Phantasm

Grunwald made a very satisfying yelp and jumped in the air when I announced myself.

“Don’t do that!” he said. “My heart could have given out!”

I looked at him curiously. Did monsters suffer from heart failure? The normal kind, I mean, not the kind of failure that occurs when you stick a sword in it. Heart disease took a long time to build up, and these goblins hadn’t been around that long, as far as I knew.

On the other hand, could they be created with an already existing heart condition? I didn’t see why not, other than the fact that there wasn’t a good reason to do so. When it came to Axel, a good reason didn’t seem necessary.

Interrogating Grunwald didn’t seem likely to get me an answer. I could ask Axel, but it would be a waste of a question. I made a note to ask Rhis, sometime when we didn’t have anything else going on. Shouldn’t take more than five years to get to it.

“The codes,” I said. Standing there looking at him while I distracted myself with idle notions must have been quite intimidating because he swallowed nervously.

“A—Ah yes, the codes. It’s done, then? We can switch the lights back on?”

I nodded. “There aren’t any more light sources in the building. I can’t guess as to whether more will come, but the two here are dead.”

“Two,” he muttered. “Can they breed?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I watched him as he stumbled through the gloom to the door and flicked on a light switch. Bright light flooded the room making my little night light redundant.

“Forgive me,” he said, making his way back to the desk and pouring out another small glass of liquor. “It’s been a trying day.”

“If you’re worried about eggs, you should check out their nest,” I said. “Or, there might be larva hiding in the corpses I left behind.”

He shuddered and poured himself another drink. “I’m going to do my best to forget you ever said that,” he said.

“The codes,” I repeated.

He grimaced and pulled a sheet of tattered paper out of his desk and handed it to me. There were two lines of numbers written on it.

“Here I am, betraying the fatherland,” he said bitterly. “The first set is the combination of the lock. The next set has to be punched into the device on the wall just behind the doors.”

“Thank you,” I said.

He tossed back another shot and scowled. “Just forget I ever gave it to you,” he said. “I don’t think that things can get much worse than this, but I don’t want to find out I’m wrong.”

I nodded. Since the lower floors were dark, it wasn’t a problem to Shadowstep down to the ground floor. I made a light to see by, and I could feel lights slowly turning on upstairs as I started searching.

It wasn’t hard to find the stairs down. They had been kept clear of junk and debris, presumably by the caretaker. The stairs ended in a small landing. Travelling further was blocked off by a large steel door with a large, obvious, combination lock.

At least I thought it was a lock.

Did anyone ever make a combination lock that looked like this? I wondered as I eyed the thing. It was big and bulky, a box about 20 centimetres high and 40 centimetres long. Five large numbers were displayed, and there were five wheels that clearly controlled what numbers were displayed.

Maybe they built it that way so you couldn’t shoot it off, I guessed. Though, it’s not like they didn’t have explosives in WWII.

I didn’t need to rely on any of that though, as I had the code. A few twists of the wheels set the numbers to match the first line on the sheet. There wasn’t an obvious clunk, but when I pulled on the door, it opened silently.

Smooth.

I didn’t enter, but let the light shine over my shoulder as I looked inside. There was a box on the wall, looking only a little clunkier than the alarm panels that I was used to from home.

Looking around, I didn’t see any obvious danger, so I stepped up to the panel and pressed the numbers Grunwald had given to me. This time there was an obvious result: A green light lit up. Green for good.

Safety achieved, that left me standing in a corridor that went one way. So I followed it. The corridor twisted around two left turns before ending in a door with a glass window in it. It wasn’t locked. Behind the door was a large room divided into two parts.

One part was set up as an office for two people. Chairs, desks, filing cabinets. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in any office building, except for the part where it was underground. Based on the turns I’d taken, I thought that the far wall of the office section would be the opposite side of the wall that had held the alarm panel. I eyed several neatly bundled wires coming out of the wall. They went into another boxy panel mounted on the wall, before heading off through the wall and out of sight.

The other half of the room was filing cabinets. Lots and lots of filing cabinets, arranged in rows that extended out into the darkness beyond my floating light.

I considered the light switch beside the door but decided there wasn’t any upside to using it. The chance that it would alert someone was low, but why take any chance at all? I brightened my light spell and moved over to the office section.

One of the desks had a file sitting on it. Just that file, no other papers, pens or office paraphernalia. It was emblazoned with a red “Top Secret” stamp.

Making it that easy, Axel? I thought, but only to myself.

As soon as I picked it up, I got a notification.

Palace of the Endless Dream, Floor Seven: Objective 1/5 completed!

Then my phone rang.

“They’re moving,” Cloridan said when I answered it.

“Five minutes?” I asked.

“Probably. Is that going to be a problem?”

“No,” I said. It was still dark outside, I could be out of here in seconds. “I’ve got the objective, the demons are dead. It’s all good here.”

“We’ll be waiting,” he said, and the line went dead.

I had time so I took a look at the file contents.

Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production

Berlin.12th February 1944

Top Secret

To: Oberstleutnant Franz Ritter

Commanding Officer, Facility 12

Hauptstraße 57, 52062 Aachen

Subject: Classified Dossier on Project Uranus

Oberstleutnant Ritter,

Enclosed herein is the latest dossier on Project Uranus, our most critical research endeavour currently underway. This file contains comprehensive updates on the atomic fission experiments, materials acquisition, and ongoing progress at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. The enclosed documents provide detailed schematics, research notes, and operational timelines crucial to our objective of weaponizing nuclear energy.

As per Oberkommando orders, this dossier is to be kept under the strictest security. Any breach of its contents could severely compromise our strategic advantage. It is imperative that this information remains confined to Facility 12, and under no circumstances is it to be transferred to any other location without direct authorization from the highest levels.

Should further analysis or consultation be required, arrangements can be made through the office at Büchelstraße Headquarters, where select members of the research team are currently stationed to ensure the continuity of the project.

Please confirm receipt of this dossier immediately and ensure that all protocols for handling classified material are strictly adhered to.

Heil Hitler!

Dr. Hans Müller

Head of Special Weapons Division

Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production

“Goddam it,” I said aloud. “Why couldn’t it have been flying saucers?”

I didn’t stay to read any more. The first page had two locations, which was likely one more than I needed. I made to teleport out of there, but something held me back.

There wasn’t a reason to warn them. They were just a part of Axel’s system. But they’d felt too real for me to just leave them. I jumped back up to the third floor.

Grunwald wasn’t in his office, which might explain why the lights were turned off. I could hear his voice outside, so I stepped out. There were screams.

“The military is coming,” I told him before he could complain. “Five minutes.”

His eyes widened in fear, and he swore.

“You had the codes, damnit! Why didn’t you use them!”

“Believe me when I say that it was unavoidable. Call it an additional trap. Good luck. Oh, and I left the door open, you might want to send someone down to close it.”

I felt a bit guilty about that, but I didn’t let it show. I didn’t have the time to close up behind myself!

I disappeared back into his office. It wasn’t as impressive an exit as invisibility would be, but I didn’t want to cast the spell just to lose it as I stepped through a shadow.

I couldn’t get back to the others in one jump, but the streets were clear for now, so I didn’t have any trouble. They were happy to see me, and Sarge was raring to go.

“We going ta smash those bastards from behind like we planned?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “We’re better off getting to the actual site while they’re looking for us here.”

I couldn’t read kobold expressions, but I made a note of that one as “disappointment”. Nevertheless, he took the file off me eagerly.

“It’s all here sah! All the details of this atom project of theirs,” he said as he went through it. “If we get this back to HQ it will be a success, no doubt about it.”

“Atomic?” Borys asked. “As in, Atomic Bomb?”

“Yeah,” I said heavily. “Sarge, find us our next target. We’re going to want to steal or disrupt or destroy whatever they’re working on.”

“Is atomic bad?” Felicia asked, looking at our expressions. “It was a big fireball, right?”

“They wouldn’t be using it here, though,” Borys said. “This is a German city.”

“You don’t believe that,” I told him. To Felicia, I explained: “It’s a really big fireball. I doubt that Axel can make one, and I hope that he can’t mimic one with magic. But he could do a pretty good impression if he fills this entire floor with flame.”

“The entire floor?” Felicia asked, aghast. “Why would he do that?”

“Adds dramatic tension,” I said. “An atomic bomb is the ultimate Chekov’s Gun. You don’t introduce it in the first scene if you’re not going to fire it in the fourth.”

From the blank looks I was getting, my idiom hadn’t translated right. But Borys got it, much as he’d like to deny it.

“It’s a rule of writing plays,” I explained. “And while this is a game, it’s also a play being put on for Axel’s amusement. I’m not sure what the excuse is going to be. It might be some mad German commander wanting to purge the city of the enemy, it might be a launch that fails. Or it might be that they don’t build it right and it goes off accidentally.”

“That does sound like something Axel would do,” Borys admitted.

“So we’re in a race,” I said. “We have to find this project before they set off this bomb, and kill us all.”

“No doubt, sah!” Sarge put in. “But don’t worry, I’ve gone through the file, and I’ve found out where they’re building the damned thing! We’ll winkle out that bomb in no time!”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I cautioned the others as I could see their mood being lifted. “The next place is only the second objective… out of five.”