Chapter one
Black Jack followed Franziska through the basement corridors of her family's Herrenhaus,
"This building has been in my family for well over one hundred years, it's huge, you could get lost in a place like this." She paused in front of a heavy steal door, fumbling with a ring of large old keys, finding the one she was looking for Franziska unlocked the door and beckoned for Black Jack to enter.
Inside the temperature seemed well below zero, the room it's self was constructed around a complicated set up surrounding a large glass topped metal box, Black Jack glanced quizzically at Franziska before approaching it. Leaning over the heavy object he whipped away the ice fog, a hiss of surprise escaped his lips.
Behind him he could hear Franziska, "His name is Freiherr Manfred von Richthofen, he is my great great granduncle."
"I think I owe you an explanation Herr Black Jack." Franziska said later that day,
"In 1918 the newspapers published articles all around the western world stating that my great great granduncle had been killed, shot by allied troops.
What only a few people new was that he had not died, yes he was shot fatally, but that April, the temperature had dropped well below freezing, men died in the trenches frozen to death from the extreme cold.
I don't know how it happened, no one in my family does, but he somehow froze to the point at which his body shut down.
History states that the Australian troops gave him a heroes funereal, and the would have had it been warmer, instead they sent what the believed to be a dead body back to his family.
My great great great grandmother was frantic at the thought that she might have lost a child, she believed in cryogenics and that one day medicine would be advanced enough to return her son to her so she had him stored away, permanently frozen in this room. You are the first doctor down here since 1978 when my father invited a well known doctor by the name of Karline Deming to examine my great great granduncle. She was the one who concluded that he was still alive, only in a stasis near death.
My father is dead now, and I have little hope of maintaining this old building myself, it was my intention to let him die peacefully and finally be buried, until I heard of the miracles that you have preformed with your amazing skills. I know that the Japanese culture is steeped in honor, so is the Teutonic culture.
Please, is there anything you can do to revive him?"