Credits
Original: http://scp-wiki-de.wikidot.com/nexus-4-1
Original author:
Translator:
Last time on Nexus:
The Murderer of Immortals, Part 3
Recently, Chloe had had fun. More fun than ever before in her life, in more worlds than she could ever have dreamed of.
A month had passed since her stay on Hawaii. In this month, Elli had lead her to some of the most diverse places in the multiverse.
They had witnessed the Boston Tea Party, visited the River Thames Frost Fairs of London and Broadway, boarded a gondola in Venice, explored Mars and viewed the Milky Way from above.
They almost always only remained for one hour, but that did not diminish the wonders Chloe saw.
Not that it always went smoothly.
In front of Elli's house inside the Nexus, a portal opened, through which a camouflage patterned jeep rushed with break-neck speed. The vehicle screeched to a halt, while the portal closed again with a flash.
"WOOHOO!" Elli yelled, as they exited the car.
She grabbed her flask and took a big sip. Meanwhile, a rather wobbly Chloe and a very annoyed Dean stepped out of the car.
"Yes, let's go to Philadelphia," Dean parroted Elli. "Next time, let us out somewhere, where the Navy does not test camouflage technology!"
"Hey, the space over there was wonderfully brittle and we did at least not emerge on the ship. And we got only spotted because Chloe had to cough. Sorry, Chloe."
Dean rolled his eyes.
"Sorry," Chloe murmured sadly.
"Oh, no biggie, Chloe," Elli comforted her. "Nothing did happen, after all."
"We knocked out a soldier and stole military property," Dean reminded her.
Elli gave him a look that could have frozen a medium-to-large sun.
"After all that racket, maybe we should go somewhere less busy," she then suggested.
"Ah yeah? What do you have in mind? North Korea? The Indian coast during the 2004 tsunami? Or perhaps Berlin at the end of 1923?" Dean asked dryly.
"No, we go to present-day Ukraine and look at the snow. And maybe go to a museum. What do you say, Chloe?"
Chloe, slowly but steadily transitioning into the solid state of matter again, was relieved. After that chase, something quiet would be nice. Yesterday, she had bruised her ribs on a railing, so every swerve in the car hat caused minor explosions in her chest. As a consequence, she slowly nodded with her head.
Because of their constant transitions through time and space, Elli had decided to simply teleport all of them into her wardrobe. Dean changed into a bomber jacket with jeans, Elli herself took a white anorak with a grey fur collar and Chloe got a beige one, together with a brown Uschanka and black mittens. Due to the view she got, Elli added a fur hat to herself.
After everybody had put on their winter boots (Dean had not approved any other footgear), it was time for the last check.
"Alright, ladies, listen up," Dean started resignedly. "Jackets?"
"Check!" Elli and Chloe replied.
"Boots?"
"Check!"
"Headgear?"
"Check!"
"Pants?"
"Check!"
"Purses?"
"With contents," Elli affirmed.
"A clue where we're actually gonna go?"
Elli rolled her eyes.
"Don't try this one on me, we almost became part of the USS Eldridge earlier," Dean railed.
"Yeah yeah…"
"I have seen the Werner movies, Elli, I know what you just said1."
Elli decided to pout. Meanwhile, Chloe began to ask herself if those two were married to each other. That would most likely explain this situation, even if the typical roles were reversed.
"Let's just hope that's a check," Dean murmured. "Chloe, do you have your emergency-"
Elli suddenly looked at him, grinning expectantly. Dean sighed.
Elli nodded contently.
Chloe got the small device in the form of a creme jar out from her pocket and held it up. It was a dark blue apparatus with an on-button inside, that, Elli assured, would allow Chloe to return to the Nexus even without her. It could only be activated by her, so as to take Chloe's fear of losing it away.
"Perfect!" Elli rejoiced. "Then now real quick the porta- ha- ha- HATCHOO!"
Her fur collar must have had tickled her nose because Elli sneezed hard, loud and in general not very ladylike. Even the portal opening in front of them seemed to be disgusted by this, because Chloe had the feeling for a fraction of a second as if it wanted to close again.
"That was exactly the maneuver Elli used to prevent a hook-up with Augustus II back then," Dean noted dryly.
Elli snuffled briefly before walking through the weirdly unshapely looking portal with a gracefully raised head. When Chloe did it too, she realized where the misshapen form stemmed from. It filled the just barely held together doorframe of a derelict shack that stood lonely in a snowy spruce forest. Elli stood in front of it and payed a raised eyebrow to the building while Dean came through the portal. It closed behind him.
"Is something wrong, Elli? " Chloe inquired.
With a last wary look, Elli turned around to get going.
"Meh, not important… Oh, what do we have here?"
Elli bent down and grabbed around in the snow.
Chloe approached interested but was halfway hit at the shoulder by Elli's snow ball.
"Hehe, fooled you," she jeered. "And now for- UMPF!"
Chloe felt the air current of the snowball after Dean had chucked it over her head into Elli's face with surgical precision. The force was enough to pull her backwards and to let her fall on her butt.
"Ouch!"
Dean stomped with the usual straight face past Chloe and positioned himself in front of Elli.
"If you are done acting like a five year old , come on, you wanted to do a winter walk to a museum."
"Yes, alright."
Dean helped Elli up and together the trio got on its way through the forest. It didn't take long until Dean noticed something.
"Elli, where exactly are we?"
"Stryschawka, why?" Elli asked before she started frowning her brows. "Yeah, you are right, where I want to go there should be more noise. Pretty damn quiet, given the fact that there's a housing settlement over there."
She pointed into a direction to her right in which Chloe saw nothing but trees.
"Well, it's winter, so it's more quiet in general," she tried to contribute.
Elli took a sip from her flask.
"Certainly, but you don't hear anything here. Not even any birds or anything like that. Do you see something?"
Everybody looked around and listened without finding anything.
"Maybe we have simply driven them awaaaaaayyyyyy…"
Elli became more and more quiet because she was to busy peering at the barrel of the MP 40 that was aimed at her. The owner of the weapon emerged from behind a small spruce tree and wore a uniform Chloe identified as the one of a Wehrmacht soldier, complete with Stahlhelm and a gas mask that dangled from his belt at the moment. The man looked very worn out, his gaunt, angular face wasn't shaved and his clothing was dirty and ripped in a few places. But what she didn't like was the angry gleam inside his eyes.
"Who are you!?" he bellowed. "Are you Soviet spies? Answer!"
"Uh, we are tourists?" Elli tried, with a desperate smile.
Chloe didn't like they way in which the left eyelid of the soldier twitched. She didn't like even more the kind of movements his hand made at the trigger.
Steps became audible behind the soldier. Two men in similar uniform and in a similar state approached. One had a wide build and a round face and the other one contrasted with the others with his eyepatch.
"Wenkmann, what's going on here?" the wide one asked.
"Kulzer, I have arrested three suspicious subjects here, probably spies of the enemy."
The two newcomers first looked at Elli, then at Chloe, exchanged a very telling look afterwards and slowly shook their heads.
"A child, Wenkmann" the one-eyed begun slowly. "I know it's not really easy at the moment but even paranoia has limits."
Chloe felt a faint glimmer of hope because of the way the man talked.
"That's exactly why it's so perfidious, Kaiser. The illusion is perfect. The Soviets know what they are doing."
"Bud vhe ore nod sovieds," Chloe said all of the sudden in the worst Dresden dialect she was capable of.
The soldier named Kaiser raised his eyebrows.
"You are from Saxony?"
"Yes," Elli lied, without batting an eyelid. "We were trapped in the Soviet Union for a really long time since the war has broken out."
Chloe became alert. War? Apparently they had emerged in the wrong time.
"Ha! Anyone could easily fake that dialect," Wenkmann laughed.
"No, Wenkmann, only the Saxons speak such gibberish," Kaiser replied annoyed. "No offense."
"Oh yeah? Rather weird clothing for refugees from the Soviet Union," Wenkmann noted with a deranged smile. "What even is that? Plastic?"
"We looted a clothing store over in Schytomyr," Dean replied. "Really amazing what they got up there. But as much as we are relieved to finally meet fellow countrymen again, could you please tell us where exactly we are here?"
"A few hundred meters behind us lies the Werwolf Bunke-" Kulzer explained, before Wenkmann interrupted him.
"PSSST! Now they know where we are, you moron!"
"Everybody knows, where we are, especially the Soviets," Kaiser gave back, even more annoyed than before.
"Is he always like this?" Dean asked.
"No but those monsters here grind heavily on our sanity, you certainly know them," Kulzer answered.
"No?" Dean replied, cautiously.
"Then you had more luck than brains," Kulzer commented dryly.
"Or they are agents of the enemy," Wenkmann noted.
Kulzer pushed his weapon down in annoyance.
"We can't stay for long out here in the open. We bring you back to the bunker. Let's see what the commander will have to say."
"Oh, we don't want to be a burden for anyone" Elli gave back with a fake laugh. "If you give us something to eat and tell us where west is, we will get through, don't worry."
Kaiser looked at her with a penetrating gaze.
"In all honesty? It's a miracle you are still alive."
The Führerbunker Werwolf was built in 1942 by forced Ukrainian laborers and consisted manly of some cuboid and now almost completely destroyed concrete structures and a lot of wood barracks. The rest of the place was occupied by weird looking artillery. It consisted of tanks that seemed as if the gun barrel had been replaced with a three meter long grey trombone.
Chloe did not have had the opportunity to ask Elli how they had arrived in this time. Deactivating her translation sticker was useless here, because their companions where sadly capable of speaking her native language. So she could only guess and try to work it out based based on the things she saw. Only, as much as Chloe wrecked her brain, they weren't at this point in history at school. Everything she knew about the Nazis came from hearsay and in a few cases from Wikipedia.
"Uh, what kind of tanks are those?" she therefore asked innocently, causing both Elli and Dean's eyes to briefly widen to the size of plates.
Fortunately, nobody noticed that.
"That's confidential, sadly," Kaiser answered with a smile.
Then he looked at Elli.
"Are you okay? You look kinda pale."
"No, all okay, could be the long march."
Slowly but steadily, other soldiers came into view. Many of them were in a similar, if not worse shape, than their overseers. Chloe saw not few who seemed to be dead inside.
Their escort lead them into one of the more livable looking barracks in front of a wooden door. Besides it, between the doorframe and a fierce looking guard hung a calendar that made Chloe's fears come true.
December 1943
"Kulzer, you stay here, Wenkmann, you come with me."
Both soldiers vanished behind the door. The clap of heels could be heard. Then nothing for a while and the a yelled "SHUT UP ALREADY, WENKMANN!"
The door opened soon after with a squeak and Wenkmann exited, no, fled from the room. Kaiser meanwhile took position in the fame and signaled them to enter.
Behind Chloe, for other soldiers came together with them into the office lying behind the door. Most prominent in the white-painted room was a window, a big office desk, several file closets and a giant man that could look even Dean almost in the eyes without pressing his head into the nape. Like the rest of the soldiers he wore a uniform, although his looked more important and much cleaner. Also, he did not wear a helmet, so the receding hairline of his brown hair was visible. From the angular face, an age of approximately fifty could be estimated. He implied a greeting to which the trio replied in silence.
"So," he started. "You are the fugitives from the Soviet Union. I am SS-Obersturmbannführer Micheal Steuer, I command this facility. Please excuse these soldiers, but you haven't been searched yet and your circumstances are, please don't get me wrong, quite suspicious.
"For the sake of fairness," Dean noted, "Our circumstances really aren't orthodox if you know what I mean."
Elli nodded affirmingly. The commander gave him a frown.
"And who might you be?
"Well, Mr… Obersturmbannfüher," Dean said. "If I may introduce us, I am Detlef Winter, that over there are Elli and our daughter Chloe."
Steuer raised an eyebrow.
"You look rather young for a daughter at that age."
"Aw, thank you," Elli replied with a smile.
"We both are thirty-eight, really," Dean gave back with an apologizing smile.
"Mhm," Steuer said. "Can you provide identification?"
"Uh, once we could but we got robbed. Vagrant scum," Dean answered. "We were only able to struggle along by stealing. Like already said, even those clothes here we have stolen from a store."
"Hm, Doesn't look like our fashion," the commander noted. "Is that plastic? Does it at least keep you warm?"
"Surprisingly yes."
"Then tell me. Why even were you in the Soviet Union?"
"We are from Eastern Prussia. Moved there a few years ago from Saxony. The Soviets drove us away and after that it became a gantlet. We actually thought we are going westwards and not towards the south."
Steuer frowned his brow with a smile.
"Ho-hum. Wenkmann told me you could be spies of the Soviets. And what can you say against that, I mean, you have to have a really bad sense of direction if you go south from Eastern Prussia instead of following the coast towards home?"
"You be reliant on vehicles you don't own for once," was the laconic answer from Dean. "Also, Chloe? A spy? Just look at her."
"Yes, look how she looks," Elli added.
Chloe tried to become invisible without success.
"Chloe," said the commander. "Remember, there are five men in the room that will upon my command charge anything that wishes to do evil. So answer honestly. Were you kidnapped by these people?"
Chloe was so surprised, her face went numb.
"What? N-No. Those are my parents. Really. Why do you think I got kidnapped?"
"Just a thought, we are at war, little girl The enemy will try everything to destroy our home. But be without worry, we will push him back."
He smiled at Chloe. She didn't know how she should feel about a Nazi offering her his protection…
"To be honest, Mr Winter, I don't believe you completely. You are hiding something. Under normal circumstances, I would have to interrogate you separately but our situation is rather unorthodox right now. All I can say with certainty is, that you are indeed Germans. And for now, that is reason enough to take you in here for protection. According to protocol we will have to incarcerate and frisk you for the time being, please excuse that. Kaiser, search for a free room for the three and after the examination something to eat, we-"
A telephone on the desk began to ring. The commander answered with an excusing gesture.
"Steuer on the line, what's up? Aha? Retreat immediately, we prepare the tanks. Yes. Thank you."
"Commander? " Dean asked.
"Change of plans. You have to go into the bunker, it will get rather chaotic in here soon. Kulzer, get six people to guard them."
"Understood, Obersturmbannführer."
"Are we being attacked?" Elli inquired.
Steuer only nodded.
Outside, the tanks got moving one after another and rolled towards the west. But even through the noise, Chloe could hear it, with a little bit of concentration even feel it.
The march. She didn't know how many there were but a whole lot of soldiers seemed to move in cadence towards the bunker. Seven soldiers, among them Kulzer, Kaiser and also Wenkman to his displeasure lead them to the bunker when Dean suddenly stopped. Riffles got pointed at him immediately, which he ignored deliberately.
"Wait. Do you hear that?"
Kaiser shrugged.
"The cadence? Probably those monsters. Normally we have to deal with them constantly but but this was a quiet day, new forces came through probably which had to be ground up. Poor bastards…"
"Wait, what are you talking about?" Elli asked.
"QUIET!" Dean demanded.
Everybody went silent. Then Chloe heard it too. A grating, cracking and crunching, as if ice got continually pulled over ice.
"That comes from the south," Dean determined. "What is that?"
The faces of the soldiers that meanwhile also heard the noise went pale.
"AMBUSH! ENEMIES FROM THE SOUTH!" they then yelled.
Then all hell broke loose.
Next time on Nexus:
Merciless Ice, Part 2