Chapter Nine: The Traitor, the Murderer, and the Challenger

Disclaimer: Hellboy characters do not belong to me. However, Erica is mine. Also, Yohann Vasser and Hayner belong to me.

Author's Notes: Thanks so much for the reviews DarkCloudRider, Psycho Llama, Nightcaster, Blu Embyr, and Thrior! Guess what? My birthday was on Saturday, May 21, so I'm 16 now! I'm really sorry about this being so late, I had to start from scratch for this chapter, as I only had a few ideas for it. Plus, the start of exams hasn't exactly helped out either. But to make up for taking so long, I made this chapter nice and long. In fact, it was so long, I had to spilt it into two chapters, this one and chapter ten! And just so you know, I am still open to ideas and suggestions. Okay…this chapter begins after a year has passed. And by the way, I figured that after a year she would probably start picking up some German, so I included some in this chapter and chapter ten. "Nein" is German for no, "Ja" is yes, and everything else is self explanatory. Everyone review, pretty pwease!

Blue Embyr: Thanks, it was really difficult to get all her visions to blend into one!

Nightcaster: If the unexpected is expected, is it still the unexpected? Seriously, I tried to surprise people by having Kroenen decide to show Erica his face. By the way, more relationship development in this chapter!

Psycho Llama: Mwhahahaha! You won't find out for a while what the hourglass means, but it does show up again in this chapter.

Gestalt: Another person that I'm killing with suspense! Just don't die, and I am terribly sorry about leaving everyone with a cliffhanger for almost a month.

Caitlin: I should become an author? Thanks!

DarkCloudRider: I wouldn't say he's cute without his mask on, more like…interesting. And the shadow man makes another, if brief, appearance in this chapter.

Hearing a woman's piercing scream reminded Erica of the night she had first seen Kroenen's face. That night was imprinted on her memory, she could still remember how horrified she had been when she had first been faced with Kroenen's lidless, eternally staring blue eyes. That was just over a year ago, she was 17 now, as she had nearly been sixteen then. Eventually she had seen his entire ruined face, his lidless blue eyes, his scarred skin, and his lipless mouth. She had felt so sorry for him, and had still felt that way when she found out how it had happened. Now she was almost used to seeing his face, although he wore his mask nearly all the time and avoided showing his face unless it was absolutely necessary. But those memories could wait. Erica turned her attention back to more pressing matters— the traitor sitting beside her.

She was at a dinner party, seated in the place of honor at the host's right hand. Wisely, she had only pretended to eat the food set in front of her. And she was very glad that she hadn't eaten anything, now that the woman who had been screaming in pain had slumped to the floor. Erica knew the woman was dead, poisoned. Erica had seen enough death in the past year to be able to tell at a glance if a person was alive or dead, and if dead, what they had died from. The other guests at the table, mostly Nazi officials and their wives, merely glanced at the dead woman and returned to eating, apparently unconcerned. This sort of thing happened so often that the majority of the guests were used to it. Beside her, the man— the traitor— sitting at the head of the table smiled amiably and casually drank from his crystal wine glass.

"You haven't eaten very much," he observed, still smiling.

"Yohann Vasser," she said, "considering what just happened, I would think that to be a very wise decision on my part."

"You don't trust me?" he said, mockingly feigning that her words had hurt him.

"How many people do you know of that I trust?"

"Only three," he said, "Karl Kroenen, Ilsa Haupstien, and Grigory Rasputin."

"Well, there you have your answer." she said.

Traitor, she thought, looking at Vasser. She had only recently discovered his treachery, between her visions and information gathered by Kroenen's network of spies. So it came down to this: Erica, Kroenen, Ilsa, and Grigory were the only ones that knew Vasser was a traitor. What Vasser didn't know was that they knew. His crime was that he had been selling classified information about the Nazis and the Occult to foreign countries. And on top of that, Kroenen had discovered that Vasser was responsible for the most recent batch of assassins that had tried to murder Erica. Obviously, the assassins had failed —and died— miserably, mostly due to her combat training and the fact that she had not been in a good mood when they had shown up. Kroenen had wanted to kill Vasser the moment he found out that Vasser was responsible for sending the assassins, but after Erica and Ilsa had calmed him down they had decided that tonight was the night they would do something about it. That's why Erica had come to the dinner party, to bring Vasser's treachery out into the open— and then to punish him for it.

"There you have your answer?" Vasser said, repeating what she had said. Then he laughed, "Clever girl."

"You have no idea," she said.

Vasser smiled cheerfully and raised his wineglass to her. Her eyes fell on the wineglass in his hand, reminding her of her own incident with a wineglass. She looked down at her right hand, she still had the scars from the broken glass shards on her palm. The scars crisscrossed her palm in a network of pale, thin white lines. A year ago, whenever she went to shake someone's hand, they would stare at the scars on her hand and ask her how she got them. Now, few people dared to question her, and most simply took in her scars as part of her appearance.

That was another thing about her that had changed. She was still tall, her hair still long and brown, and her eyes were still storm grey, though people sometimes whispered that there was no reflection in the bottomless pits of her eyes. That was all the same, but there were several things about her that were different. She was more slender and lithe than she had been a year ago, due to the intense combat training that she had received from Kroenen. She was also a lot stronger, she had to be, considering that normally her opponents were male.

Another thing that had changed was her clothes, but they had only changed as a result of another change that taken place. And that change was that, at Ilsa and Kroenen's urging, Erica had joined the Nazis. She had done this so that she could help Ilsa and Kroenen keep an eye on both sides working on the Ragnarok Project: the Thule Occult Society and the Nazis. Because Erica had joined the Nazis, most of the time she wore a uniform similar to Ilsa's and Kroenen's. This consisted of black pants, black knee high boots, and a black leather jacket over a shirt. Over this she wore either a long black cape or trench coat, whichever she thought fitted the occasion. Tonight she wore her uniform along with her long black cape and a sword buckled at her side. She never went anywhere without at least one weapon of some sort, that way she was always prepared for whatever situation arose. Usually she carried a knife or sword, as they were her favorite weapons, but most of the time Kroenen insisted that she take a small handgun with her, as not all of her opponents were interested in hand to hand combat. She also had her hair tied back in a black silk ribbon that Kroenen had given to her.

It was due to her choice of clothes she stood out sharply among the other dinner guests who were dressed up for the occasion, the women in long formal dresses, the men in coat and tails. She also stood out for another reason: she was the only one present at the dinner party that wasn't Arian. No one had pointed this out. Even though she was only 17, her fearsome reputation had grown like wildfire until she was nearly as infamous as Kroenen. And, as being one of the top members of the Thule Society, she also had a lot of power. That was why she was seated in the place of honor at Vasser's right hand, she was the most powerful and highest ranking person present at the dinner party.

Erica looked down towards the end of the long table, and recognized a young man named Hayner. Erica knew Hayner didn't like her very much, in fact, from the day the two of them had first met, she had known there was going to be trouble. It had turned out that Hayner was a close friend of Ahren Gilbert's family, and that Hayner had heard that Erica was the reason that Leonard had been poisoned and that Ahren and his wife had met an indescribably horrific fate at Kroenen's hands. She knew Hayner wanted revenge, just as Kroenen had wanted revenge on Ahren and his wife, she just wasn't concerned about anything Hayner was likely to try to do to her. And she was expecting Hayner to cause trouble tonight when she 'punished' Vasser for his treachery, because she knew that Hayner was one of Vasser's friends.

"I see your 'friend' Hayner has recognized you." Vasser said, watching Hayner casting dark glances down the table in Erica's direction.

"When doesn't he?" she said, "It's not as if he's likely to forget me very quickly, although a knife in the back would certainly help him along the way."

"I hope you're joking," warned Vasser, "Hayner's family has a very high social ranking, you'd be a fool to make enemies of them."

"A fool? Perhaps it is you who is the fool." she said, and smiled darkly, something that nowadays had the tendency to unnerve people.

Vasser's smile faded and he averted his eyes from hers. She has very odd eyes, he thought.

CRASH!

Everyone jumped, startled. One of the servants who were helping to serve dinner had overturned a cart he had been using to clear away the dirty dishes. The servant turned pale and muttered some hasty apologies, but Vasser wasn't listening. He yelled something in German at the servant, reprimanding him for his clumsiness.

And while Vasser was berating the servant, and everyone else at the table was watching the very humiliated servant, Erica stealthily reached over and picked up the spoon from Vasser's place setting. She slid the spoon up her sleeve to hide it and then, with a handkerchief over her hand, she took an identical spoon out of a pocket of her jacket and placed it beside Vasser's plate. This spoon was identical except for one thing— smeared invisibly across its surface was a traitor's payback— poison. It was a very special poison, one of many that Kroenen and Ilsa kept on hand. The poison was very strong, it took very little of it to kill a person, and it could be ingested or absorbed by a person's skin. And it was because the poison could be absorbed by the skin that she had been careful not to touch the spoon.

Once he was satisfied that the servant had learned his lesson, Vasser turned his attention back to his dinner. He picked up the spoon beside his plate and started on his soup, unaware that Erica was watching him eat with a slight smile on her lips. Suddenly, he put down his spoon and stood up.

"If you would come with me for a moment…" he said.

"Of course." she said.

She stood up and followed him away from the table and over to a row of huge windows along one wall.

"So, are the rumors true?" Vasser asked casually, glancing out the windows at the night covered countryside.

"For me to tell you that, you would have to refer to which ones." she replied.

"The ones about the latest group of assassins you killed," Vasser said, "Is it true you actually snuck up behind one and killed him, and then stole his jacket and hat and pretended to be him?"

"Of course it is," she said, "And when I rejoined the other three assassins they never suspected a thing, they thought I was one of them. So when they turned their backs…" she trailed off and grinned cruelly.

"You lying, deceiving, traitor!" Vasser said, laughing. But she could tell it was very forced laughter, undoubtedly he wasn't at all pleased about the fate of his assassins.

"Traitor?" Erica said, her voice suddenly very cold, "Oh no, it's not I that is the traitor, Vasser. You know full well that the only traitor here, is you."

At her words, the mood in the dining hall was altered immediately. Suddenly, everything was silent and all eyes turned on Vasser and Erica, as an accusation of treason was a very serious matter. A startled and concerned look crossed Vasser's face, a look that he quickly hid. But it was enough, she had seen it. And she could tell by the look in Vasser's eyes that he had just realized that she knew the truth, that he was a traitor. He faced her, standing stiffly in place, ignoring the eyes of the other guests.

"So, you knew all along," he said, with the air of a condemned man determined not to lose his dignity, "I should have known."

"Yes, you should have. How could you think that I wouldn't find out you were selling classified information to our enemies? Or that you were the one who sent those assassins?"

The dinner guests at the table immediately broke into an uproar at this information. Vasser ignored them, keeping a wary eye on the sword at Erica's side.

"And what are you going to do about it?" he asked quietly.

"Oh, I've already done something about it," she said, and smiled wickedly as she crossed her arms and stood in an attitude of waiting, "In fact, you should be feeling the results right about now."

"Wha—?" he began.

A pained look suddenly crossed Vasser's face as his skin turned deathly pale. He clutched at his heart as a faint moan passed his lips.

"Oh, my dear Yohann Vasser, I do hope you're not feeling unwell." she said mockingly.

He stared at Erica as he gasped for breath, swaying slightly where he stood. A look of agony distorted his face as his blue eyes rolled back in his head. A second later Vasser collapsed, he was dead before he hit the floor. The guests stood up in shock, voicing their astonishment and outrage.

"Murderer!" yelled Hayner. He jumped to his feet.

"Guilty as charged," Erica said, taking a sweeping bow, "But that should hardly come as a surprise to you fine ladies and gentlemen. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be leaving, Kroenen requested that I return before midnight."

She turned to leave, her black cape swirling around her, and started up the wide marble stairs that led from the dining hall to the front door.

"Come back here, murderer!" Hayner yelled after her, "Fight me! Or are you a coward, a dog? Yes, that's all you are, Kroenen's favorite, beloved little pet!"

She stopped midway up the stairs.

"I would advise you not to provoke me, Hayner," she said quietly, not turning to face him, "You see, that can have very dangerous, very deadly results."

"Kroenen's little pet! Why so anxious to return home? Are you expecting some treat, some reward from your master, you dog? You're not even Arian, you half blood, impure arschloch!"

Still standing on the stairs, she slowly turned to face him.

"No one talks to me like that." she hissed angrily.

"Really? I just did. Now get down here and fight you dog!" with those words, he pulled out a sword, and stood waiting for her.

She was slightly surprised that he hadn't pulled out a gun, but then, she had known that a confrontation between the two of them was inevitable. Perhaps Hayner had known the same and had chosen a sword so that he would look better if he won. After all, she was rumored to be a master of any blade or knife. Fool, she thought, if you had chosen a gun you might have had a chance, now you have none at all.

Infuriated, she glared icily at him and stalked down the stairs, her black cape trailing down the stairs behind her. Her hand rested on the hilt of the sword that hung in its sheath at her side. The pommel of the sword was a large, silver skull that glinted eerily in the light. The other guests quickly backed away from Hayner who had a mad, almost eager look in his eyes.

"If you are truly that eager to die," Erica hissed, "I will certainly not hesitate to oblige your wish."

With those words, she whipped out her sword, and without pausing, attacked him.

Hayner parried her fierce onslaught and thrust out at her. But she was gone! He looked around in confusion. She suddenly leapt out from behind one of the marble pillars that stood along the walls, her blade sweeping towards his throat. Hayner yelled in surprise, and tried to jerk out of the way. He wasn't fast enough. Her sword swept by, leaving a thin cut across Hayner's cheek. Immediately, she was on the attack again, and Hayner found himself forced to defend himself. The metallic clash of blades echoed in the dining hall as Erica and Hayner played out their deadly dance. The other dinner guests stood out of the way against the wall, watching silently.

Hayner's strength and weight helped him, but Erica was quicker on her feet and her training was far better. Hayner realized too late that that she had the advantage, he was forced to use all his strength and weight to protect himself. As they neared the dinner table, Hayner reached out and picked up a heavy platter from the table. He flung it at her head, but she ducked and it went sailing harmlessly past her and shattered on the floor. Erica jumped up onto a chair and then leapt onto the table, parrying his sword thrusts. He swung at her feet and missed completely, and his sword sank into the wood of the table. He tried to wrench it free, but it was stuck!

Seeing Hayner's predicament, Erica trapped his sword against the table with her boot and kicked him in the chest as hard as she could. His sword still stuck firmly in the table, Hayner stumbled backwards, thrown off balance. Seizing the opportunity, she jumped to the floor and grabbed the edge of her black cape and threw it over his head. Blinded and weaponless, Hayner gave a muffled yell as he tried to free himself from her cape, but he only became more entangled in it. Erica yanked sharply on the fabric of her cape, throwing him roughly to the floor before she pulled on her cape, freeing it from around his head. Hayner found himself lying on the floor on his back, and pulled out a dagger that he had hidden in his jacket. But before he could do anything, her sword was at his heart, the needle-sharp point of the glinting blade just barely pricking his skin through his shirt. Lying on the floor, he glared up at her, his gaze meeting her furious, stormy grey eyes as she looked down at him. Seeing he was holding a dagger, she kicked it out of his hand and it slid across the marble floor, far out of his reach.

"Now," she said, slightly out of breath, "We can go about this one of two ways. One, I kill you. Or two, you apologize to me and beg for my forgiveness, and then I kill you."

"Geh' zur Hölle!" he said defiantly, his eyes glittering with hate. He spit at her feet.

"Go to Hell? Oh, I don't think I will. But I have no problem with sending you there."

With that, she ran him through.

She wiped her bloodied sword on Hayner's shirt, leaving dark crimson stains on the white fabric. Still holding her sword, she turned to address the other guests, who were all very shaken and staring at the pool of dark blood on the marble floor around Hayner's dead body. A few of the ladies had fainted. Erica ignored them and spoke.

"Now, if you will excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I will be leaving. Farewell."

She sheathed her sword and swept up the stairs and out into the night. Her black horse was waiting for her in the courtyard in front of the mansion, his black fur making him almost invisible in the darkness. She swung herself up onto her horse's back, and with a flick of the reins they thundered away, the wind blowing through her hair and whipping her cape behind her. To anyone they passed, they appeared as a ghost like shadow racing under the moonlight…

XXXXX

By dawn Erica was back at the mansion. She had meant to get back earlier, but the night had been so beautiful, and she had felt so triumphant, that she had decided to ride through the countryside. That had been several hours ago. What had started out as a breakneck gallop soon slowed to a leisurely trot as the horizon brightened and she finally turned her horse homeward. She left her horse at the stables and casually entered the mansion, trying to be as quiet as possible. With any luck, no one would be awake yet and notice her late, belated, and way overdue arrival. Once in the entrance hall, she headed in the general direction of her study, when a female voice near the staircase interrupted her.

"You're late." the voice said simply.

"I know." Erica said, slowly turning to face Ilsa.

Ilsa stood at the foot of the staircase, gazing at Erica with her ice blue eyes.

"I suppose you were out taking another night ride across the countryside?" Ilsa said, crossing her arms.

"Yes."

Ilsa sighed. "You have to be more careful. With your black horse and the way you dress, the locals think there's some sort of ghost haunting the area."

"With everything that goes on around here, there most likely is." Erica said.

"That's not what I meant, and you know it. Really, I don't know why I bother scolding you. The only one you listen to anymore is Kroenen."

"That's not true. I listen to Grigory. And I listen to you— most of the time."

"That's not really important right now. I came down here to ask you something else," Ilsa said, "How was the dinner party?"

"It was…interesting."

"And Yohann Vasser?"

"Dead. Along with Hayner."

"You killed Hayner?" asked Ilsa, looking surprised. But really, she wasn't all that surprised. Ilsa had known that a confrontation was inevitable between Erica and Hayner. Hayner had hated and despised Erica not just because of her role in Leonard's and his parent's deaths, but because she was a 17 year old girl who had a higher rank and more power than Hayner could ever dream of possessing.

"Yes, I did." said Erica.

"Why?"

"He was being an insolent insulting pig. And he wanted to fight me. He actually seemed to think that he had a chance of killing me. Although why he'd want to avenge the death of a traitor like Vasser I certainly can't imagine."

"He wasn't just avenging Vasser. You know he's wanted revenge on you ever since he found out about what happened to Leonard and his parents," said Ilsa, "Did you kill anyone else?"

"Some woman was poisoned, but that wasn't my doing. And I don't personally care that she's dead, she was insignificant to begin with. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be in my study."

Erica turned and walked away. Ilsa called after her. "Be expecting a visit from Kroenen, he wanted to talk to you about something."

Terrific, Erica thought sarcastically, that means he's awake and knows that I'm late.

After traveling down some corridors, she came to the door of her study and went inside. Ilsa and Kroenen had given this study to her on her sixteenth birthday. Since then, she had altered the room to fit her needs. She stood in the doorway for a moment, gazing at the slight disorder inside. Things had a tendency to migrate there and stay, so she constantly had to neaten up.

Across from the door was a huge window draped with blood red curtains, and the dark wood floor under her feet was clean and polished. On her right was her desk, and on her left, centered in the wall, was a fireplace big enough for her to stand in. Part of her sword collection hung on the wall over the fireplace, glinting menacingly. And except for where the fireplace and window were, all the walls were filled with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, much like Kroenen's study. Some of the bookshelves were full of history records and books full of prophecies, others were piled with texts as dangerous as the ones in Kroenen's study. She rarely disturbed these dangerous texts, because she was just starting to learn how to control them, but she had learned how to handle the less dangerous books. Some of the other shelves had tidy displays of various objects such as knives, crystals, scrying mirrors, and the tools she used to build clocks.

Scattered around the room, on her desk, the mantel, and some of the bookshelves were all sorts of paraphernalia that could possibly be imagined as having to do with time, the future, and her visions. These objects included an Aztec calendar, multiple star charts dating back to Roman times, sun dials, Egyptian water clocks, and hourglasses of all different sizes and shapes.

Some of the hourglasses were very ornate, while others were very plain. The reason she collected these hourglasses was because of her dream. It was almost always the same: the Shadow Man and the dead garden, the hideous gargoyle in the fountain, and The Hourglass. She still didn't understand why The Hourglass was so important to her. She had even shown her dream to Kroenen and Ilsa, thinking it might be a vision, but they had both told her that it was a dream and nothing more. But she still couldn't forget The Hourglass, whenever she dreamed it was always there. And each time she saw it, the bottom half of The Hourglass held a little more black sand and the top had less and less white sand. When she asked the Shadow Man why The Hourglass was important, He would never give her a straight answer. Sometimes He would laugh at her, His laughter both burning and chilling at the same time. Because of this reoccurring dream she was driven to try to find an hourglass like the one in her dream, hoping that finding one would tell her why it was so important. So far she had not succeeded.

But thanks to a certain someone with a love of all things mechanical and filled with clockwork, she did have several clocks in her study. Kroenen had made several of them, and she had made a few herself. There was a tall, foreboding grandfather clock standing beside the enormous fireplace, and in the center of the mantle was another clock, the dark wood of its case carved intricately. On her desk was a small pocket watch, and as time passed, the face of the clock rotated to show day or night. On the windowsill was a clock housed in glass, and when the sun shone in you could see all the intricate inner workings of the clock turning. Kroenen had given this clock to her on her seventeenth birthday, and it was her favorite. Its soft, gentle, omnipresent ticking was very steady and calming.

She closed the door and walked over to her desk. She flopped down in her chair and gazed contentedly at the haphazard jumble of things on her desk. Yellowing parchment scrolls were spread across its surface, their curling edges weighed down by fist sized quartz crystals, the seeing stone of seers. On one corner of her desk was a model of the planets that she had built, its planets rotated steadily around the sun in the model's center. She leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling, which had an enormous map of the constellations tacked to it.

After some brief consideration, she decided she would tidy her study later, she doubted she would be receiving any more 'assignments' as Kroenen called them for a while. She pulled over a large leather bound volume. This book was where she recorded her visions, for the sake of easy reference for others, and she hadn't quite finished recording the last one before she had rushed off on her latest assignment. She reached out to pick up her pen, when she noticed the small bundle of black roses lying on her desk, a crimson ribbon tied around their stems. She could tell by the cut end of the stalk that they had been cut as recently as a few hours ago, probably around midnight or so. So Kroenen left these for me, she thought, that means he's been waiting for me to come back all night. She shook her head, knowing Kroenen was going to reprimand her for being so late. Then she picked up her calligraphy pen, dipped it in ink as red as blood, and started writing on a fresh page of the book.

She had only been writing for a few moments, occasionally concentrating to bring up specifics of the vision, when there was a soft knock on the door of her study. She looked up just as Kroenen entered, carrying several books. Erica quickly cleared a space on her desk and he set the books down. He sat down in the chair across from her.

"Did you have fun 'hunting'?" he asked, "I hope you found someone— ah— challenging for you."

"Poisoning Vasser wasn't exactly challenging," she said, "But I quite enjoyed the sword fight with Hayner. But even that wasn't very difficult, he would have had a better chance if he had decided to use a handgun."

"Speaking of which, I noticed you neglected to take yours with you, like I told you to," he said, "And you were very late coming back. I requested that you be back before midnight."

"I tried, I really did! I just couldn't— it was night and the moon was out, and everything was silent and dark, and the wind was blowing— something was pulling me, I just had to ride, to be out in the night…" she trailed off, unsure how to explain the feeling she had felt tugging at her.

"I was worried about you." Kroenen said quietly.

"I know." she said, looking down.

Kroenen looked at Erica. She had become an indispensable part of their team, she, Ilsa, and himself worked well together, though he and Erica worked together the best. Kroenen was proud of Erica, she had come so far in such a short time. It was true, he had taught her well, but he wasn't finished yet. There were still things she had to learn, such as to do what he told her. She's still young, she can't help it, he thought. He knew she really was sorry, she hadn't meant to make him worried. And he had been worried, knowing she was going alone to the home of a person that had sent assassins to murder her. He had been even more worried when he had discovered she had left her handgun behind and only taken her sword, and he had stayed up all night anxiously waiting for her to return.

Kroenen reached out across the desk and gently tilted her face upwards so she was looking at him. She has beautiful eyes, he thought, looking at their strange silver-gray color, They're beautiful because they're unusual.

"Just remember to be more cautious. I don't want to lose you," he said, "It's not that I think you're incapable of handling an opponent, I'm just concerned that you might underestimate them by accident."

"I'm sorry, I'll be more careful next time."

"Good, because the real reason I came to talk to you was because you have another assignment."

"What? Another? I just got back!" she said, surprised.

"Idle hands are the devil's playthings." he said philosophically.

"The only question is, is it my hands or yours that we're talking about?" she asked, looking up at him with mischief written all over her face.

Behind his mask he smiled liplessly, he loved it when she made that expression.

"Both," he answered, "You know you have a tendency to get into… mischief when you don't have anything to do. And while I personally don't mind how many peasants or soldiers you 'toy with', Ilsa is getting tired of it."

She grinned sheepishly. "So, where am I being sent off to now?" she asked.

"Russia. And you're not going alone, I'm coming with you, along with a select band of soldiers I've chosen for the expedition."

"Select band of soldiers meaning what, exactly?"

"Highly trained, good at following orders, and expendable." he answered, grinningly wickedly behind his mask. Erica's smile matched his.

"If you're coming, is Ilsa coming as well?" she asked.

"Nein. She doesn't…" he made a gesture at the books he had brought with him, trying to explain, "…she doesn't fit the requirements."

"Requirements?"

"Ja. I've been doing some research the past few nights on the subject. The place where we're going is a network of caverns and tunnels, some of them underwater. And for a person to enter the water they must be female, or they will, ah, die most unpleasantly."

"And Ilsa can't come because…?"

"Because the female has to be a virgin," he said, "And Ilsa does not fit that requirement."

"Oh." she said, then after a brief moment of silence, "What exactly are we looking for?"

As an answer, Kroenen opened one of the books and flipped through it. When he found the page he was looking for, he turned the book so it faced her and pointed to a picture and the section of text written beside it.

"A giant crystal?" she said.

He nodded. "It produces enormous amounts of energy. We need it to help power the portal generator for Project Ragnarok, our current sources of energy are not enough to power the machine."

"How do you know? You've barely finished the blueprints for it."

"Grigory told me we would need it."

"And how soon are we leaving?"

"As soon as you're packed. I made a list of the things you need to bring with you." he said, handing her the list. Then he gestured to the pile of books he had brought with him, "You need to read up on the subject, so I brought you a little 'light' reading."

"Is that what you call it? I can't possibly pack and read all of these if you're planning to leave soon."

"Don't worry. I bookmarked the important pages for you."

Erica sighed. "At this rate I'm not going to get any sleep."

"You should have come back at midnight as I requested. Remember, Erica, I have a reason for everything I do, you just may not be aware of the reason. And don't worry, you can sleep during the plane ride to Russia, you're going to have to be well rested for the task ahead of you."

"Ahead of me? What about you?"

"The crystal is in one of the underwater caverns, in the heart of an abandoned ancient city. I can't go in the water because I'm not female, remember? And there aren't any maps to guide your way, you'll have to test all your options with your visions by looking at the possibilities that lie ahead."

"So why are you coming?" she asked curiously, "Moral support?"

"Nein. If you get hurt, I want to be the one to take care of you, not those fools they assign to the soldiers as doctors."

"Well, I wanted a challenge, and it sounds like I finally got one."

"You'll do fine," he assured her, "Start reading. I'll call you for breakfast when it's ready."

Author's Notes: So, is Erica scaring you yet? She's changed a lot in a year, no? Please review and tell me what you think!