The Aeschylus

1

Dominik stopped just outside of the laboratory bunker, unable to walk through. Jan and Gloeckner came to a halt behind him.

“We've done everything we could, Mister Kaminski,” the doctor said. “She's resting now.”

She was down there beyond the door, his little girl. Dominik remembered they had ripped her body from his arms the day before, and now she was here. Here, of all places. It was fitting somehow, the consequences of his failure ending in the place it had begun. There were logical reasons for her to be in the lab, of course. The medical equipment was there, and it was one of the only rooms that could be called private, at least from a soldier's eyes. But as much as he wanted to see her again, to hold her, he didn't know what he would find. The cages were broken, and those things from the crater had been given free reign. They may not have grown far when her body was carried below, but now, a day later…

“We will give you leave to bury her tonight,” Gloeckner said. He had mentioned this on the walk over but repeated it now. “You can sit with her as long as you like until then. She was quite far along by the time she was taken from you, Mister Kaminski. The smell was… well, it was not very good. She has been embalmed.”

“Embalmed?”

“Yes. We do have the means to give our dead a proper burial here. The Führer saw to that. Our burial practices really aren't so different, your people and mine. Are they?”

Dominik had a vision of the chasm, thinking of the stories Ari had been telling him about their new commander. He wondered if the other prisoners would be afforded such a proper burial. But no, he was different from them; he was special. And so Zofia had been a punishment, swift and merciless, and then they would all be friends again. Like chopping off a limb and then cauterizing it so the victim would not die.

Embalmed.

He mouthed the word, and he was hit with another image. This one depicted the doctor himself stripping her down, cutting her open, pumping her full of chemicals. It was frightening, seeing him alone with her body, his gloved hands doing their blood work.

Dominik lunged at Gloeckner, his hands clawing and grabbing. At the same time, he felt his mind splitting. It was as if his body had flown off the handle but a separate part of himself was left perfectly sane. It asked him, why oh why am I hitting this man? He is not the real enemy, he is not the cause. So why? To this, he had no answer. He only knew that he needed to strike, and strike he would.

Before he could do so much as land a blow, however, Jan stepped between them. The sergeant grabbed the doctor by the scruff of the neck and tossed him back towards the path. Gloeckner stumbled and fell, barely catching himself before toppling into dirt. He pushed himself up, looking shocked and indignant. Jan held up a finger as if to warn him from saying anything further, then turned to Dominik. “Go,” he said. “Be with her. It's the only mercy you'll get in this place, and it's not much.” His eyes seemed to glow. Dominik could see pain in them and thought there was something more, perhaps compassion. Then, Jan took a step forward. “Get down there before I throw you down.”

Maybe not.

Dominik found himself stepping into the bunker before he had time to think. The door slammed behind him, squeezing his vision of the two men as if he were closing them out of his world. For all intents and purposes, he was. It was completely black, the generators not yet on for the day. He wondered if this is what the universe felt like before Creation: this feeling of nothing, and loneliness.

After a moment — or an eternity, Dominik didn't know — the lights flickered on. The universe reappeared, and he was standing in the familiar concrete labyrinth marking the place of his pseudo-employment. As he moved to the stairs and began to descend to the lab proper, he felt the weight of Zofia's loss grow heavier. There was no one here to save him, now.

When he pushed the door open, he knew what he should see. He should see… he should see Zofia on a table, the light of the heavens shining down, her form surrounded by angels. That's what he should see, even if he expected the growths to have done their horrible work. It was his fault, after all. He had failed to control them. He had broken the glass and set them free.

But as he stepped inside, he stopped and stared in astonishment. Zofia lay in the center of the room, lifeless, but as beautiful as she had ever been, as pure as she had ever been. What he saw around her was wondrous. It was not an entourage of angels, but it was truly wondrous just the same.

2

Lucja snapped out of bed when she heard her father come in. A moment earlier, she had been dead to the world, but the sound of him brought her out of sleep quicker than the ringing of any alarm.

“Father,” she whispered.

Removing his coat with the deliberation of an old, old man, Dominik came to her side. He carried a canteen with him, an odd adornment for the circumstance, but he didn't speak of what was inside it, not right away.

“You're awake.”

“I couldn't sleep. Could you?”

He hugged her, and for a moment, they did nothing but cling to each other in the darkness. When he finally pulled his head up, she could see how haggard he was. He looked shrunken, like a flower that had withered in the cold.

“I need to speak to Ari.”

“I'm here.” He was looking at them from the doorway. Though he had tried to give them some space, he had never been far. Lucja didn't think he would ever be far now, given what had happened.

Her father stood with that same, awkward slowness, then crossed the small space to his friend. He reached into his pocket and brought out a folded piece of paper. He looked at it a moment as if contemplating whether or not to hand it over. Then he did, his face looking to all the world as if the note were a written confession of murder.

Reaching for his spectacles with one hand, Ari took the paper and flipped it open with the other. He squinted at the writing.

“I want you to acquire these for me. Aside from Kriege, there shouldn't be anyone who will know what we can do with them,” Dominik said.

“Industrial steel tubing, silver, methanol… are you serious?”

Though Lucja was looking at the back of her father's head, she knew the expression on his face. Her father had a plan; it was the same look of intensity he had worn in the dark of The Adalgisa.

No, not like that, she corrected. He was different now. This would not be an ideation, not a gentle what if escape scenario. This would be iron clad. Because her father, like her, was now as cold and hard as the steel of his machines. This time, he would not freeze with the ax.

When he made a twirling motion with one finger, Ari turned the paper. Over her father's shoulder, Lucja could see a drawing of a strange machine. She could see vats and filters and tubes, all with arrows and diagrams and intricate labels. The design, no doubt, was a part of his plan.

“It works?” Ari asked. “Are you sure?”

“The substance works,” her father said. “I've seen it for myself. As to the production of it, that's what the machine and the chemicals are for.”

“But there's something else?”

“Oh yes.”

“And it works?” Ari asked again, as if not believing his partner had finally found a solution to the problem that had ailed them for so long.

“If only I'd found it sooner.” Even though she could still not see his face, Lucja knew the pain upon it. This thing, whatever it was, might have saved her sister.

“But… it's because of her,” Ari said.

“It was her gift to me. The funny thing is, when we have it, we're not going to use it on the fungus, not all of it.”

“We're not?”

“There's more, Ari. More that I would not care to write down.”

“Oh?”

And then, her father told them his plan.

When he had finished, they sat in silence for a long while. Lucja had been right in every assumption, and it terrified her.

“When it's done, I can't say for sure how we're going to get off of the island,” her father said. “The vehicles will be inoperable, so we'll have to hike to the shipyard. When we get there, we'll have to find a way to steal on board a ship. Most of the whalers will be faithful to the army, but some won't. Who knows, maybe we can bribe the others.” He shrugged. “It's a chance.”

Lucja nodded, and for the first time in months, she began to feel hope.

That night, under the watchful eyes of the guards, they buried Zofia in an unmarked grave outside of the walls, the three of them pondering the terrible things they were about to do.

3

Across the encampment, another figure jilted awake in the darkness. He hit his head on a shelf next to the bed and swore. He could not believe his clumsiness, even in a place so unfamiliar. But his hands had done their work; his Walther PPK pistol was in his grip before he was fully conscious.

Richter sat up and stared through the dark. The room was small and clearly empty, but he felt something, a lingering presence.

When his eyes adjusted, he saw immediately what it was. The door to the room was ajar. He had shut it and locked it before retiring as he always did. The fact that he could see a sliver of light from the hallway startled him. Throughout all of his years in the army, with the countless enemies he'd made, no one had ever gotten the drop on him. He was a man of good habits; he was a man who checked beneath the bed and in the closets and who always locked the door when he went to bed, even in friendly territory, even when the nearest enemy was a thousand kilometers away. And so to see the door open now, even a crack, gave him pause. Someone had opened it, and they'd done it quietly.

More than likely, it was a young schütze. In spite of his confidence, the commander wasn't blind to the way some of the soldiers looked at him. It took guts to be a commander of men. It was not a job for the ordinary, but then, the Schutzstaffel was not an ordinary division of soldiers. The Führer had great plans for Germany — for all of Europe — and ordinary soldiers would not get the job done. Richter's transfer from the regular army had been one of the great honors of his life, and it was not done without envy from his peers. Envy, and to some extent, fear. The Schutzstaffel were the elite. They were the ones who would stand at the front lines when The Führer unleashed his plans to the world. And it is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both, he thought, quoting Machiavelli. The Führer understood this, and it was one of the reasons why Richter loved him so dearly.

So was it possible that a lesser man had come to spy on him? To harm him? The commander intended to find out. If there was one thing he was good at, it was finding the truth. He enjoyed finding it in one of the myriad texts he studied each night before bed, but he enjoyed finding it more in men. Opening them up and reading them was so much more gratifying than what he found in books.

He approached the door like a hunter and thrust it open, but the hallway greeted him with stillness. Then, he looked up and saw the bunker exit door was also ajar. Whomever had slipped away had retraced his steps right out the front. There was supposed to be a sentry standing outside, but he saw no one.

The smells of cold earth and stale concrete wafted into his nostrils, but he could also smell something pungent beneath, something like old flowers. His jaw tensed. Cornelius Richter feared no man, but this… this was fear of the unknown. The oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. Lovecraft, wasn't it? What would such an ass of an American writer have known about real fear?

Brazenly, the commander stepped into the cold, his pistol raised. The expanse of the base opened before him, as quiet and docile as he had ever seen it. The sentries stood in their towers. The generators hummed pleasantly behind the barracks.

Perhaps the the stress was getting to him. Perhaps, in his foolishness, he had left the door to his room unlocked, or even open. It was not often he admitted to himself that his job was taxing in the extreme, that it took a heavy toll on his psyche, but in the deep recesses of his mind, Richter knew these things.

When he looked at the ground, however, he saw a spatter of black. It was not much, barely more than what you'd see from the start of a nosebleed, but it was enough. The guard to the front door of the barracks was missing, and now, there was blood.

Feeling his eyes drawn, the commander looked towards the gate. In the dying light of the sun, he saw a face. The wrinkled visage stared back at him through eyes as gray and dead as the sky. Then, just like that, the face was gone. The form slipped out beyond the gate and into the wilderness, vanishing into the dusk.

Richter looked up at the guard towers. “Alarm!” he shouted. “Alarm! Alarm!”

4

“The commander says it was Kriege,” Metzger said, walking beside the lieutenant.

“He's sure about what he saw?”

“Can you imagine the commander being unsure of anything?”

Harald could not, and so decided to keep his mouth shut from then on. He trudged to the gate overlooking the chasm, and he could see bedlam below. Pockets of orange light danced around the perimeter, men searching the area with torches. Not electric flashlights or lanterns, but torches. The commander had his men searching the grounds like witch hunters from the dark ages.

“He's here somewhere,” he heard Richter yell. “He's here! Find him! I want every nook searched. Unless he dropped into the pit, he's hiding in the rocks.”

Harald could see most of the staff about, including Jan and Seiler. The Gestapo agent, in particular, looked even more displeased about the affair than Harald was himself. He was standing by an outcropping with Hans, the two of them talking amongst themselves.

The lieutenant broke off from Metzger's trail. “Boris! What the hell is going on?”

“They have not found him yet,” Seiler said moodily. “But the commander is certain he is here.”

“I hope they catch him,” Hans said.

“Do you think he's here?”

Seiler shrugged and ignored the question. “I do not like this. I have a bad feeling.”

Before he could say anything else, Richter spied the group and made to join them. “Lieutenant! I'm glad you're here.”

Walking stiffly up the path, the man looked at Harald's brow as he came to a halt. The lieutenant realized it was because he was wearing a new hat. It was indistinguishable from any other officer's hat, though Harald had been told this particular model had belonged to his island predecessor.

“Any luck?”

Richter shook his head. “Not yet, but we have the perimeter covered. It won't be long.”

“Commander,” Harald said, at once unsure why he had begun to speak. Then, “Are you sure about what you saw? The men say he is like Smit.”

“I am sure. Until he is found, we're on high alert. This is why it is so imperative we act quickly. Surely you understand that?”

“Of course.” Harald looked around at the men, saw how efficiently they were sweeping the grounds. If the doctor was here, they'd find him. “I hear Kaminski has made a discovery,” he ventured, changing the subject. “If so, it will help prevent these kinds of incidents, I would hope.” And this was true: the lab was positively beaming with the news. Even Thomas Frece, one of the most curmudgeonly men Harald had ever met, seemed upbeat. Of course, this was all hearsay. Harald had been meaning to talk to Kriege to find out the details. Now, that might never happen. He'd have to get the word from Kaminski himself.

“Even if it's true, it would have been nice to have an answer a little sooner, yes?” Richter said. “Kriege was one of us. I hate to lose him.”

“We haven't lost him yet.”

Richter's gaze was all that was needed to prevent the lieutenant from offering any more opinions. Before he could respond to defend himself, he heard a shout from one of the men. It came from Fähnrich Immanuel Zimmer, the ensign just beneath Harald in rank.

“Commander! We've found something!”

Richter walked to meet the man, his coat billowing behind him. The other men followed, climbing down the path a few paces at the rear.

“What is it?”

“It looks like he's been here. We found a cave, of sorts.”

“But he's not here now?”

“No, Commander. But the inside… well, you have to see this for yourself. If he's sick, then… well, I'd say he's beyond recovery.”

“What do you mean? Explain yourself.”

“There are things inside,” Zimmer said. He looked ashen. “There are bodies. Animal bodies. They're mutilated.”

“Then, perhaps Kriege is further along than we thought. I would not expect anyone who was as far gone as your Captain Smit to be worth saving. We don't know what kinds of things they're capable of. It's why we must all be careful, yes?”

The man looked at him and stuttered, but only for a moment. “Yes, Commander. Of course.”

Ahead of him, Harald watched as the pair made their way to the edge of the mountains and paused at the rocks. It was difficult to see, but as his eyes adjusted, he could make out a hole in the side of the rock face. It was more than big enough for a man.

Taking a torch from one of his men, Richter ducked inside. Behind him, Metzger and Seiler held back, undecided. No one noticed that the last member of their group, young Hans, had disappeared.

5

From the shadows, the boy watched as they wandered through the Thinking Place. He wanted to shout at them, to scream at them, to make them leave, but he couldn't. He had to hide.

“My God,” said the lieutenant. “What the hell is this place?”

They were sifting through his things with looks disgust. They didn't understand, and he couldn't make them.

Ensign Zimmer stopped in front of Hans Junior. He grabbed the seal around the midsection and tried to lift, but little Hans wouldn't budge. His insides were dry now, gluing him to the pole. After a few seconds, the man let him go, and Junior slipped back down onto the anus spike.

On the other side of the cavern, Dietrich was going over his collection of bird parts. The lieutenant pulled one off of its string and tossed it into a corner, revolted. Hans shook with rage; it had taken him hours to string up the heads and the beaks, and here this man was, tearing one down just because he could.

Next to Dietrich, however, was none other than Boris. He had never showed Boris his Thinking Place and wondered what he would do. At least he was being respectful. Not like Dietrich. Not like the others.

The Gestapo agent made his way to the wall of birds, and a look of recognition dawned on his face. He saw the orange beak and knew it for what it was. He and Hans had spent all day laying a trap for that penguin, and when it had blown, he had been the one to pick the beak out of the pile of guts. When the commander started doing inspections, Boris had given it back to Hans for safe keeping, and now, here it was.

It was almost a shame, really. The beak didn't have a name (it was just a beak, after all), and Boris seemed oblivious to the real personalities in the room. Lucas and Friedricke sat patiently while Boris ignored them. He even ignored Jesus, the black bird that Hans had found amongst the Slimy Things. Jesus was still pinned to the wall, one of Hans's prize trophies. Most of his other friends were just animals, but Jesus was… well, he was black, wasn't he?

A black Jesus, Hans thought, and had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing. As he moved, he felt the weight of the package in his coat. It was annoying to have, but too late to put it back. Dietrich looked over his shoulder, and Hans tensed and quieted. His mother had never found his Thinking Place at home, and even though his new mothers and fathers had found this one, he had no intention of being discovered along with it.

“How many do you think he's killed?” Metzger asked.

“Dozens,” the lieutenant said. “Maybe a hundred, I don't know. What do you think, Seiler?”

Boris shrugged. He was beginning to look a little green in the face.

Hans wondered what this could mean. Certainly, Boris wasn't having the best reaction. The best reaction (and one Hans often had himself), was to feel your thing get stiff in your pants, and to feel yourself want to smile. Boris didn't look like either one of those things was happening. He looked, if anything, like he didn't want to be here.

“I'd say at least a hundred,” Zimmer said, looking around. “I never would have known the old guy had it in him. He must have been busy.”

“He's not himself,” the lieutenant retorted.

“I'll say.”

“And we would be wise not to forget it.”

All four men spun as a pair of hands clapped the air. It was Commander Richter, circling back around after doing his own inspection.

“You actually believe Kriege did this?”

“What?”

“I wouldn't expect you two louts to figure it out, but you, Lieutenant. I'm disappointed in you.”

Dietrich's back was to Hans, but the boy could feel the man's unease. Hans wondered if he would hit the commander, the way he had done to Hans when he was peeing on the bunker. But no, he remembered you were only supposed to hit soldiers underneath of you. Not commanders, and especially not the Schutzstaffel.

“What?” the lieutenant asked.

The commander pointed to Lucas. “That head has been here at least a week. So have most of these specimens. Given the stains on the walls, I'd say we have a collector here who has been at it for quite some time.”

Zimmer looked around, confused. “You mean Kriege was infected a week ago?”

“No, you fool,” Dietrich snapped. “He's saying Kriege didn't do it all.” His voice had a newfound certainty in it. He was looking at Boris, and Boris's face said everything. For being good at his job and all that, his friend wasn't good at keeping secrets himself. Hans didn't blame him; he wasn't good at it either.

“All this time,” Richter said, “we had a little freelance artist. We had someone who thought he could go into restricted space, right in the danger zone of the crater, and have some fun. Now I have a pretty good idea of who that someone could be, don't you, Lieutenant?”

Could he mean Hans? The boy shivered. He did not like the commander, not one bit.

“Yes sir,” Dietrich said quietly.

“And you had no idea this was happening?”

“None.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Richter knocked the hat off of the lieutenant's head. “I was considering promoting you, of letting you grow into that hat, Lieutenant. Now, I'm thinking of busting you down to head cook. For all your talents, you're blind to the things right under your nose.”

From the shadows, Hans could feel the rage seeping off of the lieutenant. He could feel the redness and shame on his face. And though he was scared now, scared of what their words could mean, this gave him some pleasure. Not the same kind of pleasure he got from making friends, but a mean kind of pleasure.

Zimmer shifted. “What now?”

The commander took one more stroll around the room. When he got to the wall of birdies, he ripped one of the heads off and stared at it. Hans prayed for his friend — James was his name, little James — to be friendly to the commander. He should be friendly to save himself, but he wasn't. He must have looked at the commander with spite, because really, he could only be nice to Hans. Hans was the one who brought him here and friended him and fed him and pet him.

Richter tossed James to the floor. “Burn it. All of it.”

At first, Hans thought he hadn't heard right. Then he gasped, realizing what this meant. His Thinking Place, done for! All of his friends, all of his work. He had been holding out hope that eventually, the men would leave. They would go away and forget about old Hans, and then Hans could come back and sit. And think. And be with his friends again.

Burn it!

They were going to destroy it! And maybe they would destroy Hans, too. Toss him into the fire and watch him burn. Burn him and all of his friends.

He put his hands to his temples, feeling water squeeze out of his eyes. He wanted to shout, but he knew he couldn't. He simply sank to the floor and huddled. The package in his coat clunked heavily against the dirt.

“Lieutenant, you and Zimmer clean this up. Inform me when it's done,” Richter said.

Dietrich and Zimmer went about with their smashing. They tore the animals from their poles, removed the wire from the walls, and gathered the bodies in a pile. It would not be long before it was ash.

Hans couldn't watch. He pulled himself together and snuck out of the cave, slinking through the darkness so as not to be seen. He had always been so careful coming in, and here he was sneaking out for the first time.

And the last time.

That brought more water to his eyes. He didn't want it to be there, it made him feel like a sissy, but it was all he could do to keep from breaking down completely. He could deal with being hit. He could deal with being laughed at. That was all right. He'd been putting up with that since he was a little kid. But not his friends. There was no reason to take James and Lucas and Friedricke and Hans Junior and all of them away. Not when he was the one to blame.

Outside, the night air had never felt so cold. He could see the torches dancing around the perimeter of the crater like fireflies. With all of the hubbub, he wouldn't be missed. He supposed he could find new friends. He could make a new home. It would be hard if he couldn't sleep at the base any more, but maybe he could sneak back and get some of his things. He still had the bulge under his coat too, and that might come in handy. Hans didn't know how he would use it yet, but he knew it wouldn't be on any more penguin experiments.

Maybe he would get revenge. He stopped and thought about it. Yes, revenge! That sounded good.

“Revenge,” he said.

Isn't that what you were supposed to do when someone hurt your friends?

Down below, the torches went on dancing. The men would be out there for hours, still looking for old, crazy Kriege.

They would never find him.

6

With the dirty work done, Harald stepped outside of the cave to get some fresh air. He left the actual fire-building to Zimmer, and he had no desire to stare at the mutilated bodies any longer than necessary. Good God. His urge to return home, usually so distant and abstract, became a thundering, pounding need. He was disgusted, both with the men, and with himself for being so bloody ignorant. So let Zimmer deal with the blood.

Though he didn't yet know it, this was to be his saving grace.

A minute after Immanuel Zimmer doused the corpses and threw a match, the heat became so intense that it spread to the corners of the room. While the ensign was smart enough to stay out of the smoke and the heat, the remaining explosives Private Wägner kept buried in the cave, having no sentience or mind of their own, were not. The explosive ordnance, the gunpowder, and the collection of Model-24 grenades heated. And sparked. And blew.

With no warning whatsoever, the cave behind Lieutenant Harald Dietrich erupted in a ball of thunder. Harald was blown to the edge of the crater, rock shrapnel raining down behind him. The entire cave collapsed in a mass of dust and debris. Zimmer — along with Friedricke, Lucas, Hans Junior, and Jesus — was simply obliterated.