Stauffenberg was dead. And so was Olbricht, Quirnheim, and Haeften. The valkyrie and their last chance of freeing their people from their mandatory loyalty to Hitler were shot down. All conspirators were executed.
All but one.
The daredevil.
Kill one man, and you are a murderer.
Heavy boots clogged against the concrete of a dimly backlit cell. The former nation had his hands tied by chains that hanged him from the ceiling. His heart slammed against his fractured rib cage. He needed air, but something had pierced his left lung. His hands were purple from the cold and from the blood's difficulty to reach the extremities of his members.
"Ever heard of the myth of Prometheus, Obersturmführer Beilschmidt?" the voice that was always followed by the torture sessions asked. "The one who gave men fire and was eternally tortured?"
Silence. It had been three days since the failure of Operation Valkyrie, three days that seemed like three years. They tied him to a pole and tore the flesh off of his back with sticks wrapped with barbed wire; whipped him for two hours straight; tested his body's resistance with salted water and electricity.
He couldn't blame the man before him for the beating and the punishment he had been suffering for the last three days. Gilbert had once been in his place, whipping his prisoners to death, hanging them from the ceiling, plucking their eyes out with no mercy. Now he was the one being stripped down of what was left of his sanity as the devil's tongue hissed against the air and laid kisses on his now raw back, devoid of skin.
Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror.
The torturer answered the silence of the albino soldier – now, a mere mortal – by giving his broken leg a twist. Gilbert's voice betrayed him, showing the officer how weak he was at the moment. The gunshot wounds did not scar any more. The shiny objects were nailed in his chest. His breathing became shaky again as his teeth clacked against each other. The cold slowly ate his toes.
"You can't kill a God," the soldier said before spitting on the tortured man and slapping him across his face. Gilbert smiled with what was left of his strength and whispered back:
"But can you?"
Kill them all, and you are a god.