Stretching her limbs Klaudia surveyed the situation around her. They had arrived in Kehl a short time prior. Across the Rhine lay Strasbourg, held by Allied soldiers. It had taken most of the day to get here and there was little light left. Perfect for Klaudia and the panzermensch, who could all see in the dark better than any normal person could. Not so good for the conventional forces that had been mustered to meet them here. Though Klaudia could hardly believe that they were going to send these men into battle at all.

If the soldiers they had linked up with were anything they were tired. Some looked too old for the battlefield and even more too young. Most seemed too weary to even look at the giants in their midst with much surprise. It gave Klaudia pause, made her reconsider her plan for just a moment, but she had to know.

At the camp Sankt had subjected her to all manner of dangerous experiments meant to test just how durable a Battleship was. Klaudia had been fed poison, lit on fire, had explosives go off in her hands. Nothing had so much as scratched her. Out here though there was far more firepower. Once the Allies got a glimpse of what was going on they would either flee or swarm in to try and crush the German excursion. In Klaudia's opinion the latter seemed more likely and then she would have a chance to test just how far her supposed invincibility went.

Suicide was a sin, this Klaudia remembered well from the religious instruction her father had given her. Being killed in battle, even a battle where you intended to die, surely did not count. If there was even the slightest chance that she could be reunited with Leon she would take it. Should she make it out of this then it would be clear that another path had been chosen for her. Leon had always told her that she should let go of her Catholic upbringing, replacing the old superstitions with faith and loyalty in the Leader, but she had never been able to fully leave it behind. Tonight she would find out if God really would answer her prayers.

Bringing herself back to reality Klaudia continued to half listen to the mission plan being laid out by the local commander, whose name she had missed, and Alois, the appointed head of the panzermensch that had accompanied her. Others were standing in the background, including Lupin and Bergen. The doctor's questions had been good for one thing at least, keeping Klaudia awake the whole journey. Still she hoped that one day Bergen would get what was coming to her.

"Klaudia?" She gave a start as she realized that Alois was looking at her expectantly. Collecting herself she motioned for him to continue.

"As I was saying," Alois must have decided to repeat himself rather than draw attention to Klaudia's lack of focus. "Klaudia will be patrolling the perimeter of the city, taking out anything that could threaten us. Artillery, tanks and so forth. The panzermensch will divide into teams of six each on an eight hour rotation. We go in ahead of the regular troops and crush all points of resistance. We move fast and we stay together. Remember to look after yourselves. If you start feeling fatigued then the whole unit will rotate out early to go on their rest cycle. If we do this right then we always have one unit attacking, one defending and one resting. Any questions?"

A few of the men began asking about various details that Klaudia had little interest in. Her role was fairly simple. They had pointed out everything that needed to be destroyed that they knew about. Once she had the attention of the Allied forces Klaudia had her own plan for how to proceed.

The local commander had wanted to wait for daybreak but Klaudia was willing to go on her own if she had to. They all knew that without her taking the city would be a far more daunting task, no matter their advantages. Klaudia waited for the briefing to end to give a bit more confidence to the men gathered there. No need to trouble them, especially if Werner had been meddling.

Then it was time to start. Klaudia went on ahead of the rest, slowly increasing the speed of her strides until the landscape was nearly a blur around her. When she came in sight of the bridge she stopped. Even in the dim light it did not take long for the soldiers there to notice her. One called out something in English as the others got into position, well entrenched behind walls and a few tanks.

In an instant Klaudia summoned her halo and unleashed its power along the riverbank.

That was all it took, a few moments and there was little left of the Allied forward position. Advancing Klaudia prepared to attack the far side of the bridge. As she passed the remains of the men she stopped cold in revulsion. There a man, now little more that bits of tendon and muscle clinging to exposed bones, the rest of him forming a pool of gore below. Inside the gutted shell of a tank another, barely older than herself, had been fused to the hull beside him. Bloody scratches marked where he had tried to claw his flesh away from the steel in his last terrified moments of life.

Her halo blinking out of sight, Klaudia bent over and vomited. Regaining focus she forced the halo to return and sent more distortions among the corpses, removing any trace that they had been there other than bloody smudges along the ground where they had lain. From then on she made sure not to look too closely.

Crossing the bridge was easy and making her way around the city even easier. Rarely was anyone able to get off a shot before she could lay waste to their positions. Flashes of white and blue split the night and behind her Klaudia could hear a growing chorus of shouts and sirens. They realized that they were under attack, just not by what. She could recognize what was English though the accents escaped her. Mixed in were many French voices. That brought back memories.

Leon had distant family in France, cousins that he had visited once years ago. As much as the French were supposed to be the hated enemy it had always been a her dream to go to Paris one day when the war was over. There had even been times when Leon would speak a few lines of broken French to get Klaudia into a romantic mood. Over the tops of the buildings around her Klaudia could make out the spire of the cathedral, the Tricolour waving in the wind from its peak. By the end of the night another flag would likely be waving there. Pushing away the memories of her husband she instead focused on the advice that Werner had given her.

Become a weapon.

Klaudia Hoch was not killing these men, destroying these machines and breaking this city. It was a weapon, one that bore her face but not her. The killing was easy enough as she barely needed to exert herself to clear an enemy position. Repeating the mantra just served to ease her conscience and that made the killing all that much more simple.

After nearly an hour Klaudia had torn a bloody path around the city. As she approached the start of her circuit she could see that German forces were already streaming through the gap she had created. Her part here was done. Now she began to move away from Strasbourg, letting distortions flicker here and there along her way. A trail for the Allies to follow. Soon she would have the answer to her question.

Many miles south of Strasbourg, following the roads along the Rhine, Lupin was fashioning a sling to carry the large cases they had brought with them on his back. He could easily bear their weight but they were a bit too cumbersome to hold all at once. From the front of the truck a stream of curses, in German, English and what he could only assume was Norwegian, was coming from Bergen.

"Of all the trucks we could have stolen we get the one that hasn't had a bloody oil change in God knows how long!" Bergen exclaimed as she flung the wrench in her hand at a nearby tree. Clearly she had given up on trying to fix the engine. She had barely said two words to him since they had made good their escape from the rest of the force. That had been simpler that Lupin expected, everyone had been too busy trying to take advantage of Klaudia's attack to pay much attention to the scientist and administrator who had tagged along.

This was not the first time that Lupin had left Germany. He had been to Belgium, the Netherlands and even Switzerland on business before. It felt different all the same. The first thing that he had done once they were out of sight of the others was take off his uniform jacket. Until they explained their mission to whatever Allied forces they met technically they were still the enemy, and even if getting shot would do him no harm he would like to avoid it if all possible. In his head Lupin went over his English. Somewhat rusty from disuse but he should be able to converse easily enough. Though hopefully Bergen would be the one doing most of the talking.

Having grabbed a thick jacket for herself Bergen stormed off the road, obviously assuming that Lupin would follow. Which he did, not intending to be left behind. Even with his greater speed it felt like he was constantly struggling to catch up to the woman.

"It shouldn't take too long to find some Allied soldiers, not with the racket Klaudia will be raising. Are you hoping for Americans or British? We might even get some Frenchmen but from what I hear-"

"Do me a favour and keep your mouth shut for once!" Bergen snapped back at him, struggling to light another cigarette as she did. Lupin stopped, waiting for her to notice and do the same. She only went about another twenty feet before turning back to look at him.

"Now I must assume that I have somehow offended you. If you could please let me know what I should be apologizing for then we can get on delivering the war winning contents of these cases to the Allies. Together." If there was a time to take a stand it was now. Lupin had no intention of being thrown by the wayside on this. He had already put everything in his life on the line and Bergen could at the very least respect that.

"Offended me? Oh, if only that was what you had done," Bergen snatched the cigarette from her mouth as she stabbed her finger towards him through the air. "You are the one who managed to set this whole chain of disasters into motion. Do you know how many plans I had to abandon when we left the camp? We are not half as prepared as we should be and all because you had to tell that blonde psychopath that her damned home had been bombed!"

"Come off it!" Lupin shouted back at her. If that was the way that Bergen wanted to play it, he could do the same. "I thought that you had everything well in hand still? That whole camp was just waiting for a spark to set it off. We might not have been fully prepared for this but Sankt sure as hell wasn't either. And furthermore a woman that got nicknamed 'the executioner' doesn't really have room to go around calling other people psychopaths!"

Rather than making Bergen angrier that made her go very quiet. She turned and continued walking ahead once more. Lupin charged after her. He had already pushed his luck this far, why not a bit further?

"Might I remind you of who it was that got his hands on more than half of the research documents we are carrying? Me. Also who is actually carrying everything we stole? Me. Who left his parents, his brother and probably even his aunt and cousins to their likely executions? Me! So in the grand scheme of things I find it hard to believe that I am the one at fault here!"

What Bergen would have answered that with Lupin would never know. Just that moment a shot range out, hitting him square between the eyes. It stung but he was otherwise unharmed. Placing the cases in his arms onto the ground he made sure his body was between them and the direction the shot had come from. Bergen had taken cover behind a tree nearby.

"Friendly, we're friendly! We want to defect!" Lupin called out in English, the response another few bullets making holes in his shirt. He was certain that he had gotten the words right but a German accent was obviously not helping his case. Holding up his hands he waited for the men to quit shooting. Looking at Bergen pleadingly he added, "A little help perhaps?"

It was a long few moments before Bergen rolled her eyes and shouted out to their assailants in a perfect British accent, "Quit bloody shooting! I'm a British operative coming home!"

At the very least Lupin now knew just who Bergen was working for. The bullets stopped coming as well. Slowly men began to approach them, guns still held at the ready. Americans from their uniforms, if Lupin could remember his field manuals.

"Search 'em for weapons! You two, stay nice and still. Especially you big fella." That, Lupin presumed, was the leader of this unit. He did his best to comply with the orders, hardly moving a muscle.

"I put one right between his eyes, how the fuck is he still standing?" One man was quietly asking another further back. The man who had come to search Lupin looked extremely nervous. He tried his best to give the man a comforting smile but felt that the effect was lost considering the situation.

"You've heard about what is happening north of here?" Bergen was asking the American commander, the soldiers having relieved her of a pistol from her jacket and another tucked into her boot. When the man nodded vaguely she continued. "What is in those cases is the key to putting a stop to it. They and I need to get to London as soon as possible."

No mention of Lupin there but considering the conversation a few minutes before he counted himself lucky that she was not recommending his execution. Not that it did either of them much good.

"Well that is nice and all but you aren't going anywhere for a while. Bad enough I have to take time out of my night dragging you two back to the lockup, you'll just have to cool your heels until someone has the time to confirm what you're saying." The American signalled for his men to take them into custody. Seeing as it had gone so well for him so far that night Lupin decided to try his luck once more.

"Sir, if you could please have your men point their weapons at me I can confirm that what is in these cases needs to reach London immediately," That had the desired effect, the entire squad swinging their weapons to react to what they probably saw as a threat Lupin could only hope that he was remembering the right words. "Whatever you do, don't shoot her or the cases. Or my face."

Activating his halo Lupin braced himself. It was the major weak point of the panzermensch that had been discovered. A sufficiently large disruption to the active halo, say by a bullet, could cause a lethal chain reaction. Now it was either do or die. Focusing on a tree beyond all the men Lupin formed a distortion that disintegrated most of the upper branches and left the rest as flaming mess. As quickly as he could he released the halo. Not a single shot had been fired at least, with all the men now gawking at the smoking tree trunk.

"Jonesy, get on the radio. Tell HQ we got something that they need to see. The rest of you grab that crap and get ready to double time it back to camp." The lead American said after he managed to pull himself together. His men rushed to fulfill their orders as soon as they recovered from their own shock.

Keeping his hands in the air Lupin considered offering to help carry the cases. One look at the trembling hands of the men pointing their weapons at him made him reconsider. From that moment on he did his best not to even look at anyone. As they ordered him to move Lupin could hear Bergen cursing under her breath. He was not sure whether her stream of invective was aimed at him, the Americans or the world in general and he hoped to remain blissfully ignorant for as long as he could.

After hours of frantic activity the camp had finally begun to settle back down. It was only temporary, Werner was well aware of that. Even as he sat stretched out on his bed, looking through the briefings that Hagen had arranged for him to receive, he knew that it would never last. A day, two at the outside, and the ubermensch would be packed up and shipped to capital. From there they would be delegated out to Germany's overstretched armies in an attempt to reverse the tide of the war. Already research and materials were being made ready to follow along with them. Werner knew where he would be headed. The Westerners were not the pressing concern, there was even the hope that Klaudia's attack might help to halt their advance through shock alone. The east was another matter entirely.

All the time that Werner had spent at the project, waiting while Sankt plotted and schemed, he had known that it would come to this in the end. Once more he would be sent out to face the Soviet hordes but this time it would be different. This time the Bolsheviks would meet their end once and for all. It was not a task that Werner looked forward to, no matter how necessary he knew it to be. An ocean of blood had already been spilled over those muddy steppes and soon another would be unleashed. Any sane man would hesitate to return to that meat grinder. Of course Markus was looking forward to it with great anticipation. If he were feeling charitable Werner would have chalked that up to youthful inexperience rather than the boy's sadism. Tonight he was not feeling very charitable at all.

There were steps in the hallway. Too soft to be Markus or even one of the panzermensch. As Werner turned to look a solitary officer slid into the room, closing the door firmly behind him.

"Sir, how may I help you?" Werner asked as he began to rise.

"You could start by telling me what in hell is going on?" The officer replied. Werner recognized the voice immediately and lowered himself back down to the bed, setting the folder in his hand to the side. He had been preparing for this encounter since his conversation with Anita earlier.

In an instant the officer changed. One moment he was one man, the next another. Luther was the crown jewel of one of Sankt's side projects. Werner knew that the man's ability to change his appearance and voice at will came from the Catalyst somehow but Sankt had never deigned to share how it was done. There were a few more, from Werner's understanding, though they had not been directly included in Sankt's plot. That was how Luther had come to be the favourite. Other than the fact that the man was an insufferable brown-noser.

Luther was well into middle age, though he refused to say just how old he was. He had an expressive face that was perfect for conveying his overblown mannerisms. Yet for all that Werner found the man to be a blowhard he was a good actor when he set his mind to it. From the few actors Werner had been acquainted with years before he knew enough to see that Luther was a man past his prime. There was a lurking suspicion in his mind as well that Luther's goal here was not to help save Germany but rather to get himself back onto the centre stage.

"You're the spy Luther, go take a look around. It is rather obvious." Werner replied. As petty as it might seem it was just all too much fun to get under the other man's skin.

"You are just hilarious, you know that?" Luther said as he walked over to the bed. Lacking any chairs in the room he chose to find as good a seat as he could get from the clean half of Werner's bedside table. "First Sankt misses a check-in, which he never does. Then when I get here the place is crawling with soldiers and neither Sankt nor Scheele are anywhere to be found. So rather than me spending the rest of my night trying to piece together what the hell is happening could you please just spit it out already?"

A fair enough request. Werner watched a bead of sweat roll down Luther's brow. He was still mostly human, just one with a few more faces than normal.

"We got found out. Not everything," Werner added quickly when he saw a look of fear come over Luther's face. He did not need the other man to try running. Mostly because there would be absolutely no way to catch him if he did. "Just that Sankt never told them that he had been successful. They hauled him back to Berlin a few hours after midnight last night. Anita left early this afternoon to advise the High Command on what an ubermensch is and what we can do."

"Shit. Shit! We need to do something, enact the plan or, I don't know! Shit!" Cursing up a storm Luther leapt up from his seat and began to pace around the room. Endless half plans seemed to spill out of him, each disregarded before the idea behind it was even fully formed. If Luther had indeed been an actor Werner doubted that he had been involved in improvisation. He waited patiently for Luther to run out of steam. Then would be the best time to hit him with what needed to be done.

"You could try to go along with the plan," Werner said once Luther had quieted. "Except that Anita and I have decided that neither of us wants to be a part of it anymore."

"You what? You can't just-"

"We can and we have. So either you can join Sankt on a sinking ship or you can help us cut our collective losses," Shaking his head Werner let out dry chuckle. "Let's face it, that plan was never that good even from the beginning."

"Do you know how many weeks of practice I put into this?" Luther spat back at him, his appearance and voice suddenly changing to another familiar pairing. Hitler. Even knowing that it was just an illusion Werner felt repulsed. He forced that back down. In Sankt's grand plan to take over Germany Werner would have been Hitler's executioner and Luther his replacement. That plan had now become unworkable. The time to deal with that madman would still come eventually, just later than he had hoped.

"Well I imagine that Sankt is a bit more upset about whatever it is that they are doing to him. Things that might cause him to start saying names. My name. Your name."

That got Luther's attention. All of the sudden his face was his own again and almost as white as a sheet. The look of realization dawned upon his face. "We need to shut him up."

"If only we knew someone who could slip into wherever it is that they are holding him and make sure that he keeps quiet. Forever." Werner was not proud of suggesting this. As great a fool as Sankt was even he deserved a cleaner death than this. However, desperate times called for desperate measures.

"They still might be suspicious, even if I frame it properly." The gears were clearly turning in Luther's head.

"You're the only one of whatever Sankt decided to call you lot that anyone of us has ever seen. I anyone asks Anita is going to tell them that she had no idea that Sankt was successful in creating any of you and that she wasn't aware that he ever tried. So by the time that you and the others come in from the cold Sankt will already be fading from their minds. Think you can manage it?"

"Its doable. I should even be able to convince the others to keep their mouths shut about everything," Luther thought a moment more before continuing. "But why stay here? We've been practising whenever we can. Building up some funds, other things. It is really quite easy with our abilities. Once Sankt is out of the way I could get you and Scheele out with us. Enough money and no one would even think to ask any questions. A nice place on a beach down in the sun with nothing but relaxation and all the women we could ever want. Or men for Scheele and yourse-"

Werner had indulged Luther quite enough by that point. In an instant he had rolled out of the bed and was in front of the man, seizing hold of him by the jaw. Just firmly enough to keep him from talking anymore.

"Don't push your luck Luther. If we don't win this war we are all dead. Think all the money in the world would help you once the communists control everything?"

His eyes bulging in fear Luther nodded as best as he could. Werner released him after that. He had made his point.

"Fine. For Germany!" Luther threw up his arm in a mocking salute as he stepped back towards the door. Never one to know when to call it quits. "But I'm still going to keep an eye on my retirement fund."

"Just take care of Sankt then report in to command. Don't make me come looking for you!" Werner called after him. It was an empty threat but he needed to do something to give the man some spine. In the end he could only hope that Luther and his fellows would come through. They would be a powerful weapon in the coming days.

Laying back down onto his bed Werner returned to reading his briefings. He knew the only person he could truly rely on was himself. With everything around him teetering on the edge of disaster that would have to be enough.