A story about how everything started for Schwarz. 'Scheintod' is German for 'apparent death'.
I am not English, but I hope I've done a tolerable job. If you find mistakes, please tell me. I'd be glad to correct them.
Neither Schuldig nor Crawford nor Weiß Kreuz belong to me and I do not ear any money with this story.
Enjoy!
Prologue: The end of innocence
He startled up from his sleep and found himself in darkness. He felt the body of his cot comrade shifting slightly under the rough blanket. The room was meant for thirty people and he was one of those who had to share the small construction of wood nailed together with rusty nails with another kid of his age. Luckily. For it was freezing outside and he had witnessed it more than once that one of his comrades would not rise from his bed in the morning.
Usually, they were beaten from their beds while the others had to wait outside in the muddy snow until they, too, lined up. But sometimes, even severe beating was no use. Sometimes, they had frozen during the night.
There was a faint trace of grey behind the panel that acted as the window. He reached out for his cap and tapped his comrade's shoulder. Bard was awake the same second. They had nearly finished making their bed when the siren wailed through the camp. Bard jumped in the same moment from their bed into the room already full of movement. For you didn't want to be the last and not within time. Nor did you want someone to find your bed untidy. He tugged the blankets into perfection, left the bed the moment he knew he would be able to take over Bard's place at the washing bowl.
One minute after the siren had howled they stormed from the barrack and lined on the frozen ground in front of their barrack.
On the other side of the muddy ground, barely to be seen through the darkness and the fog of frozen water, telekinets and telepaths were gathering. Later than the clairvoyants, of course.
The camp consisted of fifteen barracks, was surrounded by NATO-wire and four towers with soldiers and machine guns. Dogs were barking. Outside and inside. Floodlights made sure everyone was seen. In theory. Practically, they only illuminated the frozen fog. The wind was chilling through their thin clothes, even more chilly on their bold heads, scarcely protected by the cap they were wearing.
Wasn't this why his grandmother and her parents had fled Europe when she had still been a child? But this wasn't Europe, this was somewhere else. Cold. A labour camp, long since abandoned by its former masters, because inhuman. Not by Rosenkreuz.
The Teachers shouted at them to form a line, to look alive, angrily. Still about five minutes until they would be late.
The Primus came from their barrack, reported that the beds were made. Neatly, but not neatly enough. Five minutes more in the chilling cold. Waiting for the Teacher to note down their presence. Praying, not to be taken down too late.
"Codes out!"
As quickly as humanly possible, the entire group bared their right underarms to the chilling cold. A small code was tattooed into to skin, making sure they could be registered in every area of the camp.
The Teacher passed by, reading his code into the small device. He prayed to be one of the lucky ones not registered as late.
Bard's code next to him presented a problem. Again. His skin was still too uneven because he had tried to slit his wrists.
Then, ten comrades down the line, the bell tolled. The Teacher hurried down the line, taking up the codes of the last unlucky few. Silences groped through the grey twilight. Everyone held their breath, stood as straight as ever they could. Prayed.
They were to witness a punishment.
The spotlights were lit and two officers dragged a kid onto the square. He watched. A small kid in the grey clothes. He had witnessed it often enough. It could happen oh so easily to everyone around.
The Teachers pushed the kid to the frozen ground, hazy cold fog drifted over the square. The cap fell down, bared the shaved skull. They forced his head down. The kid was barely ten. Or maybe he was older. You could never tell. Malnourish wasn't a problem of the camp but mostly, the inmates had been kept over years in special labs or 'orphanages'. He knew the kid. He had been punished before, for disobedience, talking back, misbehaviour.
He knew this wasn't a normal punishment.
The kid's head was forced to the ground, the arm bent to the back. The kid squealed and Bard next to him looked away.
The device in one of the Teacher's hand's read the kid's name, a voice from the loudspeakers howled it out. Benjamin Polanski, Tele-something.
Then, his crimes were quoted, the cold creeping to their bones meanwhile. Especially the pyrokinets were bound to shake. But the line across, thin, haunted youths, tried not to show anything.
Next thing, the kids head was bent to the ground, his neck bared, the kid held down.
It wasn't the procedure of being tattooed that made the kid cry out. It was the removal of the tattoo on his wrist, with acid. The kid squealed in pain, moaned, his high pitched voice bouncing back from the barracks.
He doubt the kid realized what this meant new tattoo meant. That it was another cruder step in humiliation. From now on, this boy would have to bow to the ground whenever someone asked for his code. Which they would to for fun, in addition to the at last ten times that were needed every day. Teachers and Primus' would amused themselves with kicking when he bent down, making him fall. Especially when the ground was wet.
He didn't give a damn. The kid was a fool to try and fight back.
Bard next to him hold his breath. He wasn't used to it yet. Or other: they hadn't broken him. Yet.
The Teachers waited until the squealing had stopped, until the kid tried to get up. Then, the beating started.
They only stopped when the kid didn't move anymore. Meanwhile, all the other children and teenagers gathered around the yard are shaking.
Maybe the boy was dead. Maybe not. If the boy wasn't dead, he would be out there again, before his wounds had healed. Until they broke him.
Usually, they didn't take long. Usually, the longest they last is a month. Those who last longer don't live.
They'll take two or three outside who still needed breaking. They'll have to dig the hole, then. Toss the body into the hole, cover it with dirt while the Teachers tell them, if they don't obey, it'll be them, next time. Nothing as a reminder that yet another body is lying there. Mostly, they cry.
He had cried the first time he had to do it, even though he had foreseen that he would be beaten up for it. He had cried because it was the only decent thing to do. Because someone had to mourn the senseless death of a child. He had cried the second time and got beaten up, too. The third time, he had cried in silence. Someone told on him and he got beaten up. The fourth time it was a mere duty to him to cry. And to get beaten up for it. The fifth time, getting beaten up had outweighed the meagre sense of duty and right. He hadn't cried.
The child was carried away.
There was no pity inside him. There wasn't yet the love for Rosenkreuz he saw burning in the fanatic eyes of C-Class. There was no friendship for the boy Bard whom he shared the bed with. There was no disgust, no sense of right and wrong, no bothering about what they learned and what they were taught. He remembered a lot of emotions but inside him, there were none of them left. There was only hate. And yet, sometimes, he asked himself why he was hating them. He told himself then that he hated them for all the things they had done to him. That they stripped him of his humanity. But the part of him that scoffed and then said: 'why hate them for taking something that you don't care about any longer? That would only make you weak?' grew, from day to day. And he was very much afraid of it. If it won, he'd love Rosenkreuz. He knew it was possible. More than possible. Likely.
That was why he had to make it to C-Class. Before his hate died. At all costs. Because, when his hate died, it'd only leave a puppet.
And this was why he needed to obey every single order. To smile at them. To bring as much enthusiasm into chanting their paroles as humanly possible. To do best and to be in flames for Rosenkreuz. To be up again when beaten down, shouting their paroles even louder. It was not betrayal on himself, but saving that him that was still left.
Bard stumbled in front of him, visibly shaking, onwards to the barracks, to food. Maybe even warmth.
In spite of the experiments done on them, they all liked the labs best. It was warm in there.
He knew that Bard would be his ticket to C-Class.
.
The evening before, he leaned forward, to Bard's ear, so close that his lips nearly touched it.
"I won't stop you, I will tell them."
It took only seconds until he felt to other boy's lips close to his own ear. "I know."
He didn't move away.
"I don't want to become what you will. Such a hateful thing. And, god, you won't even realize. I see you, standing there. This hateful sneer. The carelessness you point the gun with. Tell me what you want, but I'd rather die. Being dead is better than being a human and not being human. And I don't believe that you can leave this place alive without loving Big Brother."
.
The next day, he went to the Teachers. Told them that Bard would run.
Good, they said. You 're a good student.
They flipped his file. Say that he was very good. Long due to be promoted to C-Class. That this would get him his promotion to C-Class. There was only one thing left to be done.
.
They stood on the ground again, in the morning.
And again, the bell tolled.
They were to witness a punishment.
A boy was dragged onto the square, his code read into the device and his name blared around the square, together with his crime.
Bard something. Clairvoyant. Ran. Caught.
There was another boy, sixteen maybe. Lean, with glasses. The grey clothes, although too short, too wide around his body.
He was given a gun and a sneer crossed his face as he carelessly pointed the gun. It was a hateful sneer.
Not hating the boy who kneeled in front of him who had tried to betray Rosenkreuz.
Not hating Rosenkreuz which demanded him to shoot the boy.
Hating himself from the depths of his heart for what he was about to do.