Hope

After ascending to the roof of the tallest nearby building and getting his bearings Hans figured out where he was and made the trek to Tempelhofer Feld, using the same gate to enter the base that he and Paul had first used. From there he walked across the large base to the Home Office, heading up the steps to General Harper's office, where he now stood.

"I see," Harper said after Hans had made his report. "I'll send another team to assault Fernsehturm, likely power armor soldiers."

"Speaking of which, tell me about them. I noticed they use two different suits."

Harper grinned. "The standard power armor troops use the West-Tek T-51 suit, the pinnacle of powered armor designs before the war. Our elite shock troops use the much more advanced X-01 suit, prototypes of which were fielded just months before the Great War. When we left in '79 we had a lot more power armor suits and soldiers trained to use them. The ones who remain are our most elite soldiers."

"West-Tek... I've heard that name before," Hans said.

"I'm not surprised," Harper said. "They were a major defense contractor in the years before the Great War. They were founded in 2002, did you know that? They'd be coming up on their hundred year anniversary if they still existed."

"I grieve for their loss," Hans said sarcastically. "So, what are we going to do about Paul and the NDM?"

Harper leaned back in his chair. "They've got a large base nearby, in the Schoneberg Rathaus, about four miles from here. There's a good chance your friend is being held there. Learning their Kaiser is a Goddamn robot is a big shock though, let me tell you. No idea what their Four Horsemen are, either, but if Kaiser Gaston is telling the truth about its power then it's bad news."

"If I live the rest of my life not knowing what it is then I'll be happy," Hans said. "So we're going to the Schoneberg Rathaus next?"

"Yes, but not right now. We're still rebuilding our strength after assaulting the botanical gardens. Take a day or two off then come see me, and I'll have a plan and some teams ready for the assault on the Rathaus. In the meantime I'll assign a few teams to investigate any unusual NDM activities."

Hans sighed and walked out of the office, heading downstairs to the lobby and out the front door. He stood on the front steps of the Home Office and looked out across the former park. The EAE had lost a few vertibirds in the mission to take the botanical gardens but the bulk of their air force was intact, along with their Hanomag halftracks. Combined with their power armor troops it was a force to be reckoned with, but Hans wondered if it'd be enough.

With little else to do he decided to head around to the market and talk to Helga. Restocking after the failed mission at Fernsehturm was a good idea either way. Hans had to admit to himself he felt protective of the little girl, even if he felt it on a subconscious, instinctive level. He was sure that she could protect herself just fine, though. Still, after seeing the Enclave's child soldiers he couldn't help but feel that keeping an eye on her would help assuage his guilt at working with an organization that sent kids to the front lines.

He found Helga in her usual spot in the market, talking animatedly to her guard, who was leaning back in his chair with his hands folded behind his head. "And then," Helga said, "Grognak went up the stairs holding his sword and there was a woman's body on a harp in the room! Her blood was all over the strings and stuff, it was so weird! I wanted to find out what happened next but I don't have any of the issues that come after it!"

"Maybe I'll keep an eye out for Grognak comics on my next mission then," Hans said, and Helga spun around to face him.

"Traveler! You're back again! Where's your buddy, I want him to buy something!"

"He was captured," Hans said. "We both were, by the NDM. Their Kaiser's actually a robot, and he let me go to warn the Enclave about some secret weapon the NDM's got. He kept Paul behind as a prisoner."

Helga sneered. "Their leader's a robot? That's stupid. Why would someone follow a robot?"

"He's a big robot," Hans said.

"That's dumb. That's like these stupid Unstoppables comics I read, about some guy named Dr. Brainwash. It was really stupid! Even the Silver Shroud couldn't make that one cool, and he's cool no matter what he does!"

Hans sat down. "Are comics all you have?"

"I've got American books. Some of them are cool, like the 'Big Book of Science', but some of them are really stupid. Like 'Lying, Congressional Style'. If that's what American politicians were like then no wonder their country got bombed. I've got these holotapes that are supposed to be all about the Silver Shroud and stuff, but my tape player doesn't work anymore. I tried to get someone to fix it, but he couldn't. All he can fix are guns, I guess."

"Hmm, I'm pretty good at fixing things. Can I take a look? Maybe I can fix it for you."

Helga rooted around through her things and produced the tape player. "If you fix it, I'll give you free ammo!"

Hans looked the tape player over, surprised to see it was the same model he'd had back at the cabin. He produced a few tools from his pack and disassembled the tape player, looking over the internals. Helga stood on her chair and watched, curious. Hans connected the player to one of her fusion batteries and tested it, not surprised to see it had the same problem that had plagued his same player. He carefully bent the laser's track back into place, tested it, and asked for one of Helga's tapes. He put it in, pressed play, and a few seconds later a woman's voice spoke in English.

"Shroud," the woman said, "you're hurt. Come over here, and let the Mistress of Mystery take care of you."

"Mistress," a gruff male's voice said, "I think I've played my last card with this one."

Hans didn't understand a word of it, but he could tell by the look on Helga's face that she was enamored with it. He pressed stop on the tape player, removed the tape, and reassembled it. "So cool..." Helga said. "Thanks, traveler!"

"It was no problem," Hans said. "Those tape players all have fragile tracks for their lasers, I guess. It's an easy fix, though."

"I'm gonna show my friends later!" Helga said. "They're gonna be jealous."

Hans smiled. "I'm sure they will. Now, let's talk business." He searched through her ammo chest for 8mm Mauser and produced a decent amount, which she let him have for free, true to her word. He still decided to buy a few M72 Plazmastielhandgranaten, trying not to ask himself (or her) where she could've possibly found them.

"I'm curious," Hans said when he was done shopping, "what's next for you? When you grow up, I mean."

"I still have to go to school until I'm 18, but after that I'm gonna keep traveling around and selling stuff. I told you I wanna open a really big shop and pay people to sell things for me! That way I can go exploring on my own. A boy in my class's dad has a camera and he showed us his dad's pictures of Cologne! I want to go there and see it for myself!"

Hans gave her a look. "I've been to Cologne, it's one of the worst places on Earth now. Why would you want to go there?!"

"To see the glow, duh! The pictures were all black and white, but you could see the glow in them. He said that his dad said it was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen. That it was scary, but also cool! I want to see it for myself."

"Well, I don't recommend it, on account of the lethal levels of radiation and horrible mutants, but you're nothing if not a free spirit, so trying to stop you would be a waste of my time," Hans said. Helga stuck her tongue out at him.

"What about you, traveler? You gonna keep traveling?"

Hans shook his head. "No, God no. I'm going back home to the Pariser Platz U-Bahn station and back to a relatively peaceful life managing the other stations. I'm ready to be done with all this crap."

"You wanna live underground all the time? Sounds boring. I would travel!"

"Well I did a lot, when I was younger," Hans said, and that's when he realized it. Realized why he felt such a connection with the little girl, and why he saw so much of himself in her.

Hilda...

"It's why I've been to the Cologne Crater, and lived in Stuttgart for a few years," he continued. "I wanted to travel too, and see the rest of Germany. In the end I usually ended up getting roped into some nonsense, that's why I came back to Berlin and have stayed here ever since. You'll understand, when you're my age, just how nice it is to have a stable home and the peace and quiet of stability."

Helga rolled her eyes. "Now you sound like my ethics teacher. He's always talking about the shared stability of society, and how we all owe it to each other to lift each other up. Sounds dumb when he starts talking about killing all the mutants afterward."

"Do you hate mutants, Helga?"

The little girl frowned, her brow furrowing. "I've never even met one! I mean, I've seen the really bad ones, like the Rovers and Croakers and even a Totenkopf once! I got to pet a Rover once, though, that was cool. I don't hate them, I just try to avoid them. Rovers are real easy to avoid, since they usually just mind their own business, and Croakers are easy to avoid if you don't go near water. Totenkopfs are scary, though."

"What about Rotters and Sturmutants?"

"I've never met one," Helga said. "My ethics teacher says all mutants are evil and want to kill people. He says Rotters are all feral and stuff, that you can't talk to them because their brains are all screwed up from radiation. He says Sturmutants only live outside Berlin now, because some guy killed them all last year. He must've been really cool to do that!"

Jesus Christ, Hans thought. He decided not to tell her that he and his friend Erich had been the ones to do that. He wasn't exactly proud of it. "And killing all the mutants will make the world like how it used to be, right?"

Helga shrugged. "That's what he says. But won't all the radiation and stuff be around? If we kill all the mutants but don't get rid of the radiation, then won't it make more mutants?"

"See, now you're starting to understand. You should listen to your teachers, absolutely, but not everything they teach you has value. As you get older, you'll start to understand what I mean."

"Do you hate mutants, traveler?"

Hans blinked, unsure of how to answer the question. Did he? He always told himself he didn't, but General Harper had been right: he didn't exactly have a track record of sticking up for them.

The Rotter soldiers the Final Order executed outside of the Hamburg Airport, the Rotters that Hilda gunned down in Munich, the Sturmutant camp Erich and I destroyed in my quest to avenge Hilda's death... I don't hate mutants, but... The trail of bodies in my wake doesn't exactly match up with that.

"No," Hans finally said. "I don't hate mutants. The sane ones among us want to live just like anyone else, but there are bad ones out there who do want to kill people. It's important to understand that they want to kill people because of what so-called 'normal' humans have done to mutants over the last twenty years. It doesn't excuse their actions, or make it OK for them to kill humans, but killing them isn't the only answer. If you make friends with them, you'll find that all they want is to be friends too."

"Huh," Helga said. "OK. Whatever you say, traveler."

Hans didn't know if he'd gotten through to the little girl. All he could do is hope he had. She probably had years of schooling with the EAE, listening to their spiel all day every day. Breaking it was something only she could do. All Hans could do was plant the seeds in her mind.

"I guess," Helga eventually said, "if I ever meet a mutant I'll try talking to it first. But if it tries to shoot me then I'll shoot it first! That's OK, right?"

Hans smiled. "It's OK to shoot people who try to shoot you first, yes." He looked at his watch. "I gotta get going. Gotta try to find some place to relax while I figure out how to bust my friend out of captivity."

"OK," Helga said. "Bye traveler! Good luck breaking your friend outta prison!"

Hans walked away and left the market, wondering if everything would turn out alright for kids like Helga Oertzen. If he and Paul and the rest of the EAE could win this fight, then there was a chance at least.

And, Hans knew from experience, sometimes one chance is all it took.