revulsion set his hands shaking. In the memory, Asoka would break in within minutes. In this dream, he might have even less time.
This man had committed so much evil.
Gregorios had allowed him to do it.
He had tried to stop the Fuhrer, but had not tried hard enough. He had sent intelligence to the hunters to help turn the tide in Stalingrad, and had even executed the enchanter who had convinced Hitler to launch the attempted genocide of the Jews. Gregorios had learned the entire holocaust was crafted in an attempt to destroy the hunters by eliminating the nation within which they hid. Of course, they were far too clever to get caught and sent off to the concentration camps, but that did not prevent the attempt.
The slaughter of millions of innocents had sickened Gregorios more than anything since the atrocities committed during the fall of ancient Rome. He had removed the architect of the plan, but had not been able to stop the implementation of it.
With an effort, Gregorios forced the tumultuous thoughts away and willed the memory into sharp detail. He embraced his nevra core and drove his fingers through the skin under Hitler’s jaw. Purple fire burned in his eyes and along his hands as the dictator’s face began to lift free. He hated the thrill that filled him as he took another soul, but could not quite block it out.
Just as the soulmask began to pull free, a weight slammed into Gregorios’ left shoulder and sharp pain took his breath away. The unexpected assault staggered him two steps, broke his concentration and his grip.
Hitler began to scream. Being left suspended in a partial transformation was incredibly painful.
He deserved it.
A small, implike creature clung to his shoulder, its little talons driven through his muscles. The little monster bit at his face and dug its rear claws into his back. It smelled like dead fish and rotten fruit burned on a barbecue.
Eva screamed and the young soldier lying on the next cot lunged to his feet. Gregorios grabbed the little monster by the neck and ripped it off. It brought chunks of his shoulder with it, and blood sprayed across the room. The pain would have toppled him had he not blocked the sensory input from those nerves.
He threw the little beast at the soldier.
The man screamed as it chewed on his face, and struggled in vain to pull it off. Gregorios drew his pistol. He had not been armed a moment before, but he summoned a colt fort-five 1911-style pistol, his favorite gun of all time. He shot the little demon and it exploded into black mist.
The bullet also blew a gaping hole through the soldier’s head.
Eva Braun kept screaming, so Gregorios shot her too. She’d be dead in minutes anyway, and a quick bullet was a mercy.
He paused to concentrate. His wounds closed and a sense of strength and health returned.
He could get used to that.
It took only a few more seconds to finish removing Hitler’s soulmask. Gregorios ignored the whispered questions and demands from the dispossessed despot as he exited the room and headed for the deepest corner of the bunker. He passed conference rooms, a communications center, and plush living quarters but didn’t pause. Anywhere he tried to hide the soulmask, Mai Luan could find it easily. He could think of only one place he might keep it concealed long enough.
At the deepest part of the bunker, he turned into a long storeroom. The air smelled of dust and mold and hung still and heavy. The long shelves of the storeroom held nothing of interest. Just stacks of unimportant documents, barrels of water, and some spare linens. None of it was meant to be used, but served a vital purpose of disguise.
In the back corner, he fumbled behind a broken wooden box full of propaganda pamphlets until he found a concealed lever that felt like nothing more than a splinter-riddled shard of the box. When he pulled it, the shelving beside him swung away, revealing a cleverly concealed door.
Time to finish it.
The court of Cyrus the Great embodied majesty in a way lost to the world ever since. Today we live in such luxury, and yet the world grovels in mediocrity. I am starting to think there will never be another great king.
Perhaps it is time I offer myself for this service.
~John (facetaker council member)
Chapter Fifty-Five
Eirene panted for breath and her body quaked from the strain.
She stood over the helmet that held Gregorios, her hands clasping the jagged mask that blocked sight of his face. She didn’t need it. She had memorized his features centuries ago, but she still longed to see him.
The drain had started high, but manageable. Over the past minutes it had increased until she could barely maintain the connection for all three of them. She was not sure what was going on, but they needed to finish soon. If not, she would be forced to try to pull one of them from the memory.
Who would it be?
Alter was a hunter, trained to fight heka and Cui Dashi from birth. She knew the strength of his family, the depth of his commitment.
Sarah was untrained, inexperienced, but she had designed that particular rune. Had she learned in the memory to tap its powers, unknown even to Alter’s family? If she did, she might be the best choice to help Gregorios.
The drain spiked again in intensity and Eirene sagged over the machine as she bent all her will to maintaining the connection. When her vision cleared, she noticed blood pouring down Gregorios’ shoulder, and icy fear chilled her.
If he died in there, he couldn’t sever contact with his body to save his life. If he tried, she wasn’t sure what might happen. Would he awaken? Or would he lose contact with her and be trapped in that shadow of history forever?
The skin closed a moment later, but that triggered another severe drain.
Eirene recovered more slowly that time. She leaned her face against the welcome coolness of the faceplate and whispered, “Hurry, love.”
In every generation without fail, someone discovers the idea of world domination. They think it’s new or that they’re uniquely suited to rule. I used to try to convince them they were wrong.
Now I just remove them.
~Gregorios
Chapter Fifty-Six
“The entire floor?” Tomas demanded.
“I’m afraid so, Captain,” Domenico said.
The two stood in the Tenth’s main muster hall, a low-ceilinged, concrete room filled with folding chairs and a round table dating back to the final crusade. Troop roll calls, a map of the building, and documents detailing a history of each of Mai Luan’s previous visits to the headquarters covered the table. Twenty-five enforcers clustered in groups nearby, awaiting orders.
Tomas turned to Anaru, who stood at attention nearby, despite Tomas’ urgings that he sit. “How is it possible the council’s safety was entrusted to a squad outside of the Tenth?”
“Shahrokh’s orders, sir,” Anaru said crisply. His left arm was in a sling, and his jaw still looked bruised. He’d be mostly recovered in the next half hour, but rest would help accelerate the process. “After your defection, Shahrokh said he couldn’t trust the Tenth.”
“Guess he was right about that,” Domenico muttered.
“Right that we’ll protect him even from himself,” Tomas added. “What do we know of the men up there with him?”
“Eight men,” Anaru said. “All personally recruited by Shahrokh over the past two years, and stationed in Iraq and Indonesia.”
“What do we know about them?”
Domenico gestured toward the papers on the desk. “We’re missing their personnel files, so very little.”
“They were classified,” Anaru said. “The squad’s called the Eagles. I met their leader, a man named Behram.”
“I did too,” Domenico said. “Turkish. Grumpy. Gave Quentin a hard time.”
That was all Tomas needed to know.
“We’ll try for non-lethal take-downs for the enforcers, but what of the heka?”
Domenico scowled and muttered an Italian curse.
Anaru maintained his stoic expression. “On Shahrokh’s orders. Mai Luan was allowed to bring several assistants and seven security guards.”
“That’s fifteen men holding the fourth floor,” Tomas said. “And essentially holding the council hostage.”
“I doubt the enforcers would allow anything to happen to the council,” Domenico said. “They’re Shahrokh’s new personal guard.”
“Don’t count on it,” Tomas said. “Mai Luan’s planned this too perfectly. I guarantee those men are either already somehow in her employ, or she has a plan to take them out as soon as she gets what she wants from Asoka’s mind.”
“What’s she after?” Domenico asked.
The existence of master runes was too important a secret to entrust even to his men. “Information to help her take over the council’s minds,” Tomas said. “Details are classified, but if she succeeds, she’ll destroy them and we won’t be able to stop her.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Anaru said. “The Tenth can take down a Cui Dashi.”
“We’ve done it in the past,” Tomas agreed. “But she’s changing the playing field. We need to remove her now, or we may never get another chance.”
“The fourth floor is sealed,” Domenico reported. “They’ve blocked open the elevators, and they’ve got men stationed at the stairs.”
“What orders did Shahrokh give you?” Tomas asked.
“Keep the perimeter secure,” Anaru said. “And keep everyone away from the fourth floor.”
“Do we have video feeds?”
“Of the hallways, yes,” Domenico said. He pulled a laptop around and typed a few commands before turning it toward Tomas. The screen was split to display four simultaneous video feeds that showed armed enforcers stationed near the stairs, and heka positioned by the doors.
“That’s Behram,” Domenico said, pointing to a swarthy-skinned enforcer standing near the closed door to the stairwell.
The man turned and Tomas got a good look at his face. He didn’t like the man’s surly expression. He was a good judge of character, and he never would have recruited a man like this.
“They’ve ceded the council room to the heka,” Tomas muttered. “Not a good sign.”
“We might be able to talk our way past the enforcers,” Domenico offered.
“If we can, we’ll need to storm the council room fast,” Tomas said. “Before the heka can turn on the council.”
“I don’t like it,” Anaru said. “We can traverse that hall in three seconds, but not while running into enemy fire. Even if we make it that fast, there are five heka in the room. They could execute every council member in that much time.”
Tomas studied the situation for another minute. “No video of the council room?”
“Negative,” Domenico said. “There’s usually a camera, but it’s out of service today.”
He reached a decision. “Where’s Quentin?”
“Distributing some of his new equipment,” Anaru said.
“Get him on the phone. I have an idea how to even the odds, but it’ll take a few minutes to set up.”
He pointed at Anaru. “You’ve met Behram. Take four men with you and see if you can talk your way up to the fourth floor. Try to get into the council room as extra security, but even reaching the hall would be a good start. Position the rest of the company on the third floor.”
Anaru saluted. “Yes, sir.”
“We’ll watch your progress on the video,” Tomas said. “If you succeed, I’ll join the rest of the company and we’ll make our move.”
“If they don’t let us up?” Anaru asked.
“Then we fall back to plan B, and things get ugly.” Tomas hoped it didn’t come to that. Enforcers hadn’t battled enforcers since the heka infiltration of 1453, and Tomas hated to think they might have to break that streak today.
Don’t forget what I discovered that over fifty percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future soul transfers.
~Franklin D. Roosevelt
Chapter Fifty-Seven
“This isn’t working,” Sarah shouted as she crouched behind a pile of broken concrete. German bullets whined as they ricocheted off the stone inches away.
Alter fired a long burst from his machine gun and dropped back down beside her. Although the belt han
ging from the gun didn’t look that long, it didn’t seem to run out of ammo.
Her shotgun did. She’d have to ask Gregorios about that. She had fired all the buckshot it had originally been loaded with and switched to slugs. Every time she pulled one from the wide leather belt she had draped over her shoulder, a new one materialized to take its place. Why didn’t her shells reappear inside the shotgun and save her the trouble?
“What?” Alter shouted as bullets smacked the far side of the barrier.
Although Sarah knew there were six inches of cement protecting her, the angry buzzing of ricocheting bullets sounded too close. Still, she was a little surprised by how well she was coping with her first big firefight. She kept telling herself it was just a dream and tried not to think about how Gregorios had brought injuries back the last time.
“This isn’t working,” she repeated.
“We’ve got to hold them off until we get a clear shot at Mai Luan.”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“You can’t see anything down here,” Alter said with a wild grin. He rose again and began firing, but pitched backward with blood spurting from the right side of his chest.
Sarah forced herself to rise and fire several shots at the SS soldiers before gaining a clear target. A couple of them had started to charge when they saw Alter fall, and she focused on them.
Time seemed to slow as she drew a bead.
Her finger pulled the trigger, and the first soldier tumbled to the ground, his chest a mass of blood. She had already switched to the second target and fired again. Her recent training with Quentin had helped sharpen her skills, and she barely thought about the movements as her hands pumped round after round into the chamber and her finger squeezed the trigger. In that moment, she barely felt the kick that usually rattled her. Was it Gregorios’ doing or the adrenaline of battle, or maybe another effect of her new rune?