Ragnarok

THIRTY-THREE

Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway

The woman with the callsign Queen disappeared. In her place was a fourteen-year-old girl with the unlikely name of Zelda. Her mother was dead. Her father was a drunk and beat her nightly. Sometimes with a leather belt. She was terrified of spiders and mice. She couldn’t stand heights. Enclosed spaces would make her break down into a puddle of tremors. Lightning terrified her and made her scream. She dreamed every night that she was being devoured by wild animals. She was still alive and breathing as lions and cougars pulled her intestines from her abdomen. When she woke from her sleep, the nightmares just got worse in the light of day.

Her world was a living state of terror. If only she could find a way out of it. But she knew drugs were not the way. She had been on drugs when her son died and they hadn’t helped.

Wait, that’s not right. I didn’t have a child at fourteen.

She struggled to make sense of the fear and the logical incongruity that crept into her mind. I crushed the spider. I’m not afraid of spiders any more. She knew she shouldn’t think that way. He would be back and he would be angry. He would beat her again and again, and maybe this time he would go too far. I don’t fear anything. Major-General Trung tried to break me in Vietnam, but I beat him too. I am the hunter now.

“Quiet,” she whispered. “He’ll hear!”

I base jump.

“He’s in the hallway, right now.”

I free solo rock climb!

“He has the one with the large buckle.” The whispers were frantic.

I am fearless!

She moved her hand up in the darkness to touch the scar on her forehead. The brand-it was a skull encased in a star, the symbol of the VPLA Death Volunteers, Vietnam’s Special Forces Unit. Trung had branded her like cattle, but she had escaped and exacted her vengeance on the bastard. Then she made the symbol her own, drawing strength from the wound. She felt the rough lumpy surface of her scarred skin beneath her fingertips and the sensation brought her fully back to the here and now.

Queen opened her eyes and looked at the small room in which she lay. There were a few wooden crates with swastikas on them and the legend Ahnenerbe. Queen recalled Rook mentioning the word-the name for a WWII German unit that focused on historical research and German superiority. The room had a door with no handle on it. Beyond that, she was alone in a storeroom of sorts, turned into the perfect jail cell. No window, but a lone 40-watt bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling.

She sat up from the floor where she had been lying and rubbed the brand on her forehead again, reassuring herself that she was in the present and not lost in the quagmire of her childhood. It was there under her fingers. Her old anger about the mark resurfaced, and with it bloomed a new anger at the people who ran this place and the creatures they employed. Her face felt red and hot. She could feel her heart beating faster as rage coursed through her strong body, cleaning out the last vestiges of the fear that had filled it moments before.

And then her anger turned toward Rook.

“I am so going to kick your ass again, Rook.”

Had he called this in sooner, the team could have come together and moved through this place like the coordinated tor-nado of destruction they trained to be. Sure, they could solve a puzzle or two, unlock the secrets of history, science and the unknown, but they really excelled at blowing shit up. It was an art form they perfected as a team. Solo, they were dangerous. In two-man teams, they were deadly. United, they could fight the unkillable and win.

By her logic, the blame for the trouble they found themselves in lay squarely on Rook’s broad shoulders.

But she couldn’t stay angry at him. He’d suffered a loss in Siberia, and right or wrong, it had affected him deeply. Loss was part of the game, but Rook had never really experienced it before. Not like that. Now he was damaged goods, just like her.

She smiled at the idea. A match made in Heaven.

Or hell.

She couldn’t deny her growing feelings for the man. She’d nearly come out with it back at that store, but he’d gone and used that nickname.

Zel.

It was the name her mother used for her, before she succumbed to cancer and left her alone with her abusive alcoholic father. She didn’t remember a lot about her mother. Didn’t think about her much, either. But that single word, Zel, was like a key to her soul. It unlocked the past and she wasn’t ready to share that yet, with anyone.

She stood and examined every inch of the room until she had assured herself that there were no other ways in or out and that nothing in the room would help her pry the door open. The crates held oddly shaped scientific equipment. She didn’t recognize most of it. One of the things she did recognize was a dirty, broken microscope that looked older than the one she had used in high school biology class, but it didn’t hold her interest.

Across the room, there was a small air vent near the ceiling, on the wall adjacent to the door. It was far too small for her to fit even her head into it. She considered removing the grill over the vent and using it to pry open the handle-less gray door, but then she had a better idea. She managed to get her fingers behind the edge of the flimsy vent grill by standing on the Ahnenerbe crates. She pulled hard and the pliable metal popped free into her hands. No way it would be strong enough to go to work on the door. She didn’t even think she could use the weak metal as a stabbing implement. Next she slid two stacked crates to the center of the room and reached up to the lightbulb.

Hello darkness, she thought and unscrewed the bulb. She climbed down and set the bulb down into one of the other crates she had opened. It might come in handy later-she didn’t want to break it. Then she carefully felt her way through the dark, back onto the stacked crates where the dangling lightbulb hung. She grabbed it and tugged hard. The wire, insulation and all, came free in her hand. She pulled a long length of it out of the ceiling and wrapped it around her hand.

Now she would just wait for someone to come open the door and meet doom.