Two Weeks Later...

The wake-up call was ten minutes early that morning, but Charles answered the operator cheerfully, already up and ready. He really should have made an effort to eat sociably in the mess hall, but Dr. Mason had recently given him the task of organizing and cataloging all of Ward A's patient profiles, and the work enticed him more than any office cameraderie. (That and, Mason was in the minority in terms of treating him like an adult. If one more nurse commented on what a bright boy he was, or worse, asked him which elementary school he attended, he'd force them all to act the age they guessed him to be and not feel a moment's regret). Thus the plan was to make some coffee and pour over the "E's" while making comparative notes to Mason's as-yet unpublished diagnostics manual on his typewriter. This was not, strictly speaking, part of his job, but when he'd presented A through D with annotated commentary, the doctor had ruffled his hair and exclaimed loudly that his work was more careful than some of his residency assistants'. Yes, Charles wanted to start on E very soon -

But then the phone rang again, and he was forced to pick it up mid paper-load.

"Yes?"

"Charles, this is Mason, please make your way down to Room 12A - that's in the basement. And bring all your things. We have an emerging situation that requires careful attention, and I think it'll be good for you to observe."

"Er…alright. Be down in a moment!"

When he emerged from his apartments, heavy Electromatic in hand, he was almost knocked to the ground by a rushing trio of maintenance staff. He followed them as they headed for the stairs, and noted with rising apprehension that, though the siren seemed to have been disabled, the red hazard lights were blinking throughout every hallway. When he arrived in the basement, he was grateful that he was not a cowardly child, because this slow strobe was the only illumination for several twists and turns, until at last the doors began sporting "A" suffixes, and he could see Mason and a few colleagues settling down in a gloomy conference room.

He joined them silently, glad for the fly-on-the-wall status, and finished loading his paper as Mason addressed what appeared to be two robust orderlies, a nurse, and a partnering doctor of Semitic descent. One of the orderlies was holding a wet washcloth to a substantial gash over his right eye. iQuite the entourage…/i

"Good morning, everyone. I was informed an hour ago by nurse Schriebman (he pointed to the sole female in the room, a small, frightened-looking woman with delicate features and incredible posture), that we have apprehended a pair of intruders. Margot, why don't you tell us what happened, from the beginning."

The nurse stepped forward slightly and squared her shoulders before addressing the room in broken but understandable English. "I was in pharmacy annex. Making records. Taking inventory for day. It was strange from beginning because lights were off. Lights always on, for safety, and lights off. Then I filling the bin and I hear noise over vent fan. Some sort of moaning, high sound, very strange. I go to it, and it come from storage closet. I was very afraid, so I take old desk lamp off shelf and open the door…I only had moment to see girl crouched there. Young, very thin, with a colored scarf around her head like a gypsy - she was the maker of the noise. She was crying. She stopped and squinted at the light when I opened the door, froze at sight of me…and then the man, the one who hurt Jairan, he push me hard into closet so that I fall against other side, and yanked girl out as I fall in. H-he try to lock the door on me, to get away, I think, and keep me from following, but I had screamed when he pushed me, and Jairan and Yossi come to help -"

The orderly with the gash nodded and took over. "Thank God we were on stock duty. We barely heard her, these walls are so thick, but there is only one door to the pharmacy and no exits in that hallway - we surprised them just as they were leaving. I tell you, me and Yos expected the fight ihe /igave us; he's a skinny scarecrow but has training, Mossad training, I'd bet my life on it. We both were so focused on him we didn't even see her coming with her nails until she got me - shrieking and cursing us in Yiddish and God knows what else like a wild animal- "don't touch him don't touch him" and "Max, Max, Max," over and over again…"

Charles shivered as Jairan trailed off. His psychic energy read nothing but deep unsettlement, with a mixture of sympathy, anger, and guilt…but guilt for what? He was about to go deeper, but then Mason spoke again, and broke his concentration.

"And where are the pair now?"

"Well, the girl was absolutely wild, we had to restrain her. She's in B Ward…I'm sorry but we just didn't think she'd hold up to an interview. She wasn't making any sense…I gave her some morphine. As for the man…well, boy really...he's in 12, like you said. I sedated him as well, but he's conscious…he's handcuffed too, but trust me. That's a good thing. I don't know if he'll talk to you… he stonewalled us, and he's got the numbers tattoo."

Mason frowned. "And what does he speak? Has he spoken at all?"

Jairan nodded. "Yeah…I think it was German. I don't speak German, Doc. I'm pretty sure no one on call today does. I could maybe get one of the patients…? Or see if IDF can lend one of their interpreters."

The doctor shook his head gruffly. "No no, last thing we need are some defense force hawks brow beating our every move, at least not until we figure out who he is and what he came here for. And it should be someone on the payroll…damn, I'm not fluent. Never was, and we need fluency for this sort of -"

"I am." Charles blurted, then turned a little pink. Well, I am! Just not in the actual words.

Everyone was staring at him now, as if they'd just noticed he was there. He wished for a moment that he could hide behind his typewriter, but seeing as that was impossible, he folded his hands and waited for the inquiry.

"First Yiddish, now German…Charles you're either more brilliant than I at first inferred, or you're an excellent bluff. Let me just say that this would not be the time to show off, or be untruthful-"

Charles, who had been carding through the language centers of everyone in the room and compiling what amounted to a lexicon of intermediate-level, very badly accented German, blinked calmly and tried to imagine how Marlene Dietrich would sound if she were indignant. Then he replied.

"I am aware, Doctor. I am also up to the task."

Margot smiled and looked about ready to clap her hands in surprised glee. Yossi thought privately (except not so privately, thanks to his rather loud frequency), that Charles was a little weird, and probably queer, but at least he was intelligent. Mason however, was a warm, glowing combination of impressed, delighted, and relieved.

/A miracle, this boy. We might yet escape a press circus./

Charles very consciously did not beam. "So do I have the job? I'm not afraid." He said this in the tongue in question as well, easily side-stepping words none of them knew and keeping it short and confident in the diction.

Mason was already standing. "Absolutely. Give the typewriter to Margot, and make sure to set a slow, even pace in the translation. I'm sure you know that embellishment is forbidden-"

"Of course."

"And I'll have Jairan get a tape recorder, just in case the stenography misses an exchange."

Charles followed the doctor down the hall, heart pounding with exhilaration and a little fear. He had no idea what to expect really…but it was as if the mind behind the door to 12A exerted some invisible force upon him, and he had the strong impression that to ignore this force would be utter madness.

Charles was not used to strong feelings. Up until recently, he hadn't allowed himself to feel much of anything. No; Charles was much better at falling into the feelings of others.

He walked through the door.

xxx xxx xxx

One exit. Locked. No windows. Basement. Stone - not metal. There is not enough metal, never enough. Never enough to help me. It's on my wrists and it is not enough. I am tired - I shouldn't be tired. They shot me with something. They shot her with something -

Stupid girl. Should have stayed quiet, should have trusted me-

Where is she? Where is Magda-my Magda-Roma-liebe-Magda- Magda. Please please let her be ok.

She will never be ok, will she?

Auschwitz. Poland. Even Israel, this 'modern promised land.' It is all a mass grave.

No - I can't think this way. Can't fail her. She may never be okay, but she isn't dead.

Neither is that orderly. It's probably good. But when he put his hands on her -

He should not be breathing.

The mirror is double-sided. Any idiot could tell. I don't know why they bother.

There are one-two-three…four wristwatches ticking on the other side, next to one another, one half a foot lower to the ground than the other three. There is also a silver pen, and more concentrated iron content higher up on one of the males.

So the orderly is bleeding. He has brought his friend. That nurse stuck around, and they've called for a wealthy man.

I just need to get out. I'm sure I could run faster. I could finish the job she started on his eye if I had to. But every time I move, my head spins, and my legs feel weaker than foil -

The door is opening, and there's not a damned thing I can do.

White coat. Moustache. Leather shoes - doctor. He's slight and has a sharp, patrician face. He looks a little like -

Never mind.

I don't like doctors.

I expect Pen, or maybe Nurse, but neither comes with him. Instead...

I laugh. I put all my hate into this laugh, because a boy who looks like a girl is standing in front of me. 4 feet tall if he's an inch in ankle socks someone must have picked out for him and a fucking sweater vest - in July. He's staring right at me, unblinking with lamp-like eyes, and this...

My handcuffs shake.

Stop fucking staring at me.

"I'm sorry." the boy says...and he says it in perfect German. Christ...I think he's blushing.

Are they going to shoot him in the head if I don't talk?

I prepare myself for this eventuality, and become unreadable.

"I'm Charles. This is Doctor Mason. We aren't here to hurt you."

This is clever of them. It really is. I had meant to stay silent, study the angles, and wait for my opportunity to escape. The most important rule about being a prisoner is you have to know in your heart that they will never let you out. If you know that, your captor has no leverage, and you've become desperate.

I knew a girl once who hid in a pile of corpses for two days, because I told her it was necessary.

Desperate people get things done.

"You couldn't hurt me if you tried, child." I say this, and break my own rules, because I can't help it. His presence is insulting. It makes no sense. He's in a fucking lab basement dressed like my grandfather, speaking a language he has no cause to have learned - accented, only slightly, but accented. My turnkey is a British schoolboy.

He translates what I've said into English (I know the sounds, but only a few words), and the doctor frowns, thin eyebrows nearly touching as he studies me at some length. He makes a long gruff speech that the boy - Charles, listens carefully to, and then he's speaking German again.

"My colleague wants to remind you that the only ones who have perpetrated any injuring this morning are you and your accomplice. He says that this is a sanatorium sponsored by the Israeli government, and that breaking and entering is a very serious crime, especially since it appears you were after narcotics -"

"I wasn't trying to get high." I say through gritted teeth.

Charles translates, and Mason barks something back, but I can tell the boy barely hears. He's studying me in that way again, as if he can see through me. I don't like it. I want to fold my arms across my chest, kick him in the solar plexus, and then throw - not him, no...the doctor, through that farce of a window. Eventually, he replies.

"Look I know you're angry and have absolutely no respect for me, and I don't really...I mean I don't mind, obviously this conversation is at the bottom of your priority list. But here's the deal. You got caught, doing whatever you were doing. And your friend, the girl...she's in custody. She's very disturbed -"

"Don't you dare. Don't you even think you can - You have no idea what she's been through."

"You're right, I don't."

The doctor taps Charles on the shoulder, but the boy puts his hand up and never looks away from me...a request, (or a demand?) for no interruptions. To my surprise, the older, white-coated, stern looking man relents. Well, there is a certain authority about the kid. For one thing, he's the only egg head they could drum up, in a country full of Ashkenazi Jews, who can speak my language.

"Max, I don't know, all right? I'm not claiming to. I'm trying to explain the situation. She's in custody somewhere, and all we have at this point to speak to her character is an orderly with a head wound. And you. We haven't called the authorities. You're not alone in your mistrust of the authorities, it would seem. That means that what happens to you depends entirely on what is said to me and Mason, right here in this room. Do you understand? She needs you, Max. She needs you to explain, so that we don't have to go by appearances."

Verdamnt. No. No no no. Stop talking.

I just want Magda. I want to pull her out of the corpses - the living corpses now, of this place, this place for crazy people who have no families. I am Magda's family, and I am nothing, no one. I am only Max, but I will never leave her. I walked the ten miles in the tracks of Soviet tanks to the town with the name neither of us could pronounce, with her. On my back, or in my arms, or walking on swollen ankles beside me. I found the only rabbi. I followed the sabbath candlelight to a basement of other cobbled together survivors, all holding hands. Strangers, made brothers and sisters forever by the six points of a patchwork star. I prayed for her sake, hollow words under a piece of ruined white lace given by a widow who had lost everything. I broke the bowl under my feet, even though there were holes in my boots. I made the rabbi make me husband, and Magda wife.

I made the child that is dead now, and killing her.

I did it all.

A small white hand breaks up the wood on the table. Its fingers are indistinct and blurry, but I can see that it's holding a handkerchief. Sky blue with a monogram, CX, except the right side of the X looks larger because of the drip. Drip. Drip.

I take Charles's handkerchief awkwardly with both manacled hands, and wipe my eyes. I used to resist tears. The logical assumption is that tears are a visible sign of weakness, and give your enemy satisfaction.

It only took me a few months to learn that nothing made a difference. Hell, it's better to cry. Silently, and grit your teeth until it's over, because crying is better than screaming – or begging. I am not ashamed of my tears.

I don't want to think anymore though. I hate this room. I hate that I can't focus.

"Please, Max." The boy is talking again. "Just answer Doctor Mason's questions. We're taping this, and when we're done, we'll give you a copy."

I wonder what power exactly backs that promise. He looks a little wild, like he's making it up as he goes along. But sincere too. Whatever the doctor's game, this child seems genuinely moved. How touching.

"Really, there's no harm in that, they'll let that happen, Max, I swear. That way, if you want, you can...well, aren't your people going about the business of remembering? Remembering is important...all too easily, people forget as a defense. Even now, people are denying that it ever even happened. I didn't learn about it in school, and yes, school's rather fresh in my memory. People forget because it's just too horrible...but what happened to you...to the girl, is indefensible. Don't let them get away with it, Max. Don't let them take Magda away."

My head snaps up in alarm. He's babbling quickly to Mason again, who is nodding. I don't care. Something else has sent the hairs at the back of my neck on end.

"I never told you her name."

He goes pale then, but the doctor cuts off any reply he planned on making. They have a short exchange, and then Charles begins asking his questions. I am going to answer them. Because tactically, he's right. This is my best chance of leaving this room. If anything, it will buy me time until I can think of...something. Anything.

"What is your full name?"

"Max Eisenhardt."

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"Where are you from?"

"Dusseldorf, Germany. So is Magda. We live in Poland now."

I am glad for the time it takes to interpret my answers. It gives me breathing space and an opportunity to watch his body language. To keep tabs on the people outside. There are more now. Europeans really need to stop using metal eyelets in their shoes.

"Why Poland?" he asks, and I'm back to thinking he's the stupidest child that has ever profaned the planet.

"Because they didn't give us bus fare when they liberated Auschwitz. And Magda is Roma, and Krakow has a good sized Roma slum."

Charles winces. Good. The Herr Doktor is barking in his ear again, but he never takes his eyes off me.

"How long...were you a prisoner there? What happened to you?"

Bile rises in my throat. I resist the urge to spit it at them. Instead, I swallow it down, and grin in that way that Magda says makes her afraid sometimes. "I was a Sonderkommando for two years. Do you know what that is, little boy?"

"No. But Mason has just told me that... that you were responsible for running the furnaces."

"Oh no, not running. Jews don't run things, child. For cleaning. For separating the pyramids of bodies, and shoveling them into the fire, like coal. You get good at it after a while. Efficient. Tell me, boy, what do you think burns faster? A mother holding her child, or an elderly man on the same pallet as a woman?"

I want to repulse them. I want to make them sick. It's only fair to spread the sickness. Mason goes a little green when it's translated. Charles just shakes his head, and slides his hand across the table. His fingers graze the top of my wrist - and then he draws back, as if singed or embarrassed.

"I imagine nothing burned quick enough. I imagine you remember every face."

"You..." The metal is rattling. Breaking. "You shut the fuck -"

"Mason says they killed Sonderkommando every two or three months on average, to keep the secret of what was going on. He wants to know why you were spared for so long."

It's not like I wasn't expecting this. Clearly this do-gooder Englishman has done some research. But it doesn't make it any easier.

"I was...of some interest. At the Birkenau facility."

More babbling. For the first time, Mason looks shocked. I get a once over as he tries to assess the physical damage, but apart from the fact that I'm a little bony, all of my scars are covered. Black trousers. White linen shirt. Suspenders. Heavy boots. I had a cap but lost it.

When I was younger, I wore a purple vest, even. Can't imagine what I was thinking.

I wish I had it now, for the extra assurance. These civilians don't get to see my scars.

"And what did the surgeons..." Charles falters, and pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment; a curious gesture for someone so young. "What did they want with you?"

Obviously I can't tell them about my perversion. That's what I've come to think of it as. Not a gift, like my uncle Erich used to half-think, or something that makes me powerful. If I had power, I wouldn't be here.

If what I can do were good, Reichmark coins, barbed wire, guns, saws, tank engines - death, would not come alive in my hands, and my mother would not be dead.

I am metal. I am a monster. And so I choose to be no one.

Nothing.

I am Max.

"They thought I had ESP," I lie easily. "The German army didn't want to do the hard work of finding the allies on their own, and I had a knack for swindling the bloc kommandos. Cards, dice, that sort of thing. They would play me for the fillings in my teeth, because if they extracted them themselves, they could keep the gold, instead of handing it over to the higher SS. Klaus Schmidt found them out, and I was his special project after that."

It's all true. Only cards was how I got my bread, not my wounds. And Schmidt...Schmidt had me from the beginning.

Charles swallows hard after translating, and looks like he could use some water. Mason murmurs something and appears deep in thought. I know that he's really the one interrogating me, but for some reason all I can center on is the boy...why is he here, within range of all this horror? Why didn't someone brush his hair this morning?

"Klaus Schmidt...Mason wants to know if that is, as he puts it, the Schmidt. The Butcher of Birkenau's colleague?"

"Why? Does he know him? Tell him I'm sorry I don't have a forwarding address."

They have no idea how sorry.

To my surprise, Charles chuckles. It's a mirthless sound, and again the gesture of a much older person.

"Yeah I don't think I will, if it's all the same to you. He also asked me to ask you to elaborate on the experiments, as you're the first survivor of this sort he's encountered-"

"A little coin is nothing to a large iron gate."

"Alles est gute. Alles est gute."

"Now this is 1,000 volts, Max. Let me see you move the tram. And don't worry, this will probably cause some memory loss. So though I can't promise it will be painless, you probably won't remember it."

"...Is this an order, Sir?"

"Am I your superior, and are you my lieutenant?"

"Well yes but...even with vermin, maybe especially with vermin, it's a sin. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to -"

"You know what's a sin, Horst? The cabaret dancer you go on leave to see every Christmas. What's his name? Karl? I'm sure Karl would love to come join you here on a more permanent basis."

"...Okay. Okay, I'll do it, but...but I'm going to knock him out. I heard what happened to the others."

"No, you will not knock him out, you will do it right here, while he's strapped to the table, and he will be awake to make the ceiling tiles move. That's the whole point, you know. Anger, and pain. And you can't feel pain, if you can't feel anything."

"No."

I can't stop shaking my head.

I can't stop shaking.

Charles bites his lip, and says it in English, and Mason, for once, says nothing at all. For enough time. For enough time, there's nothing. Then...

"Who is she?"

Even now, thinking about her soothes me. I wonder if this is what they mean, when they say women bring out the best in men. Then again, "They" and "I" don't have anything in common.

"She's my wife. She was in the gypsy camp. I knew her a little before that, but...you learn who people are, in a place like that. Learn who you are. I didn't need to know anymore afterwards. Only that she survived, and she needed me - still needs me." My voice begins to waver, and I hate it. But I go on, because they have to, have to listen. For her sake, not mine. "She's not crazy. The orderly grabbed me - the last time she saw that happen, she had to watch the SS beat me half to death -"

Mason snorts skeptically and babbles his trite little language, and I want to murder him. Charles, to his credit, looks bemused as he translates.

"My colleague would like to remind you that you're not in Auschwitz now, and that if she really is sane, she should understand the difference."

I can hear my back teeth grinding together. And then all I can feel is my heart pounding, and the bolts in the handcuffs making their way out of the casings. Rage. And pain. My old friends.

Come on now, old friends. Do your work on my nervous system. Sober me up.

Make me deadly again.

"You can tell the doctor," I say very calmly, "that if he were a real doctor, then he would know that's not how it worked. Tell him that Magda never got shot, or beaten, or even raped - my bribes were too good for that. But there is no safety in Auschwitz. No haven. She worked in the Birkenau infirmary. That means day after day, she was given Schmidt's used-up experiments. Ask the doctor if he's ever had to try to re-attach the eyeball of a four year old child as that child went into shock. Ask him if he was ever forced to share a 2 by 4 foot cell with consumption patients for 24 hours, to see if 'the gypsy constitution, much like the rat, could withstand infection.'"

I'm talking too much. More than I have in ages - about any of this. But it is necessary.

The third screw has just fallen silently onto my pants leg.

"Ask him to imagine slowly starving to death on top of it all, and then, just as you were thinking you'd go to sleep on the electrified fence, you see the boy who courted you in school on the other side of it, throwing bodies like sacks of grain onto a cart and still, istill/i. He is unable to see anything but you."

Charles...for a second of utter shock, the metal stops moving. Because the boy is weeping. And yet...not like a child would weep. These are stalwart, straight-backed tears. Eye-contact tears. If I wasn't suspicious of everything, I would say these were tears of true sorrow. "I'm not going to tell him." He says, and ignores Mason's prompting. "I'm not going to repeat what I have no right to."

My heart drops like a stone. It's time to finish this. I want to go back to a more predictable misery. But I need more time. And so they need the end of the story.

"You should be careful, Charles." I lean forward, into his space, liking the way his Adam's apple juts up and down with discomfort. "You'll lose your little job if you keep ignoring your superiors. Go on, tell him. Then tell him that she never really recovered. I don't know why. Sometimes I wish the Nazis had figured genes out...what makes one person wither, and another person heal? She can't eat. She can't sleep. Almost 4 years it's been, and she's like a little mouse. Even her happiness is fragile. So when she got pregnant I thought 'Finally. Finally it will change.' Because Magda...she is meant to be a mother. There is only one thing stronger than her fear, and that is her capacity to love."

Babbling. Babbling. Babbling. No more handcuffs. I am still, like rock. The boy rests his head in his hand.

"She is pregnant?"

"No." Inch the chair forward. Slowly. Count the eyelets and the watches and the locks on the doors. Less. The Aryan language, it seems, holds no charm for those who don't understand it. Their boredom will be my ticket out of here. "It died. That's what happens when your body still thinks you live in the camps. It breeds death, and that's that. She was devastated. It was violent, and very painful. I took her to Israel, to see if sun and faith would help her. But she is haunted by the baby's ghost. That's what she tells me. It follows her. I was in the pharmacy because I wanted to find tranquilizers. She came along because she won't leave me. S-she...she just needs sleep. She needs to eat something. She'll be better when she can think again."

More English. I test my legs on the floor. They'll hold me now. I know they will. And I'll have the element of surprise. The doctor is an imbecile. And the boy is too soft to see danger. He's been touched by my story, so unlike his grimmest of faerie tales, and I think he's a little overwhelmed. They suspect nothing.

"You're wrong," Charles says forcefully, and it makes me jump a little.

"What?"

"...Mason says you're wrong. He says Magda is exhibiting all the signs of post-traumatic hysteria, and that only long-term therapy is going to help her. She probably also needs vitamins, if her intake is as little as you say. A miscarriage is very hard on the body, and if she continues as she is, it's only going to get worse."

"Oh?"

It's all I can think to say. It's all I can manage.

"Yes," Charles pleads. He's translating in tandem now; listening and speaking at the same time. His mind must be very quick, to manage that. "Look, he's not going to press charges. You can go. But she should stay here. This is a good place! And you'll get to visit her and the doctors will help her, and if you don't have any money the Knesset's given a grant, half the committed patients are survivors...she could get better here."

I smile. I reach out, and tuck his most offending cowlick behind his ear. (To his credit, he doesn't flinch, although I can tell by the tension in his shoulders that he wanted to). I leave my hand on his head. His hair is soft.

"She probably could, child." I say.

And then I kick over the table, and let the handcuffs fall apart, and put him in a headlock no SS officer has managed to break. This happens in the time it takes for Mason to blink twice and stand up - but that is all he gets to do, before the leg not holding Charles against me comes up and kicks him square in the chest.

I hear his head hit the wall, and he doesn't move again. I'm not sure he'll breathe again.

The alarm is still disabled. I had the foresight for that, at least. Now it's just a matter of catching all those panicking watch springs, ticking for tear life outside the door.

"But she won't. She's had enough of walls, and bars, and Mason's kind." He whimpers, but doesn't resist when I sling him over my shoulder. "And she belongs with me. Now, if you know what's good for you, you're going to help me find her. You're going to get us out, do you hear?"

I can feel his pulse against my shoulder blade, humming-bird quick and stuttered. It's pure fear-which is why I don't anticipate the bite, hard and blood-drawing at the small of my back. It puts me off balance as I shove a fist through the mirror in an attempt to arm myself with glass and hostage before taking on the fools outside.

I put him down, but keep hold of his collar. I could kill him for it, but he looks like he could do the same, and this intrigues me.

"I do hear you, yes." He answers, words dripping acid. My instinct says this hatred is not for me. It's some other thing in him, locked up 24/7 behind Bambi eyes and the illusion of a childhood. Hm. "I'll even help you willingly, since you'll just make a mess of it and bulldoze through innocent people on your own. But if you touch me in anger again, I'll find a way to end you. I'll claw through your carotid artery with my bare hands and watch you bleed, and leave Magda wherever they have her. Do you hear, Max? Do you understand?"

I do. Mein Gott...I do.

I let go. He stays put. We are allies.