The Rest of the War, Pt 2:
One Maniac at a Time We Will Take it Back
Half an hour, time enough to reach the gateway in trucks, had turned into an eternity. Not knowing what awaited them at the facility, the caravan had stopped some distance away and the Fighters were on foot when an explosion shook the earth.
It was morning, but the sun was not yet above the horizon, and a dull mist shrouded the grassy field and the building in front of them. Smoke mixed with the mist, and the facility that had once been the Freedom Fighters' pride now stood in ash and ruin.
And silence.
The kind of silence that only comes after a storm has already hit.
They hadn't made it in time. Time, time, always his enemy, always against him, always winning. They hadn't even been halfway there when the ground quaked and Schott screamed at his men to get down. Flashes of fire burned the sky in front of them and the receiver in Schott's right ear was suddenly bursting with urgent voices asking if the troops were harmed, and if they could see what was happening.
The gateway, he was told as everything quieted, had exploded somehow without the Red Tornado's strike. The facility sensors had all gone dead. While Schott had wanted to celebrate, instead he found himself standing in a field full of winter-dead grass, staring at the smoke. Despite wanting this, all he felt in that minute was defeat.
The Reich won again and he didn't even know why.
Schott now crouched on the outside line of the fence, a trail of Fighters behind him, all of them watching the facility pensively. He could see the dark shape of a body on the other side of the chain-link barrier, the black uniform and red armband glistening with dew.
Rifle slung over his shoulder, handgun in its holster, he stood slowly, cautiously, and felt his men rise with him. Communicating with hand signals, he sent men to explore the perimeter and stepped forward to the open gate.
They entered the facility like thieves, slinking in columns around the abandoned vehicles of the Reich.
There had been no word from Leo or Ray since the Red Tornado crashed and the explosion at the facility sent their base into a panic. Their instruments had picked up that the gateway had opened. Something had gone, or something had come through, but whether or not Leo and the rest had succeeded was uncertain, and Schott had no idea what he would find once he stepped inside what was left of the building now in front of him. He gritted his teeth and pushed through the rubble that had once been the door.
Nothing moved inside the room other than the smoke. The rest of the Fighters clambered over piles of brick and metal behind him. Schott pulled the collar of his jacket over his mouth to filter out the smoke, his eyes stinging while he took in the destruction and a line of his men advanced like a wall across the open room to clear the area.
In the center of the room, a blackened crater now sat where the temporal gateway once had been. Temporal and temporary, the charred hole in the concrete, filled with a spiderweb of mangled and melted bits of metal and wiring, served as final proof to losing it to the Reich. The technology had never been simple or safe, and something must have been damaged in the fight, causing it to combust.
At the very least, Schott reminded himself grimly, the Führer's doomsday machine now had no way of returning home. But it was the Führer himself who still held Schott's concern - along with his commanding general and wife, and the otherworldly speedster whose scientific prowess must have allowed them to finish building the portal as quickly as they did. Had they returned right before the explosion? If so, had they taken his men? Or had the mission succeeded and the doubles and his men made it to the other earth?
All he knew was that the gateway had surged with use once before the explosion. Something had passed through. Schott hoped this meant that Leo and Ray and their guests had all made it to the other world - and if the other speedster who was with them was to be believed, they could recreate the breach from their side and return.
"General!" one of the Fighters stood about thirty paces to his left, a little ways from the crater, and was toeing the concrete with his boot.
Schott left the hole behind and went to see what had grabbed the soldier's attention. A small pool of dark, thick liquid was smeared at the Fighter's feet, marks dragging through it where something had moved across the floor. Blood, and a lot of it, and without a body close enough to belong to it. Someone had been injured, and someone had left the room. He looked up around the warehouse space, and began to see just how many bodies lay strewn through the wreckage.
"Check the bodies," he told his men.
Another Fighter, lean and bearded, with too many piercings to count, looked dismayed. "Sir, why? They're in uniforms and-"
"It's hard to tell what they're in," Schott cut him off. All the bodies wore gasmasks, their identities hidden, and it wouldn't be the first time the Reich had tried to trick the Resistance into believing they held the upper hand. To his tired eyes, the uniforms and the shadows they lay in began to run together. He focused on the Fighter. "You were in the tower when the strangers came in?"
The pierced man nodded. Schott knew him vaguely. There were too many of the Freedom Fighters to know them all well, but definitely few enough of them to remember a good half of their names. This man's name was Nadiir, and he had a wife and… a daughter, maybe two daughters, back at the base. Schott had a memory of Nadiir holding a small girl and laughing over watery coffee and spiced rations when they celebrated beating back a Nazi attack on an outer camp a few weeks ago.
"Do you remember what they looked like?" Schott asked. His head was pounding and he was aware his lack of sleep might be impairing him. He wanted a second pair of eyes.
"Yes."
"Good, you walk with me."
Schott instructed half the Fighters to bring all the bodies they could find and lay them out by the crater. The rest of the men he sent to see if they could find any sign that the Führer or his generals had returned. It was grim work, but slowly Schott and Nadiir went down the line of bodies - he counted forty of them before he decided he didn't care about their number - and removed their gasmasks and helmets to make sure none of the faces were familiar.
The only body in the group that gave Schott pause was a man he once knew, a former Freedom Fighter who had deserted to the Nazi army almost a year ago. Schott couldn't remember all his men's names, but the face of this traitor he had never forgotten.
"Andrew," Nadiir said softly, looking at the same man. He waved a hand over the body in an awkward gesture. "We ate together sometimes, between patrols. He never… he didn't act like he hated me. I never thought he would join them."
Schott moved down to the last three bodies in the row, all of which, to his relief, were Nazi strangers. "He didn't desert because he hated anyone, Nadiir," he said. "He left because surrender sometimes looks like victory, and it's a hell of a lot easier."
There was nothing left for them in the compound aside from the Reich's vehicles and weapons, which Schott assigned to Nadiir to be collected and organized. The Fighter didn't realize it at the moment, but he had been promoted. Schott was flying blind at the moment, and flying solo - he needed someone to rely on. He had no means of replacing James, but the Fighters went through enough ranks that he had learned to form a quick picture of who he could trust.
In his ear, the woman who had been running their communications came on again. "General Schott," she said. What was her name, anyway? An L, wasn't it? Lyra, a voice in his head whispered. He shook the thought away. Leigh, he thought. That sounded right. "What's your situation? What are the damages?"
He could have chastised her for demanding information from him, but he understood she was sitting back at the base, helpless and clueless and concerned. "The gateway is gone," he informed her, as if she needed that confirmation. "The Nazi troops here are all…" he trailed off.
Forty men. He had counted forty dead enemies now lined up near the crater before discounting their number as irrelevant.
"General Schott?" Leigh asked.
He tuned her out. "Count the bodies!" he shouted to no one in particular. A few of the men started to obey, but Schott beat them to it, pacing around the crater and counting the dead black coats in a suddenly fevered state.
Fifty-seven. There were only fifty-seven men here.
"The gateway is guarded by 30 Panzer XIIs, 50 Sturmtigers, and 100 Schutzstaffel officers,"
Leo's precise statistics echoed in Schott's memory. One hundred Schutzstaffel officers. Fifty-seven bodies.
Nadiir reentered the warehouse with the men he had taken to secure the Reich's vehicles and weaponry and Schott stopped him. "How many Panzers are out there?" he asked.
"Twenty-eight." Nadiir's answer was prompt. He'd made a point to take count, an observation Schott filed away to commend him on later. Nadiir pointed to two different lumps in the rubble of the warehouse. "Two more were destroyed in the explosion, along with some of the machine guns. The rest are still on the tanks outside."
The weaponry was all present, along with a few trucks and other non-weaponized vehicles. But forty-three men. Forty-three enemy soldiers were unaccounted for.
"We need to get out of here," Schott announced. He waved at the Fighters still milling through the rubble. "Fall back!" he ordered, and he slung his rifle from his shoulder into a more ready position.
Nadiir raised his own weapon. "What is it?"
"They didn't kill them all. Some of the Schutzstaffel must have escaped when they discovered they were losing, before the portal blew. And they didn't take anything with them."
Nadiir was shaking his head. "But what does that mean? Where could they have gone?"
"They had two options," Schott explained while they all filed outside, on guard, weapons up. "Either they stayed to lay an ambush for any reinforcements who came, and are now realizing that leaving their weapons behind was a very poor choice in plans. Or," he felt himself smile, a Leo kind of smile, and shook his head in wonder and amusement. "Or they ran to try and make it to the Führer's closest base. On foot."
Passing orders down the ranks, Schott led the men out of the compound and across the field, everyone guarding their backs from enemy fire that never came.
Nadiir smiled too and gripped his gun a little tighter. "They won't have gotten too far."
Schott slapped Nadiir's shoulder and felt himself laugh. It surprised him. There was a lot of anger, a lot of roiling emotions he couldn't name in that laugh, but there was an eagerness too, a tiny spot of something that might have been called hope if the circumstances were something more innocent.
"If the Führer made it back to our side, he will be with those soldiers and vulnerable." Schott grabbed the handle of the lead truck's door as they reached it and heard engines starting up all around him. "If he is still trapped on the other side, they have no leader, no direction, and no idea we are coming for them."
Two hours since the Red Tornado had been launched from the Freedom Fighter's base in the old city, gunfire exploded off the metal shell of the lead truck, causing the driver to slam on the brakes and swerve the vehicle to the right, the metal side of the vehicle creating a barrier between the soldiers and the bullets.
Schott had been resting his head against the window, though whether or not he slept he couldn't say. As the first rain of bullets cascaded against the truck he jerked back with a yell. Nadiir was behind him and shouted something that was lost in the noise.
The truck nearly careened nearly onto its side with the force of the turn, and then shuddered to a halt. Gunfire came from multiple sides, hammering into the vehicle and pelting the nearby ground.
Schott threw open the door and slid out, turning to pull Nadiir and the driver out behind him. Around them, the rest of the convoy was stopping, and Fighters swarmed from the vehicles, some dodging behind them for cover, others setting up return fire.
The remaining Schutzstaffel officers had heard the convoy on their tail and decided to stop and go on the offensive rather than be run down, a response Schott was counting on and had instructed his men about as they drove earlier. These officers of the Reich were ruthless, talented killers, but without their weapons and armored cars, the disadvantage was for once theirs – a disadvantage Schott and the Freedom Fighters were prepared to take.
Schott raised his rifle over the hood of the truck and took aim, dimly hearing Nadiir shouting at him to get down. He didn't listen. The rifle bucked in his steady hands and an enemy went down. Schott fired again. And again.
A dozen or more of the enemy went down under the first barrage from the Resistance and Schott stepped around the truck. He raised one hand and shouted, urging the Fighters press in, and watched his men respond, gathering themselves and rushing the enemy's position.
And he ran with them.
Nadiir was at his side, firing into the bushes and weeds where the Schutzstaffel hid. The ever-present ghosts went with him as well. Today, their weight drove him forward.
For his parents, his general, and his love. For his earth, his friends, and the future.
The battle on that field lasted only moments as the Freedom Fighters – soldiers who had been in hiding and on the run for months – found courage and strength Schott could never have inspired in them. Finally, this was a battle they could win. Finally, they were accomplishing something. Finally, they were the ones pushing forward, merciless and deadly.
A group of Fighters from the third truck in the convoy rushed an enemy and took him down, and then all was suddenly quiet, as the Resistance looked around them and realized no one was left fighting back. Someone started to laugh and someone else let out a victory whoop.
Schott raised a hand to get their attention when a blaze of new gunfire spat at him from behind.
Nadiir screamed and Schott pulled him to the ground. The Resistance returned fire. Two of the Schutzstaffel officers had sneaked around them somehow and taken control of one of the trucks, firing at their backs. Schott glimpsed the polished brim of a cap, and then Sturmbannführer Lance's face. His blood ran cold.
This was the Nazi major who had left the Resistance general-less once before. Fresh angry burns marked his face, but otherwise he looked just as he had the last time Schott had seen him, shouting about the pure and the defilers as he and his men struggled to hold Schott's commander, the general whose title he now carried.
The Reich had not fully reckoned what it was they were attempting to do that day, or who it was they were fighting, and the dread grew on their faces as the man they fought transformed into his true form. No longer proudly wearing the skin of a man they hated, but the true skin of a being they feared.
But the Sturmbannführer never hesitated, the hate on his face growing instead. Schott, James, and Leo had almost reached his side when the General saw them and shouted "Run!"
A small explosion had knocked them backward.
Schott remembered every detail of those moments: of fighting to regain his feet, ears ringing from the shock grenade Lance had thrown. Lance looking with delight upon his downed foe. Leo firing wildly into the swarm of Nazi soldiers who flooded in and blocked the fallen General from their view. James pulling Leo back and shouting for Schott to follow.
And then the second grenade going off. Schott throwing his hands over his head to shield himself from the shrapnel, feeling the bits of metal cut into his skin.
James had had to pull him out of there that day.
And his General was gone.
Now, though. Now, standing in this field after hiding in the base for so long, the Sturmbaanführer was there in front of him.
Their gazes met across the gap for an instant, and Schott lifted his rifle and took aim.
Lance made a dive for the passenger door, screaming the nightmare mantra, "Hail victory!"
Inside the truck's cab, the other Schutzstaffel appeared at the window and opened fire, forcing Schott to drop behind cover again with a curse.
Before the Fighters could rally, the truck's tires spun in the dirt, grabbed traction in the long grass, and shot it forward across the field. Gunfire from the retreating vehicle pinned down any would-be pursuers.
The minute the firing stopped, Schott rolled over to face Nadiir. The newly promoted Fighter had been hit, and he clutched at his shoulder and moaned, face tight with pain.
"I need a medic!" Schott bellowed at the convoy, pressing his hands to the hole in Nadiir's shoulder, causing the other man to grimace. Schott knew bullet wounds almost as well as he knew the weapons that left them, and he kept the pressure of his hands as steady as he could, remembering the pool of blood in the destroyed facility, thinking about how both costly and cheap a currency it was in his life.
"Sir, I can't…" Nadiir started, grabbing Schott's arm.
"Shut up," Schott ordered. He looked from Nadiir's face down to the wound his own gloved fingers covered. "You are going to be fine, Ja–" He cut off abruptly, eyes widening slightly, lips still parted to finish speaking the name of his dead brother. He swallowed and shook his head once, as though he could dislodge the memories. "You will be fine," he repeated firmly, though his voice betrayed him when it trembled underneath the hardness.
Two medics – one too young to have much skill and the other a quick-fingered woman with streaks of gray in her hair – arrived and took his place, setting to work on Nadiir's injury.
"We have to track the Sturmbaanführer," Schott said, mostly to himself, looking at the convoy and his men spread out in disarray.
He stood to begin issuing orders and felt himself sway, flashes of light and color bursting at the edges of his vision.
"General, are you injured?" the older medic asked, her voice sounded like it was coming to him through water. She was saying something else, but he didn't hear.
I do not have time for this, he thought just before the world went black.
Schott had no idea how much time had passed when he opened his eyes again. The field, the convoy, the trucks, Nadiir, Lance – all of it was gone, replaced by a familiar ceiling and a familiar cot, and the not so familiar feeling that someone was in the room with him.
He turned his head to see a woman sitting in the chair at his desk, tapping out commands on a small computer. "Catherine," he said in surprise.
She was no longer wearing the colors of her disguise as the enemy, but instead was dressed in simple slacks and a pullover sweater in the muted colors of the Resistance. "Oh good," she deadpanned. "You're awake."
"What happened?" he asked, his voice thick from sleep. His head was heavy and every movement felt childish and slurred. He blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to get his bearings.
"What happened, Winslow," she said, getting up, "is that you collapsed while in the field and gave everyone a very unpleasant shock and caused a great deal of concern. But it turns out that you're fine, so you made everyone worry about you over nothing. And do you know why?" She looked exasperated. "Because, apparently, no one in this base has any memory of seeing you sleep, and never concerned themselves with reminding their strong and mighty leader that he is, in fact, human. How long was it, Winslow?" she asked, delicately placing her hands on her hips like a disapproving aunt.
He opened his mouth and she cleared her throat sharply. "No. Don't answer. As usual you tried to do everything with no regard for your personal wellbeing, and now here we are."
He decided to ignore her jabs for the moment. She was usually sarcastic to cover other emotions, and he would wait until he was awake enough to puzzle out which ones. "How long have I been asleep?"
"Two days."
Schott bolted up in the bed, swinging his legs over the side before having to plant his hands on the edge of the mattress to keep from succumbing to the wave of dizziness that washed over him. He swore at the weakness and cocked his head to the right, looking sideways up at Catherine sharply. "Two. Days. There is a war on, Catherine, and you let me sleep for two days?!" His anger at her was only slightly less than his anger at himself. How could he have laid in bed for hours while the world around him was tearing itself apart?
"The war has lasted almost a hundred years, it's not going anywhere in two days. And I'm afraid you didn't have much say in it," she said. There was a flash of sympathy from her. She sat down on the mattress beside him, reaching out as if to pat his hand like a small child, before she instead folded both her hands in her lap. "When I arrived and they told me what happened, I ordered that you be drugged."
Schott's mouth dropped open, aghast. "You drugged me." He turned away with a short huff of a laugh, shaking his head in disbelief.
"No one argued the point," Catherine informed him. He hummed at that, irritated. "Which means either they don't respect you at all… or they respect you enough to see sense when it concerns you."
"What about Lance?" he asked, facing her again and holding her gaze with his own. "Did he get away on the field?"
She nodded. "He escaped, yes. You lost three men in the field and more were injured. The Fighters were more concerned with bringing you and the other casualties back to safety." He was reminded that one of the reasons he respected her was her straightforwardness. Unlike Leo, she never hid anything behind her words, she was blunt to a fault, and if you didn't guess at the few things she did only hint at, it was the fault of your own thick-headedness.
Even so, he couldn't help the way his fingers tightened around the thin fabric of the mattress cot, or the angry strain in his neck and shoulders as he finally managed to stand. Lance was still free. Even if the Führer and his generals and his weapon never returned, Lance still held enough power, hatred, and knowledge to keep the Reich from falling apart before it had time to regroup. They had to knock out every pillar, every stronghold. The Reich had taken over the entire planet, it wasn't going to surrender in a day.
His jacket, gloves, and boots had been laid out beside the desk and he sat down in the chair to put them on, not willing to let Catherine see how much moving from the bed to the desk had winded him. Someone, he noticed as he pulled the first glove on over his scarred hands, had taken care to wash the dirt and Nadiir's blood from sturdy material before returning them. He froze before pulling on the second glove.
"Nadiir," he said. "Where is he?"
"The man who has enough jewelry on his face to make any queen or pirate green with envy is just fine, Winslow," she assured him dryly. "The bullet passed clean through, and you kept him from losing too much blood, bravo. I believe he's with his family recovering now."
Schott slipped into the other glove and tugged the straps tight. It felt like putting armor on.
"Winslow," Catherine started before she was interrupted be a knock at the door. The lines around her eyes tightened a fragment in annoyance.
"Who is it?" Schott called toward the door.
"General?" a young male voice spoke on the other side. "Can I come in?"
Schott sent a quick look at Catherine before he stood again and walked the short distance of the small room to throw open the door and reveal the person standing out in the dimly lit hall.
It was Ray Terrill.
A full two hours, three cups of black coffee for Schott, eight interruptions from various Fighters checking on their General's condition before he distractedly ordered them elsewhere, and one urgent call requiring Catherine's attention all passed before Ray's full telling of events came out. It was another hour into preparations, communications, debates – mostly being between Catherine and Schott – and decisions for it all to finally sink in.
The scientist known as Eobard was gone.
The inhuman General of the Reich, and wife of the Führer, was dead.
The weapon, the Doomsday Weapon that could, from Ray's information and Schott's knowledge, annihilate an entire planet, was destroyed.
The Führer himself, the devil who stalked Schott's nightmares and waking hours, and had threatened and destroyed all that Schott had known or loved… was also dead. He still couldn't reconcile in his mind the two images he knew to be true: Lyra's lifeless form in his enemy's arms, and the enemy himself lying dead with arrows in chest.
Schott lifted his face from his hands, uncertain how long he had been sitting again by his bed in the silence, or when everyone else had all gone about their own tasks. Too long. He needed to move. Inhaling deeply and banishing all traces of the emotions constricting his throat, Schott gathered himself and left the room.
The tower was in a flurry of activity, following his most recent commands: they were going after Lance. They were going to push back the Reich, strike and strike hard while they could, and not give one inch in return. If there ever was a time for them to win this war, it was now. The Reich had almost overrun the Resistance when the last general fell. Schott was more than prepared to return the favor now.
As he rounded a corner in the hall, a small boy ran in front of him, knocking into his legs and Schott stepped backward instinctively, letting the child blow past him.
"Sorry, sir!" the boy called without checking his pace. He carried an old piece of pipe, vaguely shaped like a gun, and pointed it at another boy who was chasing after him.
Schott watched after them for a minute, thinking about the conversations he and Lyra had about beginning a family, in some other world and some other time that was a little more kind. Someday, he thought, they might play with toys instead of weapons.
Continuing on, he got into the elevator that would carry him to the top of the tower, where the activity was at full force. Voices calling back and forth, communications coming in on every line. Catherine had already been at work gathering all their allies, spread in tiny hopeful clusters around the globe, all of them smaller and more fragile than the Freedom Fighters. They were getting into position, setting into motion plans for attacks they had never had the courage to pursue before.
Leo was right after all. The strangers from the other earth had done what he had been too consumed by anger to accomplish: they had rekindled the Resistance's hope. Even though the heroes from Earth One had not come back to his earth, and Leo had found some reason to delay his own return, their short presence had changed the course of the war.
"General!" the female communications lieutenant, Leigh, heralded him before his boot even touched the raised circle in the center of the room where he could see his battle plan laid out on the table on one side while commanding all stations in the circle. She looked more bedraggled than he had seen her last, and her eyes held an almost feverish light that Schott was certain he would recognize in a mirror. They all had a similar energy – urgent, desperate, but alive.
"The Fourth patrol that we rerouted after the facility was lost," she began, "they reported back to us their position. One of the camps between us and the Führer's House has been abandoned. The patrol was able to liberate the prisoners behind held there, and they sent word back to us from what the prisoner's said." She smiled a broad, dangerous smile. "We found him."
"The Sturmbannführer," he said quietly.
She nodded. "He's retreated with his men to the Führer's house." Less a house than a compound, the Führer's favorite stronghold served as base, prison, and laboratory, where Thawne had invented and constructed most of their weapons. The Resistance base was not far from it, preferring to operate under the enemy's nose just to irritate them if nothing else. "He seems to be trying to shield himself until he can figure out his next move."
Schott set his hands on his hips and dropped his head, closing his eyes. He had to be clearheaded here. He had to be careful. The loss of James, the anger at the strangers from Ray's earth, the unraveling of his old plans, the impossible revelation that the Führer was dead, the ghosts. For the moment, none of it mattered. Only this, only ever this: the war and the resistance.
When he looked up, the activity of the room was still pulsing, the voices still calling over to one another as troops were gathered and weapons armed. But it seemed a little quieter, it made a little more sense.
Catherine had come in, standing in front of the elevator, watching him with a quizzical arch in her brow. Waiting.
"It is time," Schott said. Time was never on his side, there was never enough, never at the right pace. Except now. Now, when it felt like the rhythm of the clock was keeping pace with every move he made. Four days since the Führer had seized the gateway, and thirty-three years since the world decided in its cruel irony to gift a small child to a Jewish woman and a German weapons-maker. The panic he had felt the last time he stood here was gone.
He didn't have to make a speech, they didn't expect it of him. He looked around at the Fighters, the Resistance, and nodded. "Time we put an end to all things. Direct all combatants to the house of the Führer."
The lieutenant nodded once and set off, and the pitch of the room's energy changed, like a river that had been slowly flooding to the top of a dam, and now a release had been pulled.
"It's the beginning of the end," Catherine said, somewhat poetically, from the side.
Schott nodded and stepped off the platform to join her and lead the way to their own preparations. "At last."
The journey to the Führer's house took several hours, but to Schott that no longer seemed to matter. They followed the same path the previous patrol had taken, cautiously crossing the area where the now-empty camp stood in silence. Schott made a mental note to return and see it burned to the ground.
Ray came with him, his secret weapon, his friend. Without Leo and James, and now without Nadiir as well, Schott felt stronger with the Earth One fighter by his side. It helped even that Ray's nervous energy caused flickers of his power to show in the dark cab of the truck. Catherine had stayed behind to lead the attack from the base. No one had even attempted to convince Schott to stay.
The compound, once a small city, now designated the Führer's House, was before them all at once, and the main force of the Resistance comprised of Schott's Freedom Fighters and a host of spies and soldiers Catherine had brought with her, drove straight in.
The first slew of gunfire that hit the convoy was later than anticipated, but as planned, the drivers gunned the engines and drove the vehicles as far into the old city as they could against the bullets.
Ray and Schott's vehicle made it all the way to a small garage, allowing them to jump out of it under cover. Two blackcoats appeared in the entrance and were quickly dispatched by the other Fighters with them.
Outside of the truck, the sound of the war rang even louder, shouting and explosions deafening their ears.
"Remember!" Schott shouted to his group as they stood by the truck, readying to run across the open area and deeper into the Führer's former lair. "You will stop for nothing, and no one, until we find the Sturmbannführer!" The fierceness of his voice was met by the same fierceness on all of their faces: hardened, ready, willing. "We kill him, and then we kill the next one, and the next one after that, until there is no one left!" He looked around at them all, their focus intent on him despite the chaos. "For our earth!"
"For freedom!" shouted Ray at his side, caught up in the fervor.
The men roared back: "Freedom!"
They burst from the cover of the garage, a group of men turned into a single weapon, a deadly combination of hope and wrath. Running across the open street, they aimed for the most formidable building in the city, built by the Reich after the city had been taken – Lance would be there, if he was anywhere at all.
Somehow, against the odds, they made it to the building. Four other groups of Fighters arrived with them while the others still fought for every inch gained. Schott could hear the hum of a Panzer somewhere in one of the near streets. He didn't know how long they would hold the advantage.
Together, the Resistance soldiers forced their way into the building, firing against the enemy that swarmed to meet them. Ray was a flash of light and movement, flying when he could, and blazing through the enemy, allowing the Fighters enough of an advantage to keep pressing on.
There was no Führer, no Führer's wife, and no devilish speedster to help the Nazi forces now. They were left with cold weapons, and an unorganized force attempting to rally behind an uncertain leader. The Fighters had Ray and, like Schott, they had a spirit they thought they had lost.
The flicker of a black coat down a corridor caught Schott's attention and he spun immediately, waving his men to follow. They chased the fleeing coat into a dark basement room. Schott was about to tell Ray to give them light when the electric lights flared on, blinding them. "Down!" Schott yelled, dropping as gunfire pelted at them.
Eyes adjusting to the light, Schott found the enemy across the room, firing a deadly barrage against the Fighters bottlenecked in the doorway. The man in the black coat was with them. Lance stood behind his own guard of troops, shouting viciously, spitting orders. Schott raised his rifle and aimed at the same time he realized Ray was tensing behind him and felt the surge of energy as the powered soldier took off.
"Ray!" Schott bellowed, firing a spurt of bullets into the enemy to distract them.
Ray bowled into the Sturmbannführer only an instant before both forces met in a clash too tight for guns to be of any use. The Reich major had the presence of mind to lift his rifle and swing it at the oncoming Ray, knocking the flyer backwards. Ray hit the wall and collapsed.
In a rage, Schott fought through the Nazi ranks to get to his friend. He'd had enough of ghosts. He felt the enemy line break as the Fighters rallied with him and heaved a last effort into them, and they broke away, revealing Ray and the Sturmbannführer at the back of the room.
Ray was on the ground, getting up, and Lance was standing over him, shouting indistinctly. Schott lifted his rifle to fire and felt the empty click that announced he had run out of ammunition. All of his nightmares streamed from the empty gun instead. Schott was already reaching for his handgun, but he knew he didn't have time. Lance would kill Ray.
Beside Schott, another Fighter loosed a string of bullets and Lance went down.
There was more gunfire in the hall they had come from and the Resistance turned their guns in that direction. Schott ran to Ray and found to his relief that the other was slowly regaining his feet and only seeming dazed. He was favoring one leg.
Tossing his useless rifle to the side, Schott grabbed Ray's arm and pulled him the rest of the way to his feet. Ray nodded at him, shaken. "Thanks," he said. He had expended a lot of energy in the assault and was breathing heavily.
Behind them, there was a low groan. Schott spun, his handgun out of its holster and trained on the threat.
Lance had risen to his knees, though it seemed that he could not rise any further.
The burns from Ray's attack days before had swollen into angry white and red scars. Lance's leg had been shot by the Fighters. He was shaking with the effort it took to just kneel, his lips parted in a sneer and his teeth clenched.
They stood like that in a tense moment of silence, the cacophony of the war still going on outside.
Schott gestured at the Fighters who had stayed in the room. "Go," he said. "I promise, this one is no longer a threat to anyone."
No one questioned him. The Fighters checked their weapons and the fallen Nazi soldiers before taking off. Schott watched them leave, standing between Ray and the immobile Lance, before settling his gaze back on the fallen enemy. Head up, shoulders back, gun raised, the weight of his dark eyes rested only on Lance.
Hatred still burned in the Sturmbannführer's eyes, and some time ago it might have met its match in Schott. But now all his own eyes returned was a cold and detached pity, even his righteous anger was a faint spark in the dull depths of the gaze of a man who had been born of war. He didn't have any more strength to hate.
He thought about the others, the heroes who had visited his earth so briefly before retreating back to the safety of their own. Alex, Barry, and the rest. He wondered what they would have done to this lowly enemy, weaponless and defenseless before him. Capture. Conviction. Sentencing.
"Ray," Schott spoke tightly, his attention never wavering from Lance. The black coat looked like he wanted nothing more than to wrap his hands around Schott's throat, but it seemed it was all he could to do just continue kneeling where he was, frozen by injury and by the threat of Schott's gun. "The Führer is dead, and we… We are waking up to a new world, where war and hate will find little foothold. Where we will be free." His words gathered momentum, stumbling over each other in a fervent, undignified way. "Free to live. Free to hope. Free to choose what battles we fight and what times we remain at peace."
Ray looked at him in confusion, an uncertain expression on his face as he listened to this unexpected speech. He could hardly stand without Schott's support, and the three of them must have been a sight: Ray struggling to hold himself up, Lance paralyzed, and Schott standing immoveable between them.
He blinked sweat out of his eyes, lowering the gun he had trained on Lance, just slightly, still talking to Ray. "Whether you choose this as your home or return to your earth, do me a favor?" His pulse pounded in his head. "Be a better man than me."
Schott had made his men a promise that Lance was no longer a threat to anyone, and it was a promise he intended to keep. He leveled his gun once more and pulled the trigger.
Lance's body crumpled and fell backward, his death an homage to the hundreds who had died by his hands.
Ray stood in stunned silence, eyes frozen on the dead officer who had imprisoned and nearly executed him only a short time before. Schott didn't know what Ray thought of him now, but this was a scar he was willing to carry. He would sleep better in the days to come.
He took a deep, uncertain breath, and replaced his gun into the holster strapped to his thigh. Giving Ray the ghost of a smile that was equal parts relief and exhaustion, he moved to Ray's side to give him support. "Let's get out of this place."
"Why did he come here?" Ray asked as they moved toward the door.
Grateful to think of something other than what he had done, and the slim possibility of them escaping the Führer's house alive, even with Lance dead, Schott scooped up one of the Nazi weapons and gave it to Ray to use as both a defense and a crutch. "Because when the Führer was here it was a stronghold. I guess Lance just never realized he was depending on the power of an alien to protect him." The bitter irony of Lance's hatred for any being he considered substandard and his dependence on the Führer's wife was not lost on Schott.
"No, no," Ray said, stopping. "I mean, why did he come here?" He gestured to the basement room. "It was a clever trick with the lights, but did he really think cornering himself down here was a good idea?"
Schott frowned and paused to look around the area. The basement was one large open room, but not nearly large enough for the building it supported. Why had Lance come down here? Unless he was depending on still somehow getting out.
Walking back across the room, Schott stepped over Lance's body and placed a hand on the wall the Sturmbannführer had retreated to. It hummed under his touch. "There's another way out," Schott said, feeling around. His fingers grasped a switch and a door revealed itself, opening into a hall lit by dim red lights. If Schott had his bearings straight, and their intel was correct, this second basement ran beneath Thawne's laboratory.
Ray hobbled in through the doorway before Schott could stop him, acting as brash and foolhardy as Leo. "Coming?" He was regaining energy quickly.
Schott followed, drawing his pistol again. It wouldn't last long against any more Nazi troops they happened to run into, but he trusted it more than the Reich's guns.
The hall was so dark at first he thought it was a straight line of walls leading away, until he realized there were openings all along the sides.
A shiver ran deep into his bones and Ray stopped dead in his tracks as he recognized the same thing.
Cells.
They continued forward slowly, Schott taking the lead to peer into one of the cells. The first one was empty, a tangle of machinery and IVs the only evidence of what horror must have gone on before.
The second cell had a single occupant, the door left strangely ajar. A quick examination soon proved why, as the prisoner, a human female, was already dead.
Before they could continue checking the cells, a sound came from down the hall.
A single gunshot.
Someone was executing the prisoners.
He and Ray took off toward the sound, not stopping at any of the other cells until the dark shadow of a Reich soldier was in front of them. Schott fired once and then Ray was on top of the enemy in all his fiery brightness, injuries forgotten.
When the soldier lay dead on the floor, Schott looked at the other poor soul in the cell, victim of far more nightmares than he could know. He bent and patted down the pockets of the executioner's black uniform until he retrieved a keycard. "We can open the doors and take with us as many as can walk on their own," he told Ray. "And if we make it out of here, we will come back for the others."
The echoes of Oliver's words, the promise from Earth One, to not only bring his men home, but come back and help them fight, reverberated underneath his own promise. The green archer and the others had yet to make good on those words. Schott would hold to his.
Going to the next cell, Schott swiped the passlock with the stolen key and it beeped and unlocked. A dark, gaunt figure was strapped to a bed that was more of a table, partially covered with a sheet like a forgotten piece of furniture that had once been a treasured possession.
The figure did not belong to this Earth, and not to Ray's world either.
A faint blip on a monitor wired to the patient was the only sign that the starved, shrunken captive still lived.
Schott couldn't breathe, he was frozen in the doorway of the cell. He thought he might collapse like he had on the field.
"J'onn."
He staggered into the cell, raising a hand to rip the tubes and wires away before he stopped himself. It looked like the machinery was all that was keeping his commander alive. The Martian was in his true form, not the skin he had chosen to wear as a stand against the hatred of the Reich for the people of the planet he had adopted as home. Like Lyra, J'onn had come as a refugee. Like Lyra, he had stayed as a soldier. Like Lyra, he had taken the hand of a young Jewish boy and guided him along. And, like Lyra, Schott had thought he would never see him again.
Ray was beside him, mouth opened in horror and joy. "He's alive."
J'onn's eyes flickered open and a thrill of hope filled Schott as the Martian's foggy gaze fell on him. He smiled a thin, weak smile. "Winn," he said in that bass voice that had seen Schott grow from boy to leader.
"Ray," Schott said, aware that his voice was more that of a broken child than a general issuing an order. "Go open the other cells. J'onn, do you think you can stand?"
J'onn grimaced, but nodded. "It was useful to them," he said, "to allow me to regenerate slowly." Schott's gut twisted at the thought of what the Reich must have done in this room.
Schott's communicator in his ear, which had been silent as the battle raged, suddenly burst with static. "General!" Leigh's voice called.
Schott didn't move, didn't want to tear his attention away from J'onn for fear he would disappear in smoke. "Here," he said.
"I don't believe it sir, but… they came."
"Who?"
"Leo. And Alex, the woman from Earth One, and their speedster, and a host of soldiers. And… others… They're all here. The Reich is in retreat."
Ray, hearing on his own line, gave a whoop of celebration before seeming to realize where he was and quieting. Still, he grinned despite the pain in his injured leg, as he took off down the hall to begin releasing the other prisoners.
Schott immediately gave Leigh instructions to send available field medics into the laboratory, processing what she had told him.
"What is it?" J'onn asked, brow wrinkling with confusion. He hadn't heard any of it, and whatever they had done to him must have dampened his telekinetic ability.
Schott grabbed J'onn's cold hand in his own gloved one, fisting them together defiantly. The Martian squeezed back weakly and Schott smiled, shaking his head with disbelief.
"I think we won."
