|
|
|
|
by Jess Nevins
[rated PG for a couple of bad words]
What has come before: The Liberators were captured by Der Vampir, the most feared of the German super-men, and taken to the laboratories of the evil, mad scientist the Scalpel, in Germany, where they were subjected to horrendous tortures and experiments at the hands of the Scalpel, Arnim Zola, and Baron Blood. They eventually escaped due to the efforts of Captain America, the Challenger, and the Black Avenger (with some Outside help).
The summons, when it came, was heard by only a few. This was as had been planned; what the twelve would be doing went against all precedent and tradition, and would in fact have caused much unfriendly and even hostile speculation, and probably have led to a change in leadership, not to mention the ostracizing of the twelve. The fact that the twelve were going on their mission by the direct orders of their King would have meant nothing to the others of the city, to whom isolation was not only a way of life but the only proper moral philosophy to have; although the others of the city might have sympathized with the aims of the mission they would have found its methods deeply repellant.
So the twelve breathed no word of their mission to anyone, and when the call came they merely said farewell to their loved ones and families, and left the residential areas of the city, passing down the Avenue of Stability, past the Palace of the Royal Family and through the Old City, until they arrived at the Tower of their King.
The twelve filed into the Tower and silently padded up its stairs until the reached the top room, which was open, with no walls and a roof perpetually held aloft by pressor beams. They breathed deeply, enjoying the tang of the salt air for what they suspected might be the last time. Although their King was in the room, they temporarily ignored him, looking instead at their city as the dawn's light began to sweep over it, and at the ocean beyond the city's limits; the keener-eyed among the twelve could just make out the coastline of Greenland in the distance. Their King looked at them with a calm mien and sad eyes, waiting for them to ready themselves to face him.
Finally, the leader of the twelve, tall and handsome in his black, turned to his King and said, "We await your command, my liege." For those with ears to hear it, there was the faintest trace of sarcasm and resentment in his voice.
Their King sighed and said, "Please make yourselves comfortable."
Eleven of the twelve sat, cross-legged, but the twelfth, their leader, did not move, and after several moments of silence the King said, "Modeus, I know your feelings on this matter, and I have given them due consideration, but I am afraid that I must follow the dictates of my heart."
Modeus, still standing, arms crossed, and looking with a seemingly-mild expression at his King, said, "As you wish. My liege."
The King locked stares with Modeus, finally looking away and sighing again. He said to the others, "I thank you for coming. Again, I know that this is not as you would have desired, but I truly believe that this is for the best."
His words being met by an uncomfortable silence, he looked down at the floor, and then out at the sea, enjoying the play of the new day's sunlight across the waters and hating himself for what he was doing. He looked up at the twelve and then at each one individually. He said, "Belile, you have two children, I believe."
Belile nodded slowly. "I do, sir. A son and a daughter."
The King said, "And you, Hymenopter?"
Hymenopter fluttered his wings briefly and said, "Three, sire. After the death of my wife I--"
The King said, "That's right. You were given leave to have a further child." He thought for a moment, and said, "And you, Alces, you are a parent as well?"
The tall figure rumbled, "Not yet, sire. My wife is pregnant now, however."
The King nodded his head in a distracted way. He looked at the staff he held in his left hand; it was about three feet long, covered with strange machineries, and had a large faceted crystal ball on one end. Seeming to contemplate the crystal ball, he said, "You all wish a better world for them, don't you?
Hearing no response, he looked up at all of them and said, "Well? Don't you?"
They slowly nodded, and Modeus said, with the tiniest amount of sneer in his voice, "Obviously." Again the King and Modeus locked stares, but this time Modeus was the first to look away. He said, "What parent doesn't? Sire."
The King returned to his inspection of the crystal ball. He said, "You know that with this device I can watch the outside world, and see things of faraway lands. I've told you this. I've also told you about the events in that world, and what is happening there. And I have told you why I am ordering you to do this. I find my logic persuasive. And yet I look into your faces and find only resentment. Why is that? Modeus? Samale?"
Samale spoke for the first time. "Perhaps...sire...it's because your orders violate the longest-standing tradition of our race: to never, ever let them know that we are here. It's...madness. Sire."
The King looked at the others, saw them nodding, and sighed, running his right hand through his thinning hair and rubbing his forehead as he grimaced. "And you do not think that action is required against the madness that grips them? You do not believe that what affects them will eventually affect us? You don't think that if we don't act now, and help to stop the forces of evil, that it will eventually have an impact on us?"
The others shook their heads, Modeus with more emphasis than the others. The King said, "Samale...I've told you about this group of superpowered humans, the ones that have caused so much death and evil in the lands to the East. What do you imagine they will do when they find us?"
Samale snorted with contemptuous humor. "They're only humans. Sire. What could they do against us?
The King shook his head with some sadness and then looked at the other eleven. He said, "And all of you agree with Samale?"
Modeus opened his mouth, looked at the others and saw them waiting for him to speak, and said, "Sire....let them kill each other. What they do has nothing to do with us. It's more important for us to stay away from them, and advance our race. They don't count, sire. We do."
The King's face showed, for a moment, a deep sorrow, and then it disappeared and was replaced by a cold resolve as he said, "I do not agree. And I am your King. And you will do as I've ordered."
None of the twelve spoke for a moment, and the King snapped, "I do not believe I heard your response."
The twelve mumbled, "Yes, sire."
The King said, "Good. You have your orders, and I expect you to carry them out. You may go now." His final words held a note of command, and the others found themselves leaving before they were fully aware of it. They halted halfway to the stairway to the room, then continued onward, not daring to mutter their anger until they were free of the Tower and on their way to the Aerodrome.
From his tower King Agon sighed and watched them go, aware that, in all likelihood, they'd never see Attilan again, and that he'd just condemned twelve Inhumans to death.
Three nights later, the twelve crouched on top of a roof in the Warsaw ghetto, looking down into the cramped squalor of the streets. Hymenoptera shook his head in disgust and said, "It is truly hard for me to believe that anyone could live like this."
Alces, farther away for the edge of the roof than the others - heavier and larger than any of the 12, he was always aware of his bulk and the effect it had on things not built to withstand his weight, and judging by the creaking of the roof, this building was one of those - said, "Made to live like this, Hymenoptera. Do not forget that."
Dubbeel said, "Modeus, answer me something."
King Agon had not give the twelve specific orders about who was to command the mission, only saying that the twelve were to go to this city (so much larger and more crowded than the comfortable, airy streets of Attilan) and help those humans in need; but every one of the twelve, including Modeus, knew that Modeus was the most intelligent and most powerful of the twelve, and by tacit agreement he was their leader for this mission. He did not look at Dubbeel, instead peering fascinated at something in the streets below, as he said, "Yes, Dubbeel?"
Dubbeel said, "These...Ger-mans...they are killing these...Jews...and these...Po-les...right?"
Modeus said, "Yes, that's right."
Dubbeel said, "And these Ger-mans are doing it to improve the human race, right?"
Modeus nodded.
Dubbeel said, "Well...killing's wrong, yes, but...isn't this what we're doing? I mean...we strive to improve our race. Our breeding is limited, and we expose our young to the Terrigen Mist, and our marriages are arranged to further the race - all to make those of Attilan better. I can see that these Ger-mans must be stopped from killing these other humans, but surely the problem here is only a matter of method, and not aim? And, that being the case, wouldn't, I don't know, a diplomatic effort be of more use? I mean, if we're going to announce to the world that we exist, why not do it that way?"
Modeus smiled in agreement and said, "You are saying this to the wrong person, Dubbeel."
Alces said, quietly, "It's because this...Hit-ler...is like Gral."
The others stopped looking at the streets and looked at Alces. Modeus glanced briefly back at Alces and then returned to looking down into the street. Alces said, "Gral forced all the Attilanians to undergo the Mist treatment. He made us live in Mutation Camps. He killed those who disagreed with him. He--"
Beelsebaob said, "Yes, yes, Alces, we know all that."
Alces said, "Then don't you see the similarities?"
Dubbeel said, "Frankly, no, I don't."
Alces said, "Gral, and this Hit-ler, both force others to live and die according to their own principles. Their victims have no choice in the matter."
Dubbeel said, "Do we have any choice, in Attilan?"
Alces said, "No. But that doesn't make it right, now, does it?"
Modeus said, "This discussion is beside the point. We are here to help these...humans...and that is what we must do. Now - look over there. You see that pile of offal and trash, by the corner of that alley?"
The others looked over the edge of the roof and gazed in the direction of Modeus' outstretched arm, three floors down onto the street.
Modeus said, "Now, observe that group of...they must be soldiers, judging from the uniforms and weapons."
Castorida said, "Those are Ger-mans."
Modeus said, "Yes - now watch what happens...right...now."
The four Germans had their hands on their MP-38 submachine guns as they patrolled down the Allee Juliana; although the Jews of the ghetto had not put up any significant amount of resistance since being herded into the ghetto, and although their numbers were diminished significantly since last July, when the shipments to Treblinka had begun, there was something about patrolling the streets at night that made the soldiers nervous. They'd heard rumors about something else walking the streets at night - something that didn't like Germans. And although none of them would discuss it with anyone else - the SS did not approve of such stories - they all had heard about the patrols that went out after dusk and never came back. Reprisals were carried out, of course, but that seemed to have no effect. And the bodies of the German soldiers were never found, either.
Unseen and unheard by the patrol as they walked by the trash pile, a figure rose from it, his body seeming to drip filth and his costume stained and dirtied almost beyond salvage. He sprang forward and was on the four in a second, the knife in his right hand running through one of the Germans from behind and a sidekick knocking the second German off his feet. The figure, still holding his knife in the first soldier, who was paralyzed with agony, futilely reaching behind him for the source of his pain, spun the soldier around to face the other two, who were turning to see the cause of the disturbance. The figure drew a Luger with his left hand and, using the first soldier as a shield, gunned the other two Germans down, a rubber baby's pacifier on the end of the gun-muzzle muffling the shots. He then turned and shot the fourth soldier, the one he'd kicked; the soldier was scrambling where he lay, reaching for his dropped submachine gun, when the bullets took him.
The figure then yanked his knife from the first German, and quickly looked around. Seeing that the street was empty, he dipped his hand in the body of one of the Germans and painted a large V of blood on a nearby wall. He quickly dragged the four bodies into the alley on the other side of his trashpile, and stripped them of their overcoats, boots, weapons and ammunition. He then carried the bodies a few yards down the street, pried open a grate set among the cobbles of the street, and dumped the bodies into the sewer, where they landed with a distant splash. The figure then checked the streets again, gathered up the overcoats, boots, and weapons, and scuttled down a block into another alleyway. He knocked twice on a beaten wooden door in the alley, then knocked twice again. It opened a crack, a few whispered sentences were exchanged, and someone inside the doorway took the guns and clothes from the figure, and then hurriedly closed the door.
The figure then ran back into the street, slipped into the open sewer duct, and pulled the grate onto the opening after him.
Samale broke the silence, saying, "An efficient killer, that one. Modeus, do you want...?"
Modeus nodded. "We were sent here by our beloved King," and the sarcasm in his words was lost on none of them, "to help these humans, against these other humans. I think we have found the human we should make first contact with."
In the sewers underneath the ghetto the man slogged through the filth and muck, the familiar weariness saturating his body. He felt a certain satisfaction at the night's work, but he knew all too well that letting one's guard down from overconfidence was the quickest way to get caught by the SS or SD. The rank stench of the sewer no longer bothered him; he'd been down here since the end of November, when he'd left the Liberators to return to where he could do the most good, and he'd grown accustomed to the foul smell. It permeated his clothes and coated his body so thoroughly that it was second nature to him; even when he ventured above-ground he still stank, but even there the smell didn't bother him. The bitter cold of the winter no longer bothered him, either; like the stench and like the hunger, the cold was just another unpleasant fact of life for him now, and he'd had lots of practice getting used to those. Down here in the sewers, though, the heat was partially trapped, and it was generally warmer down here than it was up on the street. Besides, he'd taken enough overcoats and wool socks and boots from dead Germans to keep him warm, or at least not as cold as he could be; while he was up there, working, he couldn't wear more than a layer or two - any more would slow him down far too much - but down here he could dress more warmly.
The man reached the space he'd come to think of as home. It had probably originally been an office for those who worked in the sewers, but that had been before the war, when much had been different in this poor city. Sometime after the Germans and Russians killed Poland and carved up its corpse, this particular office had been abandoned, its doors and windows boarded up, its electricity shut off, and, as far as the man could see, its existence forgotten about.
Until the man had arrived here, that is. After his "death" at Dunkirk he'd been ordered, by his Captain, to go behind enemy lines, to aid the resistance against the Germans. He'd worked in Paris and Berlin, but the German capital had grown too hot for him, and after conferring with Powell he'd chosen Warsaw as the best place for him to work.
And so he'd come here, at the end of 1941, and worked from here for several months, until the call had come to join the other Allied mystery men for the invasion of North Africa. He had, and stayed with them for a while afterwards, but he'd always been nagged by the feeling that he could be doing more elsewhere, that beside the heavyweight types like Dynamic Man and the Human Torch, he was just another batter behind the Bradmans. And so, when the opportunity had presented itself, he'd left, and returned here. He'd cleared out the trash from the abandoned office, killed the roaches, unclogged the air vents (he never stayed anywhere without making sure he had at least one extra escape route, and one of the vents was wide enough for him to crawl through) and set up shop. He couldn't risk a fire - the SS or SD probably wouldn't see the light of the fire, but the smoke would be a giveaway, even filtered through the air ducts - but between the extra overcoats and clothes he'd taken from the Germans and the blankets he'd brought with him and hung around the walls of the office, he was able to keep warm enough. Food was scarce, but it was scarce all over. Les boches were trying to starve all the Jews of the ghetto, giving them next to nothing to eat and working them to death. Even down here there weren't any rats left, never mind dogs or cats.
The man was relaxing, scribbling notes in his journal, when a faint sound just outside the office caught his attention. He rolled over and drew both Lugers from beside his makeshift cot just as the blanket in front of the door to the office was pushed aside and the...things...walked in. There were twelve of them, and they looked like...like someone had taken a bunch of animals and insects and put them together with men. And they were dressed...the man hadn't seen costumes like that since he'd left the Liberators.
The lead one, the one most human-looking of the group, clad all in black, raised his hands and smiled a mollifying smile and said, "We mean you no harm."
Although the voice was mild and reasonable, the man heard the underlying contempt in the speaker's voice and said, "Do tell."
The figure in black said, "We're here to help you."
The man didn't move his guns as he said, "Really. Who sent you?"
The lead figure said, "Nobody you would have heard of, I'm afraid. But--"
The man, guns held steady, said, "It would appear you have a problem, then."
The lead figure's smile didn't falter, but the man could sense that his opposite was not happy about being interrupted. He kept his hands raised and said, "I have a problem?"
The man said, "I'm the one with the guns, friend."
The lead figure made a tsking sound and flexed his mind, telekinetically yanking the guns from the man's hands. He held them for a moment, not smiling, and said, "Your guns don't matter to me, human." He then tossed them back to the man and said, "Your cause, though, does. Now, will you trust me enough to listen?"
The man looked at the guns and then at the twelve and shrugged. "I suppose I should, then."
The other eleven sat, and their leader began to speak, telling the man an incredible story of a hidden race of superbeings and the mission of the twelve.
When he finished, the man said, "So you're here to fight the Germans, eh?"
The leader of the twelve, who'd called himself "Modeus," nodded.
The man said, "Why only twelve of you, then? And if your city is so advanced, why don't you have any weapons - no Flash Gordon death rays or anything like that?"
Modeus sighed with some irritation. "Must I repeat myself? We can neither risk our weapons falling into human hands, nor chance anything that would lead these Ger-mans to Attilan."
The man said, "So your boss sent you here without any weapons? All you've got to defend yourselves with are your fists?"
Modeus said, "We do have powers beyond those of humans."
The man said, "Uh-huh. Much good that will do you if Barbarossa or Autumn Fog shows up. Sounds to me like your boss gave you a scut job, friend."
Modeus smiled humorlessly. "Indeed. I had no choice in the matter...what is your name, human? I prefer to know with whom I am allying myself."
The man said, "Folks around here know me as Citizen V, Modeus. The Germans have other names for me, of course."
Modeus said, "Very well...Citizen V. I was given no choice when the question of coming here came up, but now that I am here, I will do all that I can to help you."
Citizen V stroked the stubble on his chin thoughtfully, and then said, "Fine. Destroy the SS guard barracks on Marszatkowska. Leave no survivors. Then return here without being seen. I'm going to get some sleep - wake me when you're done." With that he wrapped an SS Colonel's greatcoat around himself and rolled over, showing his back to them.
The others stared at him with some shock; few had ever spoken to Modeus so peremptorily, and only one of those - the King - had survived doing so. Samale walked forward and yanked on Citizen V's shoulder, saying, "Human! How dare...you..."
His voice trailed away as he mentally examined the weapon that Citizen V was pressing, muzzle-first, into the bottom of his jaw. Citizen V snarled, "How dare I? Easy. Because of one simple rule: You don't. Fuck. With the SS. If you don't learn that quickly here, you die - simple as that. You feed me some cock-and-bull story about being from a super-advanced race from an island which nobody's ever found before, and you expect me to buy that? Me arse, I will. You or Modeus there pulled some trick with my other guns, and you expect me to trust you with my life, of a sudden? Bullshite I will. The SS and SD are sneaky buggers, and they've pulled cleverer stunts than this before. And don't be thinking that you can pull this gun away like you did the other ones. Maybe you can, but not before I pull the trigger. And while you may not be scared of bullets, this gun's a Liberator, and what it's loaded with carries one hell of a lot more punch than a lead slug."
"Now - you want me to really believe you're here to fight the Germans? Fine. Kill them. Then I'll begin to believe you are who you say you are. Until then, sod off."
And with that he shoved Samale away from him, and waved them at the entranceway to the office with his gun. He watched them leave, and listened until the sounds of their footsteps dwindled to nothingness, and then silently crept from the office to the edge of the river of filth, where he stood for two minutes, listening. Once he was sure that they were really gone, he packed up what few belongings he had, checked his escape route through the air vent over his cot, and made sure it was still free of obstructions, shoved his belongings into the vent, and then crept to the nearest storm drain, where he crouched, Liberator in hand, waiting and listening.
The other 11 Attilanians said nothing until they were free of the sewer, waiting for Modeus' inevitable outburst. He said nothing, directing those who could fly to carry those who could not back to the rooftop they'd been on before. Once on the rooftop Modeus, his expression and voice mild, said, "Hymenopter, perform an aerial reconnaissance, please. Locate this barracks, observe its defenses, and then return."
Hymenopter looked curiously at him, then shrugged, unfolded and flapped his wings, and flew off into the night.
Samale shook his head and said, "Well. Now I have seen everything. Modeus, scion of the Royal House, obeying orders from a human! What those of the Technical Center would say, I--"
Modeus' right arm swung around, his pointer finger aimed at Samale's face. Samale fell silent, his yellow eyes flickering between Modeus' finger and Modeus, who was not looking at Samale, instead observing the streets below. Modeus finally withdrew his finger, softly saying, "The human is correct. He has no reason to trust us. We must earn his trust, and the only way to do that is to kill the enemy."
Dubbeel said, "Modeus...we have one last chance not to do this, not to disobey our oldest teachings. We can still flee; this Citizen V' will be killed, and no one will believe him. We could make a home somewhere else here. Phaeder is said to have done so."
Modeus shook his head. "And what of our families? Agon undoubtedly watches us even now. If we flee, he would, I'm certain, declare our families outcast; he might even reduce them to the status of Alpha Primitives." He watched the faces of Dubbeel and the others as that sank in; they obviously hadn't thought this through all the way, or seen the implied threat in Agon's inquiries about their families. Alces, though, seemed discontented by this conversation; he obviously continued to believe that this insane mission was a good idea. Modeus waited until they'd fully grasped his words, then went on. "Besides, we are still Attilanians. Our duty is to obey the King. The one who gives us our orders may be a fool who cares nothing for the lives of his underlings, the orders themselves may be idiocy, and to obey them may be suicide, but we are Attilanians. We have all taken our vows. The race is paramount, and our duty is to obey, and further the race. I will not lead anyone who thinks otherwise. You obey me without question, as I obey the king. And that is all there is to it. Is that clear?"
The others nodded, and nothing further was said until Hymenopter returned. He said, "It appears to be a simple warehouse; a guard at the front and rear doors, and between 30 and 40 humans inside. They have no mounted guns, and no one on the roof of the building."
Modeus said, "What is the roof made of, Hymenopter?"
Hymenopter said, "A very thin and light metal, Modeus. I had to be careful moving around on top of it; sound carried, and they nearly heard me a couple of times."
Modeus said, "Hmm. Good. We will take them from above. Micrurus, can you silently kill one of the guards?"
Micrurus' tongue flickered in and out once and he smiled and said, "A rhetorical question, yes?"
Modeus smiled and nodded. "Yes. Good. Here's what we'll do..."
Ten minutes later the guard at the barracks' East door, half-dozing despite the cold and dreaming about some of the Polish whores he and his friends in the SS usually used, felt something sharp jab into his neck. He said, "OW" and then lost all feeling in his body and collapsed, dead. The other guard, at the South door, was stamping his feet and rubbing his hands together to keep warm, and was thinking about how good it had felt to go out with his friends on the last Einsatzgruppe trip, when he felt something horribly like fingers crawl inside his skull, and then he felt a blinding pain, and then he felt nothing.
On the roof Modeus saw Micrurus make the palms-up gesture of success, and Modeus turned and gestured at the others above him. Hymenopter, Picforme, Belile, Beelsebaob, and Samale let the non-flyers go, and Dubbeel, Scutiger, Sphenodo, Castorida, and Alces plunged down, through the roof of the building, followed quickly by Modeus, Scutiger, and the flyers.
The battle was over in under thirty seconds; those SS men who were not already asleep were preparing for it, and only a few had their weapons handy. And the Germans' rifles and machine guns and pistols were of no use, the various powers of the Attilanians proving sufficient to kill them. When the slaughter was over Modeus quickly surveyed the carnage, then nodded with professional satisfaction and said, "And now we go. Back to the sewers."
In his "home" Citizen V waited, listening. He'd heard the shots - it was very quiet at night in the ghetto, and even small sounds tended to carry a long way - but after that he heard little else, only a scream or two, and he'd quickly retreated back to the office, trying to figure out if the number of shots was a good thing or a bad thing.
The sound of a footfall outside the office made him point his Liberator at the doorway. Modeus entered and threw something to him, saying, "I trust this will quiet your suspicions?"
Citizen V looked at the thing; it was an SS Colonel's hat, covered with splotches of drying blood. Citizen V nodded slowly and said, "For the moment. You're sure you were not followed here?"
Modeus said nothing, but Samale managed a look of wounded and offended pride and said, "Human, we were training for this sort of thing since before you were born."
Citizen V said, "Good. Then I won't need to nursemaid you. Find places to sleep in here or along the sewer. It's almost dawn, and the SS will be looking for us. We don't move during the day, only at night."
Castorida said, "What of food?"
Citizen V said, "What of it? This is the resistance, friend, and this is Warsaw. The only people with food are the Germans, and they aren't sharing."
Dubbeel said, "So you starve?"
Citizen V said, "No, but we don't have any extra food. Tonight we'll try to grab some. But you'd best become accustomed to going hungry most of the time." He let a note of dry asperity enter his voice as he said, "I trust your training covered that, too."
Modeus said mildly, "Had you let us know that you had nothing to eat before we killed those Ger-mans, we could have brought back some of their food."
Citizen V said, "Ah. Well. You have a point. Too late now, though, so you might as well grab some sleep."
The other Attilanians left the office and began stretching out on whatever open, empty, relatively clean space they could find. Modeus stood, arms folded, waiting for the others to leave. He then closed the door to the office, put the covering blankets back in place, and leaned against the desk, inspecting the office. Citizen V looked curiously at him. Modeus finally said, "Human...V...these Ger-mans. They do not, I assume, simply stand by and do nothing after you kill them?"
V sighed and looked down at his lap for a moment. He looked up but avoided meeting Modeus' eyes as he said, "No, they don't. They carry out reprisals; five Jews for every German. If they think it was the ZWZ, they kill three Poles for every German."
"And you continue to do this anyhow?"
V's eyes flared, and he said, "What's the alternative, then? Just sitting here and waiting until they cart the Jews off to the death camps, like the Poles do?"
Modeus said nothing. V said, "Don't think this is something I haven't thought about, Modeus. Every day I lie down here and listen to what the Germans do to the Jews because of me. The faces, they...well, never mind that. But doing nothing..."
Modeus said, in a thoughtful voice, "Then by my actions I have condemned 150 innocents to death."
V said, "Yup. Best get used to that fact, Modeus; that's the calculus of war, right there."
Modeus said, "Why not move, then? Surely there are other areas where they..." His voice trailed off as he realized the improbability of what he suggested.
V said, "Where they won't carry out reprisals? No such place, mate. The Germans have this policy with resistance fighters: extermination, plain and simple. If they think you're with the underground, or they think you're helping the underground, or if you're just the wrong kind of person, they kill you. They've got these groups of killers - the Einsatzgruppen - that patrol the countryside, killing everyone. Here in Warsaw they've sent, I don't know, 200,000 Jews, I think - maybe more - to the death camps. And their..."
Modeus waited a moment for V to finish his sentence, and then said, "Their...?"
When Citizen V spoke again, his voice was thoughtful. "Their super-men. Hmm. You've all got powers, I think you said before?"
Modeus said, "Yes, we are exposed to...we are given our powers in a ceremony when we are young. We twelve are among the strongest of our people. And our kind is of a higher order than mere humans, anyhow."
Citizen V was silent for a long moment, finally saying, "I was about to say that their super-men kill dozens each, and there is little we can do against them. You know, you may not have invited a reprisal with your actions. My work, they know; I always leave a V behind. The Germans know that I'm working alone, but they kill Jews anyway. But this, though...there'll be no V left behind, and they know I couldn't wipe out that many SS by myself...and they won't believe the Jews could do this...hmmm..."
After a few moments of silence Modeus said, "They will kill more innocents eventually, though."
V said, "Yes, but not for, oh, days, at least. They won't know what to make of it; they'll want to investigate this thoroughly. They might even think that this was the Liberators. And that'll bring..."
Citizen V abruptly began chuckling to himself. Modeus waited, then said, "Bring who?"
Citizen V said, "Never mind. I'll explain in the morning. I just thought of what our next mission is going to be."
And with that he rolled over and went to sleep, leaving Modeus to glare at him and eventually wrap himself in his cape and fall asleep himself.
Hundreds of miles away many of the Liberators tossed and turned, and eventually woke up, covered with sweat. They had each had the same nightmare, the same one they'd had for several nights running, that they could never quite remember when they woke up, but which they knew was bad. They never thought to discuss it with each other, but it did trouble all of them, and even the blinding sun of the North African desert could not fully dispel the sense of foreboding the dream always left them with.
Two galaxies away, three beings awoke from a terrible dream. The dream had started with a vision of an enormous gem, glowing from within with a nova-bright light. The gem, which seemed to the dreamers to be close to a diamond, towered over the three in the dream, reaching high into a brilliantly starry sky; the three somehow knew that in "real" life the gem was not quite that large, but also knew that it somehow also contained infinities.
The gem had dozens of facets and in each facet the three could see images of other times and other places. In one facet was gathered a group of gaudily-costumed humans, listening intently to one of their members; two of them - a young yellow-haired woman wearing a red-and-black costume with a web design across the shirt, and a tall, muscular, dignified black man wearing a winged metal helmet and carrying a heavy, short-handled war hammer - were gesturing at the speaker, a tall human with white-streaked black hair, sad eyes, and a long, yellow-fringed blue cape which all three dreamers recognized. The three dreamers could sense that the human in the familiar cape was telling the others something important, but they could not sense what.
In a second facet they saw seventeen costumed humans sitting around a round table. One of them, who wore a featureless golden mask almost identical to one of the three dreamers, was speaking to the only standing human of the seventeen, a tall man of noble mien, wearing a blue costume with a red cape, with a symbol on his chest. The similarities to the leader of the three dreamers was so strong that the three were almost jolted from their dream, but something drew them back into the dream.
In a third facet they saw more humans, in stranger costumes, in the middle of fighting many different battles. These humans were drawn away from their battles by another human, who wielded a stick of great power.
And then the light of the gem began to gutter and flicker and dim, and the three could see many shadows fall across the gem's facets. Many of the shadows were unfamiliar to the three dreamers, but the profile of one was unmistakable, and that shadow reached into the gem and drew from it a short, hairy, somewhat round humanoid, who was motionless, his face twisted in alarm and fear. The dreamers knew that the humanoid was a creature of great power, but somehow he'd been nullified, and the shadow holding the humanoid gestured, and the humanoid vanished. Then the shadow reached into the gem again, and it exploded and cast an awful black unlight across everything and began sucking the dreamers into it--
And that's when they awoke. Each immediately knew what had to be done.
In the Castle Unnameable Zauberer laid the three infants side by side. Freshly taken from their beds within hours of their births, and still wrapped in their swaddling clothes, the three knew they were in a Bad Place - some knowledge is present in human brains at birth, and the occult awareness of danger is one of them - and were screaming for their absent parents. Zauberer shut the sounds out of his mind and waited until exactly midnight, then picked up a black bag (its cloth seeming to crawl, somehow) and dumped its contents on the babies.
The three snakes, angered beyond measure by their captivity in the bag, took their anger out on the first things they saw. The snakes, glittering green, with a malign intelligence in their yellow eyes and strange symbols on their backs, were no longer to be found on Earth; Zauberer had traveled a very long way into the Tangled Zones to find them. They had once flourished in abundance on Earth, but after the burial of the Serpent Crown and the destruction of the Set cults they were hunted down and destroyed..
Zauberer waited until he was sure that the snakes' poison was taking full effect, and then uttered the summoning spell, offering the lives of the three babies up to Set in exchange for power.
Nothing happened, and in a fit of pique Zauberer destroyed the babies and the snakes with a gout of black flame. Immensely frustrated at his fourth straight failure, he began idly flipping through some of his books, looking for some inspiration.
He found it in the Necronomicon.
Author's notes:
Take a good read of the OHOTMU Inhumans' entry. Their obsession with eugenics is on morally shaky ground, I think. And this "rule by the genetically fittest" thing....yeesh. I know they're the good guys, but still....there's an unexamined morality going on here that I find extremely dubious.
I just can't see anyone calling himself an "Inhuman" with a straight face, so I'm using "Attilanian" instead. Not as euphonious, I know, but it doesn't jar the eye as someone referring to his- or herself as an "Inhuman."
Gral was a real part of the Inhumans' history, and the background of Citizen V here is as it was given in the comics.
The "Powell" mentioned here was the "International Police" contact, in Berlin, for the Blazing Skull, back in the Golden Age. He will appear in person and be referred to again, both in these pages and elsewhere.
Next issue: A Samurai's Duty In Life Is Death
