Fire and Steel

"Here we are."

After an hour's walk the team had reached the abandoned factory, Northeast of the Spreebogenpark and set well back from the banks of the river, in an industrial area of Berlin. Across the street from the factory's entrance were a few biochemistry institutes, and Hans shuddered to think what might be lurking within in them. Or worse, had escaped. His experience at the Max Planck Institut fur Molekular Genetik in Dahlem had taught him that Germany was fucked long before The Bomb came.

"After you," Hilda said to Friedrich, and their former friend obliged. The sign above the factory's doors was gone, the outline of the letters only vaguely visible. 'Rob-something.' Friedrich pulled one of the doors open and in they went, keeping low. According to Friedrich the place was abandoned. In Hans' experience, intact buildings were only 'abandoned' if something inside them was too dangerous to brave.

As expected, beyond the entrance doors was a once-plush lobby. Chairs, a receptionist's desk, potted plants (or, more accurately, their withered husks), posters. A radio sat on the desk, still playing music amazingly enough. Hans approached it, listening to the gentle but rapid opening chords of 'Fur Elise.'

"Where the Hell is that even coming from?" Hilda asked, looking at the radio, and Hans had to wonder too. Last time he'd heard a broadcast was October 23, 2077. 'Fur Elise' continued, growing more and more complex as the composition continued, until it soon ended.

"Guten Morgen, Berliners," a woman's voice came through. "This is The Lightbringer and you're listening to Der Berliner Tageszeitung. Today's weather is sunny, with a hint of clouds on our horizon. What little news I've got for you today is, unfortunately, a mix. Sporadic gunfire has been heard near the usually quiet Amtsgericht Mitte, and a duo of Death's Heads has been seen in the Volkpark Prenziauer Berg. For your own sake, please avoid these areas. Next up is 99 Luftballons. Enjoy."

After a few moments of silence the song began to play, and Hans and Hilda turned away from the radio. Friedrich was waiting for them by the doors that led into the factory proper, watching through the gap for any surprises. "Pirate radio stations are rare," he said. "I haven't heard one myself in quite a few years. She has a bit of a strange name, though."

"Maybe she picked it for herself," Hilda said. Hans was about to turn the radio off when he thought against it. His gut told him the factory wasn't quite as abandoned as Friedrich thought, and turning the radio off would only telegraph their presence. He left it and approached the doors into the factory proper, shotgun at the ready. He and Friedrich pushed the doors open and stepped out onto the factory floor, a wide slab of concrete broken up by a number of machines and lathes. A series of catwalks ran back and forth above the factory floor, the only light provided by the broken skylights. Shards of glass and bits of scrap metal were scattered across the floor, but so far the building looked genuinely abandoned.

"I didn't see a way up to the roof when we were outside, but I did see catwalks on the one smokestack, so there's gotta be a way up there," Hans said, and the three of them got moving. With all the machines around there was plenty of cover should they get into a fight, but that would work both ways. They checked around each machine as they went, looking for any threats as well as a way up to the second floor.

"There's a door here," Hilda said when they were halfway across the factory floor, looking to her left. Tucked between two giant presses was a blank door, a stair icon above it. Hans approached, turned the handle, and pushed.

Nothing happened.

"Always fucking locked," he said. "Guess we'll have to find a key."

"Not necessarily, Herr Eckhart. Here, allow me." Friedrich approached the door, slung his rifle, and crouched. He produced a few picks and torsion bars and started working on the keyhole. "Mmm, this is a fairly serious one. It'd take a real expert to pick this door, but I think I can manage."

"Good to know you're useful for something after all," Hilda said. Friedrich ignored her. Hans turned away from the door and looked out across the factory floor, his mind wandering. Once they got up to the smokestack and took a better look at the Sturmutant camp at the park they'd have to come up with a plan to actually knock it out and confront this supposed Queen Ilse. Even with the help of the Deutsche Kommunists and what few guards the U-Bahnen could spare it'd still be a considerable challenge.

There was a clanking noise to his left, around the other side of the lathe by the door, and Hans turned his head to look. A Protectron shambled into view, sluggishly and awkwardly walking along. "Achtung," it said when it saw them, "intruders detected! Vacate these premises at once."

Hans shot it, the buckshot easily punching through the thin shell and smashing its electronic guts to bits. The robot crumpled to the floor in a shower of sparks and bolts, and he went back to thinking. If Queen Ilse's Sturmutants were calling Hilda the Monster of Munich, then there was a good reason for it. There was only one incident Hans could point to, but it would certainly fit the bill. He looked at Hilda, who was sitting on the edge of a conveyor belt, staring at him. She held his gaze for a few moments before looking at Friedrich. "Finished yet?"

"Not yet, Frau Muller. I'll let you know when I'm done."

Hilda looked away and started flicking the selector lever of her MP5 back and forth, and Hans could only imagine what she was thinking. Projekt Natursturm had been important to her; losing it was one thing, but learning that the man responsible for destroying it was still alive was another. Worse still knowing that her husband had spared him. Vindictive as she was Hans still suspected that she was more upset that he'd lied to her about it.

He heard a squeaking noise from the left and turned to look. It wasn't a rat, or if it was it was a gigantic one. It sounded to him more like ungreased metal squealing. He hunched down a bit and Hilda hopped off the conveyor belt, crouching low. Hans quickly topped up his Walther Automatic shotgun and crouched next to her, waiting.

What grinded into view was unlike anything Hans had ever seen before, and it made his blood run cold. It vaguely resembled the Panzerbot Mk.1 he'd once encountered in Hamburg, with two triangle-shaped tracks attached to a bowl-shaped chassis, but a much upgraded variant. Mounted atop the chassis was no less than a Panzer III turret, modified with countless sensors and cameras. Atop the turret, where the commander's hatch would be, was a bubble turret sporting an MG-34. One of the cameras spotted them, and the turret began to rotate towards them.

Fuck me running.

"Alert," the bot said in a deep mechanical drawl, "enemies of the state of the Federal Republic of Germany detected on these premises. In accordance with wartime directives issued by Parliament and Chancellor Guderian, enemies of the state will be summarily erased."

Hilda turned her head and yelled "hurry up you fucking retard!" at Friedrich. With armor and firepower like that there was nothing they could do to harm it; it'd obliterate them in seconds. The turret finished turning, the cannon barrel pointed at them, and two arms slowly unfolded from the chassis and descended to the ground. The arms reached the floor and lifted the Panzerbot into the air a few inches, locking it in place as it prepared to fire.

"Got it!" Friedrich shouted, and then they were all scrambling through the door. Hans slammed it shut behind them just as the robot fired, the 37mm high-explosive shell bending the door inwards when it detonated and flinging Hans to the ground. Loose pieces of the ceiling fell down all around them, the floor shaking. A series of cracks spidered across the wall surrounding the doorframe, warping the hall.

"Hans!" Hilda said, and crouched down next to him. He was unhurt, as far as he could tell. He slowly staggered to his feet and shook his head. His wife looked him over, the closest she'd gotten to him since Alexander Platz, and nodded. "You'll be fine. I don't see any wounds."

Hans blew out a breath and nodded. "Glad to hear it," he said. "Christ, that was almost as bad as that fucking Flak 88 that nearly killed us at the Hamburg airport."

"Don't remind me," Hilda said. The hall they'd ended up in was a stairwell, proceeding up to a landing that switched back to continue up. They followed it all the way, emerging on one of the catwalks that ran above the factory floor. Hans peeked down and saw the Panzerbot slowly patrolling the floor, its treads producing that telltale squeal. It grinded along beneath them, seemingly oblivious to their presence.

The catwalk stretched straight across the open space, ending in a door. The team quickly made their way to it, and mercifully it was unlocked. The three of them went through and closed the door behind them. The room inside was a breakroom, all of the furniture still intact. The domed skylight wasn't, however, and the floor was covered in glass as a result. The room had suffered some water damage from two decades of rainfalls, leaving the wood endtables warped and the couches moldy. "Why are the windows always broken?" Hilda asked.

"The Bomb," Hans said. "Berlin was spared a direct hit, but those nukes create this gigantic shock- and pressure-wave. Intact windows are so rare they're a novelty. If The Bomb itself doesn't kill you, then any number of countless other things will. Radiation, flying debris, the shockwave, burns. Hell, when my mother took me to the shelter there were people there so dehydrated by the sudden heat-flash that water was killing them. The sudden influx of electrolytes was sending them into shock."

"God," Hilda said. "That's awful!"

Friedrich chimed in. "A friend of mine died that way. She ran into the Spree for relief and the shock killed her," he said, shaking his head. "Cursed fucking thing, The Bomb. It upsets me greatly that a German helped create it."

"Germany invented The Bomb?" Hilda asked. "Why?"

"In a sense," Hans said. "A German-born man helped the United States create the first nuclear bomb, and a German-born man helped the United States build their rocket program. Their work resulted in that abomination of science. As for why, well... Because sometimes we just can't help ourselves. Whether you can, whether you should, it doesn't matter to someone who has a thirst for blood and absolutely zero fucking morals. Or worse, someone who knows better and just doesn't care."

Hilda frowned.

"Come on, let's take a look around and see if there's a way up from here," Hans said. There was a terminal in the breakroom, to the right of the door and opposite the couches. Hans sat down and turned it on, though as expected there was nothing of value beyond it. The holotape file named 'Red Menace' had seemed promising, but had turned out to be some stupid game.

The only other door in the room led out onto another catwalk, this one connected to multiple other catwalks, each stretching this way and that. On the far side of the catwalk system, on the right side of the building, was a door with a staircase icon above it. The way to the roof. Hans looked down and saw several Protectrons and a single Mk.1 Panzerbot patrolling a warehouse floor.

Hans looked left and saw another door a short distance away. An office door, from the look of it. He gestured to it and then the team was scurrying across the catwalks to it. Locked, of course. "Damn it. Friedrich, get to it."

"Allow me."

Hans stood by the door and peered down at the floor, praying the robots wouldn't see them. Up there, with no cover, even the Protectrons could kill them. In less than a minute Friedrich had the door open ("What luck, that was an easy one!") and then they were through, the office mostly nondescript save for the terminal on the desk. Hans approached and sat at the desk. The terminal was locked too, but thanks to the lessons of an old friend Hans had it hacked in just a few minutes.

"Incident reports," he said. "Boring. Financial records. Very boring. PR statements. Controversial then, boring now. Here we are, what's this?"

'August 29, 2077

Arnelie quit, so now I have to start writing these. It's just as well, I suppose, since I can include some extra details and information. When I became plant manager for Germany's first RobCo Industries factory I wasn't sure we'd last. RobCo's investment into Germany promised to help restart our economy and was guaranteed to bring sorely-needed jobs to Germany. Of course, no one in Germany had (has) money to buy a Protectron, and certainly not a Mister Handy. Not that you can even find one of those in Germany, since General Atomics is too busy with God-knows-what. Of course, like any matter in life, once you get the ball rolling it picks up speed and size.

A few short years and some contracts from the Bundeswehr later and today the plant is doing modestly well, but I'm hoping we can expand next year. In early October my brother-in-law is shipping out on the FMS Northern Star, bound for Boston in the United States. When he returns I'll see if he can pull a few favors to help us expand to Norway.'

Fat chance of that. It was common knowledge in Germany that nothing of China or the United States remained anymore. They'd been reduced to nothing but simmering radioactive moonscapes, home only to the worst kind of mutant abominations imaginable.

Hans kept reading.

'September 18, 2077

Odd things have been transpiring the past few weeks. The home office in the United States has sent us a disassembled example of a new type of automaton. Developed jointly by RobCo and General Atomics and produced at the Big Mountain Research and Development Center this new kind of automaton will radically alter the way our species approaches robotics. The home office has sent along the technical details and manuals, and assembling the automaton will apparently be rather simple. All we have to do is put it together and run it through some tests, apparently to gauge its lingual abilities. It ought to be interesting.'

Hans clicked on the final entry and felt his stomach sink, disturbed by what it contained.

'Only God may forgive us, for the Devil is in man, and he has profaned the creator's creation.'

There was nothing else.

"Well that's just great..." Hans said, and stood. He approached the members of his team by the door and took a look down at the floor. The robots still hadn't noticed them, but it would only take one to alert the others. Still, it didn't seem there were any other ways to the roof access door. "Guess we'll have to make a break for it. Unless you two have a better idea."

From their position at the office door the roof accessway was all the way across the catwalk system, 40 or so feet away. The catwalks were all intact, thankfully, so all they'd have to do was run as fast as possible.

"Let's throw Friedrich over the side and let him distract the robots," Hilda said.

"Surely you can't stay mad at me forever over something that happened years ago, Frau Eckhart."

"Shut up."

"Let's just get across as quickly as we can," Hans said. "The catwalk will protect us a bit from the Protectron lasers, but if that Panzerbot sees us we're dead. Don't stop, no matter what." He pushed the door open a bit further, tensed, and scurried out onto the catwalk, keeping low. Hilda and Friedrich followed right behind, the three of them quickly crouch-walking across the catwalk.

They were maybe halfway there when a laser beam flashed by in front of Hans, reflecting off the railing and through the catwalk grating. Hans swore and kept going as the Protectrons opened fire, errant beams flashing randomly through the grating. He reached the door and slammed into it.

Locked.

"What the fuck, I swear to fucking God!" he yelled. He glanced down at the floor and saw the Panzerbot turning, its wheels squealing and the rubber treads marking the floor. Being a Mk.1 it only had machine guns, but that would be enough. Hans turned back to the door. There was no chance Friedrich would be able to unlock it in time, so that left Plan B.

Hans slung his shotgun, drew his G11, and aimed at the door handle. The rounds punched clean through the plate in a steady beat, quickly creating a jagged hole. He slung the G11, drew one of his grenades, and was about to stuff it into the hole when the Panzerbot fired.

The shot hit the wall just beneath the catwalk, blasting it clear from the bolts that kept it mounted to the wall. The catwalk and the people on it all tumbled to the floor with a colossal *CRASH*, the three of them falling to the floor in a pile behind a machine.

Hans stumbled to his feet, holding his head. He'd hit it on the railing as the catwalk had collapsed, though as far as he could tell he wasn't bleeding. "GET UP, GET UP!" he yelled, and the others slowly got to their feet. They had maybe 30 seconds before the Panzerbot came around the corner and finished the job.

To the right of the machine was a door and Hilda staggered towards it. "In here!" she said, and the men followed her over to it. Mercifully it was unlocked, and they stepped through the door and into the room beyond. Hans shut the door behind them and stepped back, nearly slipping on something. The room was dark, all the lights either off or unpowered.

He pulled out his flashlight and flicked it on, and Hilda switched on the MP5's flashlight. They were in some kind of storage room, the floor a complete mess. Boxes, spare robot parts, and tools littered the floor, along with several skeletons. Hans lifted his foot and discovered a femur beneath it, explaining what he'd nearly slipped on. He was about to say something when he heard the squeaking of treads.

They all turned towards the noise, a knot forming in the pit of Hans' stomach. If they were locked in with a Panzerbot they were all dead. He listened to the noise as it got closer, coming from around the room's only standing rack. From the gaps between the boxes and parts he could see the robot moving along, but it didn't look like a Panzerbot. It looked like...

The robot came around the corner and turned towards them, and Hans stared at it, confused. It didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before. It was cylindrical, with two treads and two arms. At the top was-

Oh, Jesus...

"Oh goody, visitors!" the robot said, the glass dome at the top flashing as it spoke. Inside was a human brain, suspended on a lattice and submerged in a tank of gel. Hans didn't move, couldn't speak, his whole being rooted in place by what he was seeing. He looked down at the skeletons and shined his light on them, disturbed to find that some of the bones had scorch marks on them. "It's been so very long," the robot said, and lifted one of its arms. "Won't you come here and die?!"

The team scattered, the darkness speared by the flash of a red laser. The robot trundled after them, its cylindrical body turning on its axis to track Hans as he rushed behind a stack of boxes. The robot fired again, the laser burning into the cardboard. "Oh but isn't this fun, trapped in this room with no chance of escape!"

The brainbot's body shuddered as Friedrich shot it, the 7.62mm rounds punching into its chassis with little effect. It rotated towards him, the light from the brain tank casting an eerie glow on the room's walls, dark shadows dancing as the light moved. "Aren't you a great shot?" the robot cheerfully said. "Please come out so I can shoot you!"

Hans popped up from behind the boxes and fired, aiming for the brain tank. The pellets punched into the gel and stopped, suspended. The gel began to ooze out through the holes, and the robot started to turn back towards him. He fired again, the pellets shattering the left side of the tank.

"You're not trying very hard! The last visitors put in a lot more effort! Is that a shotgun? If you had a better gun, maybe you would stand a chance," the robot said. It fired again and Hans ducked, the cardboard catching fire. He heard Friedrich shoot again, but the room was too dark to get an accurate shot.

The robot grabbed one of the boxes and pulled, causing the whole stack to collapse. "Time to die, you worthless goose-stepper!" Hans raised his shotgun and was about to fire when the robot was lit up by a bright light, before being lit up by a burst of automatic fire. The 9mm rounds punched through the gel tank and perforated the abomination's brain, splattering the drained tank with gray matter. The robot's arms fell limp and the lights in the tank died, the machine just standing there.

Hans stood and backed away from the brainbot. "Jesus Christ, this thing was made in fucking AMERICA? I thought the Wanamingos were bad enough! What THE FUCK were they thinking with this?!"

Friedrich and Hilda rejoined him, their expressions showing they were just as bewildered as he was. His wife had her MP5 propped up on her shoulder, the flashlight beaming up at the ceiling and bathing the whole room in light. There was another door at the end of the room, opposite the door they'd come through, and Hans made a beeline straight for it. It was barred from the inside, and he released the bar and pushed the door open. The hall beyond was clear, shooting off in two directions. To the left it went down ten feet and then turned left, towards the factory floor. To the right it went to a staircase. Hans quickly left the room, the rest of the team right behind him. He swore to himself that he was glad that the U.S had been completely fucking erased by The Bomb; that sick, depraved country deserved it for the things they'd created.

Hans didn't stop until they reached the door at the top of the stairs, a sign declaring 'roof' above the door. He slowed down, not wanting to rush outside in case there were robots on the roof as well. He peeked through the window on the door; it looked clear, but there was no point in taking risks. "Goddamn abomination," he said, unable to get over the existence of the brainbot. "Who and why and what the fuck." He turned around and saw Hilda leaning against the wall, her left foot off the floor. "Are you OK?" Hans asked.

"No," Hilda said. "I got hit by a bullet or shrapnel in my leg. Upper thigh, I think." She looked back at Friedrich, who had turned around and was watching the way they'd come. "Could you take a look, Hans?"

"Of course." Hilda turned around, unfastened her pants, and Hans crouched to take a look. A trickle of blood was trailing down her left leg, smeared a bit by her pants. Hans dug into his gear for a cloth and a bandage. "Doesn't look too bad," he said. "Your chastity belt deflected it, it looks like." There was a mark on the belt and just below it a small gash, oozing blood. Hans disinfected, cleaned, and wrapped it. "You'll be OK."

Friedrich chortled. "The Frau wears a chastity belt?"

"It's an anti-rape belt, you fucking asshole," Hilda said, and pulled her pants back up. "I keep the key in my shoe, and Hans has one too. I may have to put up with getting shot at, but I don't need a rape on top of that. Not that you have to worry about that, you prick."

Friedrich scoffed. "Men can get raped too, Frau Eckhart. Believe me."

Hilda ignored him, turned around to face Hans, and gestured to the door. Hans turned the handle and, shockingly, the door actually opened. He crouched and slowly emerged out on the roof of the RobCo factory, the coast clear. He stood and the others followed him, looking up at the smokestack. It was easily a hundred feet tall, with a ladder going up halfway to the balcony around it. The second smokestack had collapsed at some point.

"Well, we don't all need to be up there, so who's going?" Friedrich asked.

"Me and Hans," Hilda said. "You can wait here."

Friedrich shrugged. "Have it your way. It's not as if you'll jump off and glide back to Brandenburg."

Hans and Hilda approached the ladder and began the slow trek up, carefully yanking on each rung to make sure it was safe before proceeding up. After a few minutes Hans had reached the top and stepped off onto the balcony, Hilda right behind him. He offered a hand but she ignored it. She stepped off next to him and looked out at Berlin as it spread beneath them.

For the first time in quite a while Hilda looked to be in awe, her wide gaze scanning the Berlin Odland. Hans, too, had to admit that the view was unlike anything else. Even though the city was a crumbling wreck its past grandeur could be seen in what remained. The countless landmarks, the Spree snaking through the city center, the withered husks of the office towers and the decaying parks. She was beautiful once, and Hans had once believed she'd be beautiful again one day. When Projekt Natursturm had crashed before his very eyes that dream had died, and now it was unlikely that Germany, let alone Berlin, would ever recover from The Bomb in his lifetime.

"Let's take a look, then," he said, and produced his binoculars. From their position on the smokestack they had a clear look at the Spreebogenpark and the nearby Reichstag building. While the camp at the park had looked big from ground level, it looked even bigger from their bird's eye view. Hans peered through the binoculars at the camp, taking in its fortifications.

"They've got a wall around the whole thing, obviously, with guard towers here and there. Not many, though, just seven. I see several handmade buildings, and some farmland. There's a single gate, near the Reichstag building." He frowned. "Hmm, and what looks like a gallows, too. I see a few Sturmutants around, but it looks like the camp mostly has normal humans in it. Or maybe they're Formers."

"You mean Rotters," Hilda said.

"Yeah..." Hans said, still looking at the camp. "They don't have anything else I can see, though. No vehicles, so we won't have to worry about any Hanomags or Panzers if we go in. If we had the right numbers an all-out assault would be the simplest approach, but stealth could work too. Not that I can sneak worth a damn." He returned the binoculars to their case. "Let's go back down and talk to Friedrich; discuss our plan."

"About that. We need to talk about him," Hilda said. Hans had been afraid of this, had been hoping to avoid it, but knew it had been inevitable. "I can't accept that he's even still fucking breathing, let alone toadying around with us. He's obviously tagging along just to spy on us."

"Well, yeah," Hans said. "He even told us as much."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. For the 'agreement' you two reached. Really, did Projekt Natursturm and the lives of all our friends mean so little to you that you couldn't shoot this guy the moment you saw him? Hell, did they mean so little that you thought it was OK to let him live?!"

Hans frowned. "When the Natursturm machine proved to be as slow as it did, and the GECK turned out to be irradiated, there was no fucking Projekt Natursturm anymore. All that was left was useless shit people were killing each other over."

"It's the principle of the matter, Hans! Walter died to that fucking alien horror, and Klara was turned into a pile of fucking goo by a Coalition soldier. They died for nothing!" Hilda said, and seemed to realize something. "You told me that you watched Klara die. Who shot her? Did you kill them?"

"Hilda..." Hans said.

"Who did it, Hans? It was Friedrich, wasn't it? Don't fucking LIE to me, Hans! Who was it?!"

Hans pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling like nothing he said ever got through her bloodlust, but knowing that she wasn't entirely wrong about this. "Yes, it was Friedrich... He did it."

Hilda put both of her hands on her head and ran them through her hair. "Jesus... Jesus Christ, what the FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" she screamed. "This rat-fucking faggot killed Klara, turned her into GREEN PASTE, and you let him LIVE?!"

"Now wait a minute, just listen-"

"Seriously, how could you let him get AWAY with that?! She was our friend, you WATCHED him do it, and then you just let him go?! Are you a fucking idiot?!"

"Could you just listen-"

"You're a fucking coward, Hans! Everything we went through, all the fucked up shit that happened to us, and you couldn't kill the one man responsible for destroying the dream WE worked so hard to build! You're a fucking coward, a little bitch! If I looked at my pussy in a mirror, I'd see your fucking face you spineless-"

*SMACK!*

Hilda slowly reached up to touch her cheek, her eyes filled with contempt and scorn. Her expression made Hans instantly regret it, made him ashamed of himself, but it was too late now. "Are you going to fucking listen to me now? I already you told a dozen-"

*SMACK!*

Now it was Hans' turn to reach up and touch his face, his fingertips coming away bloody. Her backhand wasn't quite as strong as his, for sure, but she more than made up for it with her nails. He balled his hand into a fist and then let it drop to his side, his palm smeared with the blood.

"If you ever hit me again I'll fucking kill you, and you know that I won't hesitate," Hilda said. She turned and began descending the ladder down. Hans sighed, took one last look at the Spreebogenpark, and followed her down. He was expecting to hear her shoot Friedrich as he neared the bottom, but she was just standing there, her hands on her hips. Friedrich was waiting by the door, and the two of them approached.

"Learn anything new?" he asked.

"You could say that," Hilda said.

"Their fortifications are modest, but not insurmountable," Hans said. "If we bring enough numbers we can punch through and put an end to this mutant horseshit. Kill all of them, kill their stupid queen, and be done with it."

Friedrich gave him a look. "Queen?"

"Their leader is some mutant they refer to as Queen Ilse. I didn't even know the Sturmers had a leader, but apparently she's it." Hans rubbed his jaw for a moment, thinking. "Let's go back to our respective holdouts and take a few days to rest. I'll talk to Paul and some of the other stations, see what kind of force we can assemble, and you can do the same, Friedrich. We'll come see you once we're finished."

Friedrich shook his head. "Not a chance, Herr Eckhart. I'm hardly as naïve and trusting as you two think I am. You're stuck with me to the end, but if you want us to pay a visit to Pariser to get some rest then I'm all for it." He turned to leave and stopped. "Oh, while you two were up there, I found a shortcut back down to the street. There's a fire escape here on the roof that goes down to an alley. It looks clear."

Hans nodded. "Let's go, then." The three of them went over to the fire escape and descended down its rickety metal steps to the alley below, several dumpsters and trash cans strewn throughout. The sun was beginning to go down, casting an orange light in the sky. Dark clouds on the horizon threatened rain, though Hans figured they'd be back in Pariser Platz before it came.

He turned to look at Hilda, who was already looking at him, and he wondered if their relationship could be salvaged. Or if it'd even survive this thing with the Sturmutants.

"Let's go," he said, and the three of them set off for Pariser Platz.