The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Old Wizard's Woods, Part 2 of 3

Nikola Tesla thought he could disappear in the forest and live out some fantasy of a new life, away from the war. But the inventor of some of the deadliest technologies to ever live is not allowed to light a match and walk away. No, he’s got debts to pay to both friends and enemies alike.

With assassins on his trail, Tesla much make the hard choices and desperate sacrifices that he thought he could run away from, or risk losing it all.

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This is Part 2 of The Case the Old Wizard’s Woods. If you’d like to avoid spoilers, read Part 1 first.

Content warnings: Mild swearing, violence, gun violence, death, gore, alcohol use, drug use, tobacco use, creeps, gaslighting.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, AUGUST 26, 1943
ELBERT AND SONS AUTO REPAIR
JACKSON, MAINE

A repeated impact against the automotive repair shop’s anterior entrance interrupted Damir’s caloric intake routine. He looked up from hit plate and watched the door from his seat.

Knock, knock, knock.

The impacts’ near-syncopated rhythm indicated the source was of a biological nature. His imprint indicated that the most probable cause was a human. The impacts originated higher on the closed door, increasing the probability that the person causing them was an adult. His imprint cycled into interaction procedures.

Those procedures dictated a verbal response.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

His interaction imprint offered three possible verbalization branches, but the increased frequency and force applied by the impacts called for the most terse response.

“Yes?” Damir vocalized. English was statistically the most likely language for the human adult to respond positively to in his current geographic region.

“Excuse me, sir?” a human adult replied. English. Tone and timbre indicated that it was likely an adult male. Damir saw the adult male’s silhouette in the shop’s dusty windows, his shadow projected by an occultation of the post-meridian sun. The angle of the sun and height of the shadow indicated he was one-and-seventy-two-one-hundredths meters in height.

Damir’s imprint verified time and date based off the sun’s position and determined that he had registered no scheduled delivery for the indicated period.

Deliveries were Damir’s only acceptable interactions with persons other than Nick. Nick was one-and-eighty-eight-hundredths meters tall. The present adult male was not Nick and he was not arriving with a registered delivery.

The interaction was verified as unacceptable and triggered a separate subroutine in Damir’s imprint:

He was to terminate it without increasing the interactor’s interest level.

“I am terribly busy right now,” he vocalized, the lowest-aggression response among his options.

The caloric cost of holding his yeast tablet near his mouth throughout the unacceptable interaction was greater than lowering it, so he set it on his plate with the remaining four.

Damir watched the door knob turn. He had imprinted the door’s status as locked, yet still it turned.

An adult male entered the automotive repair shop. Damir’s estimate of one-and-seventy-two-one-hundredths meters tall was correct. He was wearing new garments made in a vulgar style and his gait indicated he was carrying conspicuous weight on his right hip.

“Do you have a moment?” he asked. His diction and accent matched what Damir’s imprint classified as ‘midwestern American.’ What did not match anything in the imprint was the man’s appearance: his dermis was deathly pale, beyond the symptoms of anemia, fever, even oculocutaneous albinism. The imprint’s only possible match to the man’s pallor was that of someone recently drowned

Damir hesitated while the imprint struggled to match answers to input. The man had spoken to him, therefore he was not drowned. The man’s skin could only be found on a corpse. The observations did not meet his expectations. His sole determination was that something was very wrong with the person who had just entered the automotive repair shop.

Damir’s imprint instructed that he assist persons in need.

“Are you in distress, sir?” he asked. He did not move from his chair but he was prepared to render first aid.

“No, there is no distress yet,” the man replied. The imprint did not register that statement as a threat.

“I am terribly busy right now,” Damir repeated.

“I won’t be long,” the adult male insisted.

“I am having lunch,” Damir replied. He escalated the urgency of his response. “I do not have extra.”

“I am not here to ask for food,” the adult male said. His right hand drifted to the object on his hip, resting on something between fourteen and twenty centimeters in length. “You run this place?”

“I am having lunch.”

“I can see that. You from around here, pal? What’s your name?” the adult male asked.

Damir was to be polite, to decrease interest, and to resolve unacceptable interactions in a timely manner. The imprint instructed his answer:

“I am James Elbert, you can call me Jim. I am in town for a few weeks to help my cousins with their automobile repair business.”

He droned, like he had said it a thousand times before. It was litany to him, imprinted into his very marrow analogue to be recited whenever called upon.

“Nice to meet you, Jim,” the adult male said. He looked around the empty, quiet shop. “Where are your cousins?”

“They are repairing a customer’s vehicle at the customer’s home. I can take a message to relay to them upon their return,” Damir recited. He had only had to access that deep into his imprint’s responses regarding unacceptable interactions twice before.

“Well, tell Rob that Will stopped by, would you?” the adult male said. His smile indicated friendliness, but his eyes did not move. They stayed locked onto Damir’s face.

Damir did not twitch. The imprint did not allow for surprise. Though the father and sons behind Elbert and Sons Auto Repair were fictional, none of those personae were named ‘Rob’ or any variation thereof.

The interaction had passed the bounds of unacceptability. The imprint’s options regarding deceit and response to it were not as exhaustive as those provided when examining a shipping manifest or diagnosing mechanical problems in internal combustion engines. it allowed deceit when deceit was employed against it. Damir would determine Will’s intent, then reassess.

“I will communicate to him that you visited,” Damir said. Will’s eyes moved just enough to give him away, his irises flashing pink in the afternoon sun. The imprint had no insight with which to add further context to that observation, so Damir disregarded it.

Will’s minute tic did tell Damir that he had followed the wrong prompt. He had just verified to Will that neither of them was where they were supposed to be.

He had extended an unacceptable interaction.

The imprint’s options were exhausted. It reinitiated its inherent logic tree from the beginning:

“I am terribly busy right now.”

“So you said,” Will replied. His voice changed tone and timbre. What might have been classified as cordial had sublimated into something threatening.

When a threat was verified, Damir was to run. The imprint overrode all other functions.

Damir stood, his chair squealing across the concrete floor.

Will stiffened. Damir watched him adjust his stance, moving his weight to the balls of his feet. His right hand drifted ever closer to the object beneath his coat. The actual movement was near-invisible, but the imprint recognized it as potential violence.

“I am having lunch,” Damir repeated. He prepared himself to escape. He had eaten five of his ten daily yeast tablets and had drank seven-tenths of one liter of water. With his remaining internal caloric and water reserves, he could run flat out for sixty-one kilometers.

Will had not given any indication that he would chase Damir for sixty-one kilometers. That distance would have been enough if the imprint did not superimpose its own priorities over his own. Although Damir was to preserve himself, it was not his primary task. He existed to receive deliveries, pack them onto the truck, and to protect Nick from unacceptable interactions.

The imprint needed more information.

“I can leave Rob a message for you,” it bade him say.

“Who’s Rob?” Will asked. “I am looking for Nikola.”

Upon hearing that name, lightning coursed out of the imprint and through Damir in a manner that was so immediate that he was already leaping through the front window before Will had finished smirking.

Damir had to continue his tasks: he had to protect Nick. He had to protect Mister Tesla.

Damir landed among the falling glass, gathered his feet beneath him, then took off a dead sprint, eastward on Village Road.

“Stop him!” Will shouted from the broken window. He held a fixed-blade knife and was pointing it at Damir’s back.

Damir had not considered from whence Will had originated until he was already outside. Twelve Caucasian adult males in soot-stained gray overcoats were lounging against a series of four large cargo trucks parked in front of the automotive repair shop. None of them suffered the unidentified dermal condition that afflicted Will.

They did all produce firearms as Damir sprinted past.

“Non sparargli!” Will shouted. Italian with a German accent, an order for them to refrain from employing firearms against Damir.

Five of the loitering adult males holstered their firearms and took off after him on foot as the rest embarked onto their cargo trucks. Damir counted four engine ignitions engage behind him.

He sprinted seventy paces east along the right shoulder of Village Road before he determined that the four vehicles were too close to evade on the road. He adjusted his vector and left the shoulder, entering the gully where Village Road passed over North Branch Marsh Stream. The off-road terrain would preclude the passage of any automotive vehicle, much less large cargo trucks.

Brambles and mud slowed him, but he had the caloric capacity to endure. His muscular strands and tensors did not generate lactic acid, so he would be able to travel further and faster than any human pursuers.

A flock of Setophaga petechia startled as he crashed through a blueberry bush, sending the small yellow birds into the air. Damir’s imprint impressed the migratory patterns and song of the little warblers onto him. It told him about their diet and courtship, about their small cup nests and the division of responsibilities between parents when raising chicks to fledglings.

What the imprint did not contain was further options to evade capture. All Damir could do was run.

He was twenty-six minutes into a southbound course when he finally stopped. The North Branch Marsh extended around him in every direction. The cargo trucks could not have pursued him so far in the morass. The adult males aboard them would have been sweating, swearing, hacking through underbrush. Warblers and thrushes would have been taking flight were they in the marsh.

Damir did not detect any indication that the adult males had continued their pursuit.

He oriented himself eastward and began along the creek bed. He would have to weave between the hills and gullies, but an eastbound trajectory would eventually lead him to Penobscot Bay, from which he could travel south to Belfast.

There was a public telephone there, and he could leave a message with Nick and await further instructions. Beyond that task, the imprint ended.

Damir estimated that his caloric capacity was more than adequate to complete the journey. He had been undamaged during his flight. It would be a long walk, but he would let the imprint wander, listening for the calls of the birds that took up residence in the region for the season.

He walked for one-hundred-seventy-one minutes. In that time Damir had identified the songs of sixteen different migratory species before the calls went silent. The position of the sun indicated that it was no later than five-thirty, which was far too early for birds to seek shelter for the evening.

The imprint did not allow Damir to feel fear, but it did once more reiterate his signular option to evade capture: run. He had not determined the best course of action before a green shadow passed overhead.

A sudden impact against Damir’s cranium reset the imprint, and his options were reduced to a null state.

When Damir’s capacity to observe, identify, and interact restored itself, he discovered that his ability to move had been removed. Will was standing over him, extracting a syringe from his right forearm. Damir tried to stand, but he was bound to the table upon which he had been undertaking his caloric intake routine several hours before. It felt smooth on his bare back. His clothing had been removed.

Around him, Elbert and Sons Auto Repair was thoroughly disorganized. Every tool box, desk, work bench, and cabinet had been opened and emptied onto the muddied floor in a manner that could be characterized as ‘violent.’ The imprint had insisted he keep it maintained but shabby so as to not draw undue attention.

Outside, it was dark. Damir could not see the moon so he could not make an accurate estimate regarding the time. Without knowing how long had passed, he could not made an accurate estimate regarding the state of his caloric reserves, either.

Will discarded the syringe in a waste bin and took his place in the corner to watch Damir. He kept one hand on the pommel of his fixed-blade knife, the other toying with a yeast tablet.

“You’re not Nikola Tesla,” he said after moment.

That name should have sent the imprint screaming options down branching pathways, but it remained quiet.

Damir was alone.

He could observe and identify, but he had no guide to prioritize his interaction. All he could do was rely on past experience to inform his next choice. All he knew, the very reason for his being, was to complete Nick’s tasks.

He was alone, but he would continue in his work. It was all he had.

To do so, he would need to get up from the table.

Damir had been tied down with rubber hoses at his neck, wrists, and knees. Judging by their diameter, he would not be able to generate enough leverage to overcome the bindings’ tensile strength. He could not apply force to escape.

With no imprint to guide him, he tried the tack that he, and Will himself, had employed during their first interaction: deception.

“I am James Elbert, you can call me Jim. I am in town for a few weeks to help my cousins with their automobile repair business.”

“I do not know what you are, but it is not James Elbert, and it is not Nikola Tesla,” Will countered.

The imprint should have recoiled as if burned. It remained inert. Damir’s efforts at deceit shriveled away.

“I am not Mister Tesla,” he replied. The imprint offered him no avenue for deceit, so he did not engage in it. “I cannot be.”

“You certainly look like him,” Will said. It wasn’t phrased as a question, but Damir recognized it as one.

He had never considered his own physical appearance. His hair was purely ornamental. He washed and groomed himself to belay unacceptable interactions, but the act was wholly utilitarian, dictated by the imprint.

A cursory listing of his physical attributes indicated he shared a number of qualities with Nick.

“I look like myself,” Damir answered.

“You are not you,” Will replied. “None of us are who we appear to be.”

The imprint offered Damir no response to his statement. Will took an olfactory sample of the yeast tablet then placed it on the plate. His facial expression indicated that he was displeased with the tablet’s odor.

“Only truth can set you free, my friend,” Will said. “Let me start: my name is not Will.”

The imprint offered no response. The void it once occupied echoed with Not-Will’s words. Damir understood the concept of bartering. His situation had become an exchange: truth for freedom. The yearning to continue Nick’s tasks gnawed at him, biting deeper than the hose across his throat.

“Talk to me and you’ll be back doing whatever it is you do. We’ll start easy: how old are you, Jim?” Not-Will asked after a moment.

“Thirty-two,” Damir answered. His imprint insisted that he say thirty-two in order to avoid unacceptable interactions. As he resembled an adult human male in many ways, verbalizing his actual age would result in further unacceptable interactions. Yet he was already in an unacceptable interaction…

The imprint had abandoned him.

“I am four-hundred-twelve days old,” Damir corrected. His existence was Nick’s tasks. Neither force nor deceit would allow him to re-engage those tasks. He would barter.

“I see,” Not-Will whispered. He gathered himself after three seconds and smiled broadly. “That is good, thank you.”

“Please release me,” Damir said. He had offered his part of the bargain.

“Where is Mister Tesla?” Will asked. The imprint would have been burning with instruction if it were there.

“I do not know,” Damir answered honestly.

“I believe you,” Not-Will replied. “But he comes here. What does he do when he visits?”

“Mister Tesla leaves me with provisions, I help him load any packages I have received into his Chevrolet Canopy Express, he refills his vehicle and carrying cans with petrol, then he leaves.”

“What direction?”

“Please release me,” Damir implored.

“Of course, Jim, of course, that’s our deal,” Not-Will replied. His eyes twinkled pink again. “Which direction?”

“West. Please release me.”

“Does he come at night?”

Damir had to return to his tasks.

“No, Mister Tesla does not operate a vehicle after dark,” Damir said.

“When was the last time he was here?”

Damir’s jaw locked.

“Last question, I promise, then I cut you out,” Not-Will swore, one hand over his central cardiovascular system and the other on his fixed-blade knife.

“Eight days ago,” Damir answered.

“What time?”

“He left at four-thirty-six in the afternoon.”

“Sunset’s just before eight this time of year,” Not-Will muttered. “So he’s less than three hours west of here.”

“Please release me,” Damir repeated.

Not-Will looked down at the yeast tablets and picked one up again. He sniffed it then took a small bite out of one corner. His nose crinkled at its taste and he spat the crumbs onto the floor.

“How do you eat this stuff?” he wondered.

Damir realized in that moment that while deceit might have been ineffective against Not-Will, it did not prevent him from becoming a victim of it himself.

Not-Will smiled again, then unsheathed his fixed-blade knife. Its edge gleamed in the shop’s low lights. He approached Damir’s bare belly, his blade in the lead.

“You don’t have to answer that question, Jim,” he said. “I’ll just see for myself.”

SATURDAY AFTERNOON, AUGUST 29, 1943
TESLA RESIDENCE, WILD RIVER WILDERNESS
WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST, MAINE

Mickey and Earp dropped to the ground on instinct. Earp's .45 barked in response to the sudden barrage, sending shots back at their attackers. Gunsmoke choked the green air.

“Stop!” Tesla shouted over the din. The scientist was still standing fast before the fusillade. The Tridente soldiers racked their rifles and popped new magazines into their submachine guns. They took careful aim at Tesla and fired some more, but Tesla still stood, unharmed.

The uniformed leader realized with a start their none of their shots were connecting and howled an order to his men:

“Cease fire, now!”

His men complied within seconds. They’d been taught to fear his dissatisfaction.

“Please, go home,” Tesla said, too loud in the sudden silence. A flutter of desperation had entered his voice. He was cradling the control box in his arms, letting his thumb rest on one green button.

“So you have disabled our firearms,” the uniformed man said. He dropped his MP 40 onto its sling and drew a P 38 Luger. He leveled it at Tesla and squeezed the trigger. A flash and gout of cordite smoke erupted from its barrel but Tesla did not so much as wince. The intruder stepped forward, blowing gently to clear the gunsmoke away. The bullet had ground to halt within a yard and was gently drifting to the ground like a half-filled balloon. He plucked it out of the air. It sizzled against his fingers, but he did not seem to mind. Metal clinked as he walked, and some poking through the underbrush with the toe of his boot revealed the scores of rounds his men had just fired, piled among dead leaves. He looked up and gave a knowing smile, letting the dappled sunlight illuminate his face for the first time.

He was pale. Not ill, but blanched a harsh corpse white. He had neither hair nor eyebrows, and his lashless eyes glowed a chemical pink in the light.

Mick knew exactly what he was looking at.

“Brotherhood,” he growled. “One ugly mother.”

Earp nodded; the regional inspector knew all about Hitler's brain-washed fanatics, maniacs formed by chemicals and torture to become military tacticians and blood-thirsty assassins. Brothers felt neither pain nor fear, only dedication and anger, and the Nazi brain-washing process that twisted them was powerful enough to turn anyone to their cause, permanently.

The Brother took his steel pot helmet off and tossed it toward Tesla. The magnetic field caught it and sent it into a gentle spin before setting it gently on the ground.

“Electromagnesis,” he said. “Very clever, Herr Tesla.”

“Please leave now, there is nothing more you can do here,” Tesla pleaded.

“You are a man of science. A student of history would know that men have been killing men long before bullets and steel became our tools of choice.” He barked an order over his shoulder:

“Arm yourselves.”

The soldiers dropped their guns and picked up whatever was within reach: jagged chunks of granite and heavy pine boughs. The traitors stared at Tesla and the officials, their brutal prehistoric weapons looking deadlier than the firearms they’d discarded.

“Please, go home to your wives and children, to your bread and dogs and chickens,” Tesla called out. His voice wavered. The control box was rattling in his trembling hands.

“These men are mine, through and through. Your pleas are pathetic to them, while my orders are sacrament. Show him your reverence, Brüderchen.”

On the Nazi's word, the line of Italian-American insurgents ripped open their collars. X's, V's, and I's, Roman numerals, had been branded into each of their necks. The scars were still puffy, pink, and peeling, some oozing pus down the front of their shirts.

Mickey had read that term, Brüderchen, in reports. Elf had one of his own back in Kansas. Each Brother would recruit flocks of zealous killers around themselves, their 'little brothers.' It was part of their programming to build their own militant cults of personality, men eager to kill and die for them.

“Surrender and we will not hurt you,” the Brother assured Tesla. The branch he'd picked up was thick with knobbed burls large enough to cave a man's skull in. He held it in both hands like a Louisville Slugger and tested its swing.

“No,” was all Tesla said. A tear grew in the corner of his eye then tumbled down his cheek and soaked into his beard.

“Bring the target to me, alive. Kill anyone else,” the Brother ordered. His men looked at each other up and down their long line. A silent assent passed through their number, and they advanced as one. The Brother stood back and watched his men go forth.

“Please,” Tesla implored. His finger flicked away from the green button.

“They will kill us in front of you and burn down your home with your wife inside,” Mick hissed.

“I know,” Tesla sighed. He jammed down the button, then closed his eyes.

Somewhere off behind Tesla's cabin, the reverberating twang of a metal spring sounded. Mick ducked instinctively.

A gleaming chrome egg larger than a horse crashed through the branches overhead, raining down pine cones and needles on Mickey's head. It smashed into the clearing in front of the line of Tridente soldiers. They recoiled back, only for a second, then approached, makeshift weapons at the ready. Something whirred inside and the thing popped open like a jack-in-the-box, sending them scrambling back again.

An aluminum structure sprouted from the open sphere, ratcheting upward on telescoping supports.

“Back!” was all the Brother had time to shout before the eight-foot scaffold reached its full height. A table-sized shining dish unfurled atop it like a metal blossom. The entire contraption hummed for just a second before the dish turned to face the closest Tridente soldier, one bearing a snapped sapling like a quarterstaff.

A golden beam, glowing dully and no wider than a pencil, hissed out of the center of the dish and touched the left side of the man's chest for a fraction of a second. He dropped to his knees instantly, throwing aside the sapling to reach toward the smoking dime-sized hole in his shirt pocket.

He did not cry out, for he was already dead.

“What in the - !” Mick began, but a crackling sound cut him off.

Silver sparks started flying out of the man's chest wound, which had expanded into a flare-spitting black crater the size of a fist in seconds. The man may have been dead, but the reaction had just begun.

His skin turned gray, and black stains leeched up his neck. Ash began whistling out of his chest cavity, propelled in chunks by expanding bloody steam. His spine snapped back and his head contracted into itself with cracking bone and a slurp as his eyes were sucked back into his own skull. His mouth and empty sockets began smoking, charring into black pits that matched his chest. The same silver sparks came crackling out of the new craters, growing in volume until it looked like an angle grinder was working overtime in his throat. The whistling grew even louder as embered lungs and viscera rushed into the air.

An incredible stench reached Mickey's nostrils.

“Oh my Lord,” Earp said.

Mickey almost covered his eyes. Whatever the Heartland Heroes had done to those Legionnaires, the teleforce weapon was worse. The Tridente corpse slumped over, hitting the ground face-first. His burned-out skull exploded in black shards and white-hot stars and the headless body caught on fire in front of his comrades.

The Tridente stopped in their tracks.

“Forward, Brüderchen!” the Brother ordered from the rear. Before they could decided whether continue on or to run for their lives, the teleforce projector turned on its platform and found every one of them, standing fast or on the move. Its gold beam drilled through each of their hearts with terrifying precision, one by one.

Thirty fascists were dead in less than a minute.

The air was filled with fountains of light, crackling and whistling as they burned off. Smoke that used to be human flesh rasped Mickey's lungs, and he dug his treated black bandanna out of his pocket and pressed it over his nose and mouth.

“I knew you had tricks, old man,” the Brother called to Tesla. A field of sputtering sparks lay between him and Tesla, his massacred little brothers. He patted a pouch dangling from his web gear. A bright blue light gleamed within it. “Do you think I would pursue a Titan without an aegis?”

The teleforce platform whirred and the dish turned to focus on the Brother. Its golden beam reached out and collided with an invisible force a yard in front of the grinning Nazi. Shining energy splashed across the shimmering barrier, rippling gold lightning around a flickering blue sphere that completely enveloped him.

“What is that?” Mickey asked.

“It is an Ionen-Aktivierung field,” Tesla finally managed to stammer. “He is mad.”

“He is going to blow!” Earp shouted, stepping between Tesla and the Brother. He’d seen the aftermath of Vesuvius and Toroka. He knew what an overloading I-A bomb could do.

“I think not. It need not enter into an overload state to achieve his desired effect. The active field’s agitated ions are serving his purpose: they are diffusing the tungsten stream.”

Earp stood down like that mumbo jumbo meant something to him. Mick just shrugged. What was going on was beyond him. Old cops were never meant to deal with Tesla’s flavor of bullshit.

“Sounds like he's too smart for our own good,” he grated.

“He must surely know that the field will expose him to cancers as yet undescribed,” Tesla said.

“Cancer's a lot more treatable than death rays,” Mickey figured aloud. He watched the Brother advance on the teleforce device. The dish was desperately pulsing beam after beam at the smirking man, oblivious to the glowing blue halo that deflected its every shot.

Mickey hefted his club and started for the Brother, ready to intercept him before the humming beam could be disabled. He felt a strong hand grab his elbow, and he was astonished to find that iron grip belonged to Tesla.

“He's about to bust the beam,” Mick objected.

“I am unsure of the effect de-ionized diffused subliminal particles would have on the human body. That light-emitting reaction,” he pointed at the golden arcs tracing around the pulsing blue sphere, “Might expose you to millions of watts of energy in the form of deflected tungsten plasma. It could be unpleasant were we to get close enough to stop him.”

“Why doesn't it stop shooting?” Earp asked.

“That is its targeting system, which must be disabled manually. If one human heart is beating within its range, the teleforce projector will detect and home in on its intrinsic electrical frequency. It then emits particle beams until that frequency is no longer detectable.”

“So these badges...” Earp said, tapping the copper rectangle dangling from his chest.

“They prevent the turret from detecting us with a Faraday field over our persons, effectively masking our intrinsic electrical emissions to the device.”

The Brother stomped through the charred, smoking remains of his traitor army and stood before the pulsing tower. Sparking, ultra-accelerated tungsten snaked across his I-A aura and scoured the ground and corpses around him, peeling it all away to reveal scorched bone and glowing granite. The Brother ignored all that. Instead, he hauled back with his heavy branch and brought it down on the fragile dish above his head.

One good wallop sent sparks and arcing electricity vomiting up out of the scaffold like a tapped oil well. The dish shattered and the beam cut off. Silver metal rained down on the Brother's shoulders. He glared about at his dead men, then focused on Tesla.

“The Führer would have a great place for a man who can kill armies with such ease,” he told him, his pink eyes not leaving the inventor’s blues.

“It was not easy,” Tesla whispered.

“He's not going anywhere with you, you nut job,” Earp said. He had his Colt 1911 out. The magnetic field was giving the pistol life, and it was struggling to jump out of his hands. The Brother saw his wavering aim and his smile grew even wider. He slipped his Luger out of its holster and tossed it over his shoulder. It seemed to bounce on the air, then froze in place and began a slow descent to the ground.

“Your gun is as useless as mine. I am going to beat you to death before I take him,” the Brother promised. He lifted his long branch. Metal shards were embedded in its dry bark. “I will leave the pair of you dead in these woods. Your bodies will be lost amongst this traitors' boneyard and your corpses will be burned like diseased animals.”

“That's a nice stick you got there,” Mick said. He rose and stood next to Earp, his club in hand. “But ain't you supposed to talk soft when you're carrying one of those?”

“The man with the stick speaks how he pleases,” the Brother answered. “Are you planning to fight me? It would be an unfortunate waste of your last moments.”

“I could think of worse ways to go,” Mick chimed in.

“You do not know me,” the Nazi said. “I would bury a blade in your fat belly and - !”

“Yeah, you’d gut me,” Mick interrupted. “All you cookie-cutter krauts sing the same old tune.”

He pulled Earp out of his way and squared up with the Nazi. The Brother had a couple inches on him, but Mick had bulk on his side. He wasn't afraid of the white-skinned killer. He laughed, then continued:

“What number are you, Fritz? By my count, Brother Nine bought it from a typewriter. Mind you, he got got and his cronies were actual Vikings, not your sad little social club. Brother Eight is in a coma in the Grave, Brothers Twenty-One through Thirty are at the bottom of the Atlantic, and Six caught a bullet through the throat in Sicily. Twenty got his head caved in before we buried Zero and your whole next generation in Eberkopf. And I personally saw Eleven get killed by a damn centipede and Seven get his melon knocked in by a burning timber.”

“What is your point?” the Brother demanded.

“Well, we work for the Office, and cutting you super-soldier types down to size is something like our specialty,” Mick goaded. “Now what number do I get to carve into my club after I bash you to pieces?”

“I am Bruder Achtzehn, if that eases your addled mind before your death.”

“Achtzehn?” Mickey wondered.

“Eighteen,” Earp, Tesla, and the Brother all translated in unison.

“Well, Eighteen, you're outnumbered,” Mickey said. “How about you surrender? I got just the Grave to put you in.”

“Outnumbered?” Eighteen laughed. He leaned to the side and said: “I think not.”

Mick lifted his club in front of his face almost on instinct. Something whipped over Eighteen's shoulder at high velocity and collided with the club. Mick’s hand throbbed and he almost dropped his weapon as he tripped backward. An instinctual spasm caused him to swing it around again as he fell, abosrbing another impact that would have connected with his head.

Mickey rolled to his feet and hefted his scarred weapon. Two arrows, each as long as his arm, were embedded deep in the wood, still quivering from their impact. Mick grabbed them both in one hand and pulled, tugging them free. Their points were not metal or stone, rather they were fire-hardened wood: not strong enough to pierce metal armor but plenty good at punching a hole in oak, bone, or flesh without getting fouled by a magnetic field.

“How?” Tesla asked. Mick knew what he was thinking: his teleforce weapon targeted heartbeats, how could someone survive its attack without flaring blue with an I-A shield?

A green and brown shadow arced high out of the canopy above him and dropped down to land in the dirt before him, silent as it touched down. The smoke of dead Tridentes swirled away, revealing a petite woman wrapped in head-to-toe Wehrmacht camouflage. A vented mask covered her lower face, and her hair was tied back and covered. She held a a black bow in her hand, its taut string still reverberating. Mick could only see her eyes, murderous and gleaming behind black face paint. She was a Waldgiest, a Japanese-trained German master assassin.

“Ninjas,” he said as he struggled to his feet. “Damn.”

Mick had heard rumors that ninjas could will their hearts to stop on command, but he had never believed it until just that moment.

The woman barked something in guttural German to Eighteen. The Brother grinned in response, then charged Earp and Tesla, his heavy branch swinging. Shots rang out.

Mickey did not have time to aid them as the woman came at him. She moved as if her bones were liquid. Her bow snapped through the air and smacked against Mickey's bicep, numbing his arm from the elbow down. He was ready when she swung it again, and caught it with his bare palm. He felt his dry, calloused skin split open with the impact, wincing for the half-second it took to lose the feeling in his whole paw. He wrenched the bow out of her grasp and threw it aside, but she had bounded away before his club could find her.

Cold steel hissed against leather and her long dagger was free of its sheath. She snarled again in German, then charged. The magnetic field subsumed her blade in an instant, and she found herself pushing against the frozen knife with all her weight. Mickey hadn't hesitated when he saw the glint of razored metal; instead he had charged. His club smashed into the distracted woman's forearm, sending her back-tracking once again, nursing the fractured bone. The knife was gone. Malevolent heat flared behind her eyes.

She attacked in inhuman silence, slithering around Mick's club to hammer him in the arm and neck with granite-cracking chops. He could barely keep track of her one good hand, she moved so fast. Blow after blow rained down upon him, forcing him to withdraw. Her feet whipped out as well, popping him in the knees and ankles. If he stumbled, he knew her next nimble strike would be at his throat.

The woman fought like a tangle of snakes, striking and drawing back and striking again from another direction. For every step Mickey willingly surrendered against her onslaught, she forcefully took five more. His foot slipped on something hard and metal, and Mick knew what he had to do.

“Back off!” he roared, and took a wild, wide swing with the club. It was loud and it was telegraphed, and the ninja was able to hop back and dodge it like Mickey knew she would. It was enough of a break to let Mick slip his toe under the object at his feet and pop it into the air.

He dropped the club to its strap and caught the floating M13 Randall rocket carbine in his shooting hand. He smiled and fired its whole magazine from the hip.

The Waldgeist bounded out of the rockets' path, only to watch them travel just a few yards before they sputtered to a halt, caught in Tesla's nebulous magnetic field. The mini-warheads groaned and coughed the last of their blue-black exhaust, then started their sad little fall to the ground, cushioned by the fluctuating energies. The six rockets settled onto the pine needles, armed and deadly but crippled.

“Ha!” she shouted, then hopped over the little cluster of explosives and renewed her assault against the old man and his empty carbine. One blow bent the heavy gun's barrel, the next snaked out and shattered its stock into oaken splinters. It fell out of his hands in pieces, barely held together by its canvas strap. A gut-bursting boot caught Mick in the ribs, doubling him over. His feet caught up in the destroyed M13's strap and he went down in a heap. He wheezed and tried to catch his breath, staring up at the sky, but the ninja had other plans.

She pulled a handful of throwing stars from a pouch on his belt and whipped them at Mickey in a silvery storm. The razor-sharp blades, pointed and deadly from any angle, whirled over him, cutting the very air. Then they were in the grip of the magnetic field, slowing their spin and wrapping them up with invisible tentacles. Mickey sighed with relief. The stars had stopped in flight, hovering a foot above Mick's big gut.

A girlish laugh escaping through the Waldgeist's green-on-green mask brought him back to reality. He glanced upward to see sea-emerald veins running across the throwing stars' raw-steel edges. Mick had heard what ninjas laced their blades with. Even a scratch from that green edge would lock him in excruciating paralysis for hours.

The stars began their slow descent, an inexorable meteor shower of miniature guillotines falling toward Mick. Their points were sharp enough that even a scratch would split him open. The field's gentle flow would pull the cold metal and poison through him like sewing needles.

“Shit,” he grunted. The stars were too close to struggle against. Even pushing his shoulders off the ground enough to scuttle away would be enough to bring him into contact with the tainted blades. The Waldgeist watched him squirm, pleased with her work.

Then Mickey was moving, dragged out from under the throwing stars and between the ninja's legs by the carbine strap that was wrapped tight around his ankles. His bulk slammed into her shins and the Waldgeist tumbled forward, instinctively rolling over Mick to regain her feet. Mick swung his club around by its strap, not even aiming.

It thumped her heavily on the backside and she stumbled forward one last step. She looked down to find herself among the flurry of poisoned stars, sliced and pierced a dozen times over. Her eyes went wide and her pupils dilated as she dropped, opening even more cuts as she fell onto the steel corners. Her body went rigid on the ground, and only then did Mickey look for his savior.

Tesla was on his rear, wheezing and untangling the carbine strap from Mickey's feet. He'd pulled so hard that the canvas had rubbed his palms raw.

“I have a crackers and water diet you should look into,” he wheezed, exhausted after hauling Mick's heft.

“After,” Mickey snapped. There was still fighting to be done.

Earp was holding his own against the Brother, though only barely. His magnetically-neutered pistol had only served to scorch the relentless Nazi with muzzle flash; none of its molasses-speed bullets had struck true. Still, the inspector had managed to clock the kraut with a few good pistol whips, judging by the blood pouring over Eighteen's snarling white face.

The Brother had gotten in his licks as well. Earp's left eye was damn-near swole shut, and blood trickled out of the shrapnel scars he'd taken in Denver. The inspector was fighting with a limp, and his ankle was already sole-up enough to snap the laces on his oxford. Eighteen whirled his heavy branch around, then leveled it at Earp.

“I will break you before I kill you, old man,” the Brother promised him.

“At least I'll die with a full head of hair,” Earp fired back. He spun his Colt on his finger, then threw it at the Brother's gleaming dome. Eighteen ducked under the decelerated steel in time to catch a knee to the chin. Mickey heard teeth crack and saw blood spray, but the kraut was hardly slowed. The chemically-enhanced soldier swatted Earp with his knotted branch with force enough to crack it, hard enough to launch the smaller man like a softball. Earp smacked into a tree and laid there, limp and bloody and still.

Mickey could not call another wife. His attack was instinctual and desperate.

He followed his club into battle. It came down first on Eighteen's weapon, shattering the cracked wood and disarming him. His next blow found purchase on the Nazi's already damaged chin, pulverizing his jaw and snapping his head back so hard Mickey was surprised it stayed on his neck. At this Eighteen laughed, spitting crimson and teeth as he did so.

Mick swung the club like a baseball bat, mulching the Nazi's ribs, then came around again and took out his left knee with a pop. The pulped Brother collapsed into a heap. He tried to get back up, but his leg folded over beneath him.

Eighteen looked up at Mickey with resentment, but his grimace melted into a malicious grin. He laughed again. The glowing I-A grenade emerged from his pouch. It took one hard yank to pull its leather strap out, wrenching the activation pin from the globe. The sphere begin to flare, first blue, then purple as Eighteen drooled blood onto its glass shell. He screamed at the effort, but his shattered body had one last strong heave in it, and the grenade soared over Tesla's head. It bounced to a halt a dozen or so yards from the cabin.

Eighteen let out another sputtering laugh and collapsed onto his back. The I-A flashed again. Mickey's mouth had gone dry. They'd turned the Brother into a mean mess of broken bones and jelly, and he would still kill them all.

Exotic electricities flashed through the trees, lighting up the woods in spectral blue. Eighteen laughed again and splashed more blood onto his collapsed chest.

The Brother spit part of his tongue out, laughed again, and somehow managed to choke Mick’s words through his mangled mouth:

“One ugly mother.”

Mickey snarled, but left the dying Nazi to do just that. He didn't matter anymore.

“Grab your wife,” he yelled at Tesla. “I got Earp, there's still time to run.”

Sweat was pouring down Mick's back. He knew what I-A weapons could do to a human. The damn kraut would win.

“Inspector, your flask,” Tesla said. His voice was even and the hand he held out what steady. His rationality stopped Mick in his tracks.

“As good a time as any,” Mick said with a shrug. He dug it out of his pocket and handed it over. Tesla unscrewed the cap and tipped it over, pouring the last few drops of rot gut into the dirt. Mick objected to the waste, but Tesla wasn't listening.

The scientist trotted over to the flashing I-A bomb, which was now so bright that he had to cover his eyes even to approach. Tesla unbuckled his belt and whipped it out of its loops with a snap, then wrapped it around glass globe and steel flask to bind the two together.

“What are you doing?” Mick called out, but Tesla did not answer immediately. Instead, he hinged open his control box and turned one dial counter-clockwise, flipped a switch, then adjusted a slider. The flask began to tremble.

“I am localizing the electromagnetic effect and reversing its amplitude,” he shouted after a moment. Mick snorted: Tesla was still speaking in tongues, even in the face of death.

The fields took hold of the flask and I-A grenade floated them off the ground. They wobbled in the air for a second then shot off like a rocket. The searing light slipped into a low cloud, illuminating it up from within. The cloud glowed glacier blue before a crack shook the air.

The shrouded I-A flared blindingly bright and held steady, like a second sun, one that was blue and cruel and cold, consuming the cloud around it. Wisps of other clouds nearby stretched across the sky like tentacles, drawn toward the beacon, slithering toward it until they too were burned away by the burning kraut bomb. Then the light winked out and a roiling thunderhead boiled forth, crackling with lighting and darkening the sky directly above the scoured clearing, the charred dead, and the little cabin. Hot rain began to fall and Tesla slumped onto a chopping block, wholly spent.

“Thank you, Mister Malloy,” he sighed.

“That flask has saved my rear more times than I can remember,” Mickey told him. Tesla did not respond. A shudder ran through him and for an instant he looked like he carried eighty years in his broad shoulders.

Tesla might have been crying, but the rain washed it out. He muttered something as blue lightning flashed overhead, but the cracking thunder drowned out whatever had been saying. With weary finality he powered down the control box. The electromagnetic field's humming finally ceased and Mickey was able to breathe again.

Earp moved. Blood was still pouring out of his head, spurting faster than the rain could rinse it away. Mickey rushed to his side and helped prop him up against the trunk he had crashed into. The regional inspector was mouthing something; its was astonishing the man was even conscious, much less able to communicate whatever he thought his last words might be.

“You're okay, boss,” Mickey said, “This ain't anything.”

“No,” Earp managed to gasp, “Him.”

Lighting silhouetted the grotesque figure that stood behind him. Eighteen was balanced on a single leg; his other was dangling useless. His liquefied jaw hung limp over his throat, and his every breath was a laborious fight against his caved-in chest. Still he had raised the shattered branch over his head. Its splinters and knots were savage and cruel and would end Mickey as surely as any bomb or bullet.

It wouldn't be this day, though.

Lightning flashed again, and a shot rang in Mickey's ears. Earp, near-beaten-to-death himself, had somehow snaked a hand into Mick's coat, pulled his Detective Special, and drilled a .38-caliber hole in Eighteen's shoulder with a practiced and steady hand. The Nazi's arm wrenched backward, then fell limp and useless to his side. Eighteen snarled and switched the branch to his good arm to draw it back again.

That was enough time for an old man who'd had damn-near enough.

Mickey brought his club up quicker than the thunder could roll in. It crunched into Eighteen's left armpit, popping it audibly out of socket. Mick stood to his full height and reared back, then kicked out with a heavy boot. The smaller man caught the strike full in his mushy chest and tumbled backward, head-over-heels.

The thunder rolled in, and the Brother flopped onto his back with a staccato of concussive blasts that staggered Mickey to his battered knee. Eighteen was gone; his arms, legs, and innards draped over the closest tress.

It took Mick a long moment to put together how the Nazi had come apart.

Reddened dirt smoked in a half-dozen small craters where Eighteen had fallen. The Brother had landed on Mickey’s live Randall mini-rockets that the Waldgeist and had dodged. His weight set off all six of them and their shaped charge warheads had shredded him.

Mick struggled to his feet to limp the few yards to Earp's side, just to drop onto his rear and collapse back against the trunk next to his boss. He clamped a hand over Earp's gushing head wound and closed his eyes to listen to the all too familiar ringing in his ears. Rainwater poured down his face and he swore he could taste rye in the drops.

The Waldgeist coughed where she lay, a pathetic, soggy hacking. Tesla trudged through the storm. Her body was wooden and red trickled from a dozen clean cuts all over her legs and abdomen. She was fixing to drown in the rain, her own venoms rendering her paralyzed and unable to turn her neck.

Tesla rolled the still-breathing assassin onto her side. Rainwater poured out of her open mouth and nostrils and she coughed to clear her airway.

Satisfied she would survive, Tesla left her in a pink puddle and made a bee-line for his little cottage.

The storm twisted and whirled and raged, all of it no more than a mile across, centered over Mickey's head. Blue lightning crackled across it, scalding his retinas, its thunder rang in his ears. The rain steamed off his skin, melting his patina of dirt and sweat. Then, as quickly as the storm gathered, the wind whisked it away.

Copyright © 2025 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Tyrelle Smith.