References to Hellsing is copyright to their respective holders. References to Lovecraft are open-source.

DER LEBENDTOTEN

Castle Naudbaum was hardly suitable for a man of Klaus' condition; or so he continued to tell everyone. It was far too cold, the Bavarian air too sickly. The village at the foot of the mountain – the only habitation for miles around, barring scattered farmsteads – was not to his liking, even if it was a shining example of agricultural Germany; the very thing they were meant to be aiming for. Worse yet, for a man raised in good stock, the mass-transportation used was uncomfortable; the SS support staff were too slow, and too slovenly; and no-one seemed to be able to make a decent cup of coffee.

As far as Jochen was concerned, Klaus could shut the hell up and get used to it. But the fact remained, even if they were of the same rank, Klaus was still superior – if only because he'd been a Party member since the beginning. Jochen couldn't help smiling. The stupid fool certainly acted like a party member.

With a sigh, Jochen leant back in his chair, feeling the creak of the wood more than hearing it, and tried to massage the dull ache of tiredness from his shoulders. His SS-uniform, pale grey in the dancing candle-light, was slick with sweat even with the night's cold – and he wondered whether Klaus would comment on it when he returned. It wasn't that Jochen particularly cared at all – he was no soldier, and Sonderkommando-H made special liberties for its translation staff – but Klaus, with his stuck-up Prussian accent and perpetually haughty manner, made Jochen remember his own life, scrabbling bread-crusts from Berlin's back streets, the last surviving legacy of a victim of the Great War and a woman who had worked her fingers to the bone caring for six children.

He pushed that aside and returned to the papers on his desk. The first was a thick set of type-written manuscript, bound and carefully stamped "Geheim" – all of the words were in English. It was uncommon for the translators to get live languages – usually it was Greek or Latin. Sometimes – although he'd never seen it personally – old Yiddish or some unused style of French or Teutonic. In this case, however, it appeared that these pieces were shipped from America or Canada – the style of writing certainly testified to that, but he knew better than to say it out loud. People who asked questions about their work had a habit of being 'transferred'. Most likely, he thought, to the Eastern Front.

But dear God in heaven… the monotony of this thing. As far as it seemed, it was little more than a diary or a journal, seemingly nothing more than an under-graduate's laboured and heavy-handed tries at putting thought into word. Even giving him another "Vermiis Wyrm" would be more fun, although he wouldn't have liked to translate the thing in full – every fourth page had been enough. After the original translator gouged his own eyes out rather than finish the thing, he supposed it was a small mercy that policy had forced translation into a group-work. But this? This wasn't even translation! This was school-work!

He hadn't really been reading it as he went along, rather transferring it word-by-word as he'd been taught, making sure that nothing was out-of-place; but now, sitting there alone in the cold of the mid-winter, with the small office lit only by the candles sitting on each of the four desks around the room, he picked up his translation and read it. Then he re-read it, and when he was finished he began translating again, although this time with a new and profound vigour.

Klaus returned from his over-long coffee break when Jochen was on the last page, stamping about, blowing into clenched fists as if it was him who had been sitting up in the office rather than lounging about in the kitchen – the only place with a gas-heater. "Jochen," he said between huffs, "your uniform looks like an American's." Jochen, however, was too busy skimming, his pen flying across the page like a demon. "Jochen," Klaus said again. He waited for an answer, but none came. Angered, he went back to the door, opened it and slammed it shut with a crack like thunder. The other man paused mid-sentence and looked up, his face flushed.

"Your uniform looks like shit," said Klaus, thankful to be the centre of attention again. "And I've just heard, the heads of the Millennium Projekt will be visiting next month… they want to see whether we're earning our pay." He took off his coat and draped it on his chair. "Have you got anything from that English thing they sent?"

Jochen looked first at him and then at the pages of scribbled notes he'd made. "No." He pushed back his chair and cleared his desk, dropping the manuscript into the drawer and the translation under his arm. "Just more ramblings."

Klaus sniffed. "Well, what do you expect from an American?" He laughed, a noise like a duck's quacking. "I heard they got that from some University."

"Miskatonic," Jochen said quietly. Taking a key out of his pocket, he locked his desk drawer and then walked out, leaving Klaus standing there.

It was three days before Jochen could even prepare his mind for what he was about to do, and it took that long just to go over his notes again and again to fully understand the undertaking. The Castle's surgery was barely adequate for Jochen's needs, and so he collected what he could from there – vials, a gas Bunsen-burner, syringes and needles, and the detritus of medicine. For the more advanced needs, he travelled with the support-staff into the village. His sojourns were unexpected, but hardly seen as wrong – as a Captain, he had every right to travel with the other ranks.

The pharmacy was surprisingly well stocked for such a hamlet; and neither the proprietor, an elderly gentlemen who worked part-time as the fireman, nor the employee, a teen-aged girl of keen wit but only fair face, dared question an SS-officer's purchases. For that Jochen was thankful – some of the supplies were esoteric, little more than folk-remedies' ingredients. But he bought them all the same.

It was on the fourth day that he tried it out.

Jochen wondered whether people would wonder what he was up to, crawling around the kitchen's store-room on hands and knees like some mad-man, peeking under shelves and behind boxes for his prize. He listened carefully, stock-still, waiting for any movement that might give away what he wanted – and in his hand he held his kerchief. He had to wait a long while until finally, he found it. The mouse had been lurking behind a tin of meat, seemingly hiding from him, as if it knew what was to come. Quickly, Jochen grabbed it by its tail and held it up – letting it scrabble around, squeaking impotently, before wrapping it up in the kerchief. Then he dropped it to the floor and stamped on it. When he moved his foot, he found the handkerchief was stained with a single blood-spot - the shape of a petal. Carefully, he picked it up and ran back to his room, scattering the Castle's work-crews as he went.

He was in such a rush he nearly barged into Klaus, whose look of pure contempt stopped Jochen dead in his tracks. "What is that?" asked the other man carefully. He waved a withered octavo at the blotched handkerchief, which Jochen had cradled in both hands before him.
"It's a mouse," replied Jochen.
"I suppose you need a friend." Klaus laughed and for the first time Jochen suddenly found it deeply painful to his ears. "I hope you're going to bother doing some work today… I'm off my feet as it is." Jochen thought this unlikely, as Klaus seemed to have been going in the direction of the kitchen at an almost leisurely pace, but he kept quiet.
The silence stretched on, and Klaus rolled his eyes. "Oh, get along and play with your friend," he groaned. "Some of us have better things to do."
There was no need to be told twice.

Jochen's room was a draughty cell, taken with a bed and a writing desk. The latter was covered with his collected works, pride of place being the test-tubes which were stopped and waiting. Placing the dead mouse's shroud on the edge of the desk, Jochen grabbed a syringe from its rack and drew some of the formula from a test-tube into its glass-belly. Then he uncovered the tiny cadaver. It lay on its side, grey and limp, the fur dark and matted around the top of its neck, the spine obviously having been severed. A tiny glint of white hinted where it jutted through the flesh. This mouse, thought Jochen… this mouse will be the first.
My first.
He pulled the skin up to allow the needle to sink in, and then depressed the syringe – watching the plunger force his serum into the dead-thing's body. When it was done, he cleaned the needle with alcohol and waited for some sign of life. The corpse remained unmoving, the mouth hanging open, eyes glazed in death. It lay there, silently waiting, and Jochen realised with impatience that the creature was too far gone. The chemical reaction talked about in the manuscript said that if there had been too much of a delay, too much decay had taken place, then death was permanent. Jochen grimaced. Damn Klaus. Damn him to Hell! If he hadn't waylaid him there'd be…

What a waste of the formula, that was if the formula actually worked. And now he felt foolish. What if it was a joke? A lie? It was a preposterous idea in the first place. He went to grab hold of the mouse, and at which point it sank its teeth into his right index finger. The surprise was too much to allow shock and Jochen stared as this thing… this abomination against life… dislodged itself from his flesh and waved its forepaws piteously. No noise escaped from its mouth, but it yawned and closed continuously, as if some conscionable action within it sought to mewl or squeak but couldn't. To Jochen's eye it seemed that the spine's severing had stopped any feeling from that point downwards – the forepaws with their limited movement proved to the break having not entirely severed the top-half of its body, but its back legs remained inert as well as the tail. Carefully, keeping his eyes on the little creature, Jochen cleaned his finger and applied a thin strip of gauze he kept in a medical-tin next to his bed. The mouse, after a few minutes of scrabbling, seemed to pacify itself then lie still.

It remained like that for some time, until eventually Jochen realised that it was truly dead this time.

The experiment had succeeded, and Jochen pondered on its ramifications for the rest of the day. Tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow he would try again.
Siegfried was the name given to the Castle's guards' mascot – a black and white cat of indefinite age and gender that had seemed to adopt them more than they it. Jochen had never disliked it, but then again he'd never had much love for it either, and he was particularly careful about catching it – this time more for fear of what the guards would do to him than for looking like a fool.

He found it mooching around in one of the corridors, presumably stalking mice, and it had seemed pleased to see him. He stroked it gently and fed it a bit of mince, even as he inserted the cyanide-filled syringe into the scruff of his neck. It shook and coughed violently for a minute, before lying still – the tongue lolling and the eyes rolled back.

This time the application of the serum was more forceful. Within ten seconds of injection, the cat leapt up and – with a screeching wail – leapt from the table before running laps of the room. When Jochen went to capture it, it hissed wildly and struck out, before finally leaping up to the window and darting out into the castle grounds. It was with great trepidation that Jochen finally left his room and went back to work – a thousand thoughts of what he could do or say if anyone traced him back to the cat racing through his head.

But it seemed he needn't have worried. He found Siegfried in the kitchen later that evening, being tended to by the under-cooks. The cat was lying on his back, having his belly rubbed, and apart from a wary glance at Jochen's entry, the creature seemed not the slightest bit bothered. "Poor thing," said the youngest of the cooks. He looked at his companion, "turn the heater up, Rudi, little Siegfried's cold as ice."

Even sunshine couldn't heat the morning, and the bustle of activity around Jochen seemed more subdued than usual. It had been a slow progression; but the weeks had flown by, barely seeming to have substance. Nor did the people around him. He'd taken to eating his meals in his room over the last week or so, where he could keep watch over his dwindling supplies. His mastery of life and death had got vociferous since the first experiment with the mouse, and the later test with Siegfriend.

Now he had a small box, in which six mice he'd turned lived. 'Turned' was the word he'd invented. Dr. West (that genius! That crazed, magnificent genius!) may have had the means, but Jochen was the wordsmith for those means. The mice he'd turned were mixed sex and he'd tried, with little success, to try and mate them. It seemed that they acted upon their instincts well, but gained no interest from them – food, water, reproduction, it seemed they realised all were unnecessary in this state of half-life. As well as the mice, he'd turned a crow. He'd had to shoot that during one of his walks, and had injected it on the spot – it had flown off before he realised that, unlike the other animals he'd tested the formula upon, docility was no guaranteed. He should have realised that with the cat Siegfried. But what he had found was that the sooner to death his methods (no longer West's. His) were applied, the more likely intelligence was to be kept. A decomposing rat he'd found had proven this, becoming a mad-thing; biting, tearing and seemingly insensate to all but attempts to eat. He had been forced to stamp it to death, and even then it had kept coming until he had crushed its skull under his boot. The stench of its corpse, exploded across the sole of his boots, had been ripe and sickening. The same had been for another mouse and a second cat, this time found in the village. He'd had to bury that out in the woods.

The longer it was left, the less chance of anything more than pure animalistic hunger remained.

Carefully, Jochen washed himself in the basin of water that was propped in the communal bathroom. The face in the mirror, he knew, was his – but it seemed almost alien. In barely four weeks he'd gone from the healthy colour of middle-age, to the grey pallor of the dead things he toyed with. Bags under his eyes testified to the days he spent without sleeping… and what sleepless nights! His stubble had started forming into a beard, and a straggly one at that. Hours spent listlessly writing notes and annotations of his findings, scribbling frantically down all his discoveries, and then following them up with fitful broken nightmares had done nothing for his looks – but his mind…

For the first time, Jochen felt as though his mind was as sharp as the razor by his hand. His senses had dulled, fingertips wrapped in gauze from the thousand-bites of dead creatures, and pain felt nothing to him now. He barely even realised he was bleeding until someone pointed it out to him – not that anyone usually did anymore. The rules said that when someone was acting as strangely as this (and by God, they did when reading some of the crazier things, thought Jochen) then they should be removed and allowed to recover. But Jochen was sane – he wasn't going mad, because he knew exactly what he was doing. By day he translated those boring old books, and by night – by night he breathed life.

By night, he became God himself. Myriad in all possibilities.

He picked up the razor-blade from next to the basin and held it up, seeing its reflection next to his face in the mirror. The blade glittered like fire, and he was suddenly afraid of what he was going to do next. He had attained immortality for all creatures… but himself, he realised. The only person he could not revive was the only person who needed to be. The creator, the only person who would believe it was possible. Himself. Not unless.

If he cut his throat, he might just have enough time to inject himself.

Jochen quivered in excitement, feeling the rush of blood through his veins – perhaps for the last time. He turned around quickly; to find himself face to face with a repulsed Klaus. The other man was standing at the door, wearing his best trousers and a carefully ironed vest, his towel draped across one arm. They stared at each other. Klaus' face was clean-shaven and harsh, and his look was equally so.

"For God's sake, man!" His voice splintered the silence, and he marched forward imperiously. "What are you doing? We've got Millennium's top-brass coming today, and you're standing there smelling of…" He leant forward and took a deep breath. Gagged. "Have you even washed?" he asked, and without waiting for an answer continued, "you smell like you've been screwing bodies. Is that what you've been doing?" He quacked his irritating quack laugh. "Little necrophilia, huh? Got a little too involved in your translating? Yeah?" He looked Jochen up and down. "Yeah… I knew you were bad news, but now…" He shook his head, almost sadly, but there was an edge to his words that was almost excitement. "I let you off before, but you're not taking me down with you this time – I'm going to have to report you."

He turned to leave, but Jochen grabbed his arm, ignoring the man's protests, and pulled him close. Jochen could see the fear in the other's eyes, and he knew that it wasn't simply the smell of decay and cloying death that lingered that make Klaus suddenly try to shrink back. It was the look of death in his eyes, the same look that he'd seen in his mirror. He half-pushed, half-dragged Klaus towards the tiled wall of the washroom and slammed him against it. There was no struggle.

"Look," said Klaus. He swallowed. "If you let go of me, I won't report you… okay? We'll forget this. Good? Just… you get washed and changed and we can meet the Major and… we all look good."

"Klaus," replied Jochen. His eyes burned dully. "I would prefer you better, if you didn't know how to speak..."

"Major," said Naudbaum's OC, snapping a salute. The fat man who got out of the Mercedes limousine replied in turn, then pulled his coat a little more tightly about him. The half-a-dozen SS guardsmen surrounding the grounds, all of whom had been preparing for this moment for days, clicked their heels and saluted in unison with a crisp crackle of fabric.

"Gentlemen," said the Major. He saluted the other ranks before turning to the superior. "Captain-Commandant, we've had a long drive and there's much to get through – I hope this can be as painless as possible." He motioned for the others in the car to get out. The driver, who had been waiting next to the open door, waited for a tall man in a field-coat and spectacles to extricate himself, before closing it. The sight of the two, one tall, the other short, might have reminded some of the Laurel and Hardy films that still got shown at the Castle cinema – that is, if it weren't for the grim sense of purpose that the pair had. Even the Major's smirk held a certain foreboding as the entourage set off inside the castle.

They found Jochen sitting at his desk when the group entered the translators' room. He raised his eyes at the gaggle, and then stood up and saluted – flicking blood from his sleeves and his fingers as he did so. He stared at them, those people with their wide-eyes and surprise. The OC was quivering, half-way through his words. One of the adjutants' legs buckled and he fell to a heap on the floor. Yet, the Major and the tall man stood there and watched carefully, as if what they were seeing was perfectly normal. To Jochen it was, and he could tell that to these men too – this was nothing.

"I'm sorry, Major," said Jochen. "I must apologise for my companion, Herr Klaus Jaeger. I thought it would shut him up."

And on his desk, Klaus' head sat in its last tears, born from tear-ducts that never again would work, and screamed and screamed and screamed.