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Lascarone eased the cup of coffee from Rachatelli’s paws.
“Grazie.”
“Prego.”
The duo took generous sips from their cups, withstanding the bite of the hot beverages. Lascarone was met with the ever-familiar mediocrity of the canteen coffee, bought in bulk and transported from some average point of origin for those onboard the Liberazione Ascoltata to suffer through.
“Starting to think they should allocate greater budget for the drinks,” Rachatelli chuckled in Italian.
“That would make our jobs a lot more tolerable,” Lascarone grumbled.
He looked back across the bridge. All bridge traffic controllers continued with their work, mild chatter scattered across those who experienced the fortune of little to do. Stanmer stilled worked at her station, monitoring chatter through her headset.
“What’s the Taskforce situation?” Rachatelli asked, following his gaze.
“Nothing they can’t deal with,” Lascarone said. “They’re a capable crew. Anything on your end?”
“Not nearly as exciting as yours.”
Lascarone opened his mouth to reply but his words froze in his throat as Stanmer looked in his direction.
“Excuse me,” Lascarone said.
The bridge officer proceeded across the bridge and stopped by Stanmer’s station.
“What is it?”
“I’ve been trying to get through to Taskforce. No response. They last called to report gunfire.”
Lascarone didn’t need to ponder the implications of such silence.
“You told them to hold position?”
“As you instructed, sir.”
“Pass it to me.”
Stanmer passed the headphones to Lascarone. He nestled them over his ears and placed the microphone over his mouth.
“Taskforce, this is Bridge Officer Lascarone.”
No reply.
“Taskforce, I repeat, Lascarone is on the line. I need you to reply.”
Still no reply.
Lascarone relented, easing the headset off.
“They must have turned it off.”
“Why would they do that, sir?” Stanmer asked.
“Enemies nearby. Don’t contact them unless they contact you. I don’t want to get them killed by calling in at a bad time.”
“Is it possible that—”
“It’s not. A Brutta Notte team doesn’t die that easy, Stanmer. That radio’s off because they turned it off. No other reason.”
Stanmer nodded.
“Right. I hope they’re okay, sir.”
“I’m sure they are. Monitor over traffic for the time being, keep me notified of any developments.”
“Yes, sir.”
Stanmer returned to her duties. Lascarone walked back over to Rachatelli, sipping his coffee again.
“The team doing okay?” Rachatelli asked.
Lascarone looked back in Stanmer’s direction.
“I hope so.”
…
Aelwin was far from the most experienced of the team yet she had witnessed her fair share of Nazi atrocity. The underground bunkers and research labs guarded and maintained by Neowehrmacht forces, carrying out gruesome experiments that gave way to horrid monstrosities, lingered with her even years later. She could not count the times she had been greeted by the clinical monotony of drab concrete and reinforced steel, interceded by thick glass revealing all manner of diabolical research. She had stared down many an abominable adversary and lived to recount the events, able to watch as her slain foes were incinerated aboard the Liberazione Ascoltata and had their ashes spread across the sea.
Despite all that, the novelty of a gun in her face remained as pertinent a warning as ever.
The forest serpent swayed to and fro as it kept the muzzle trained on her. The appendage, covered in a coat of thin protruding cilia, wrapped around the grip and rested its tip against the trigger. Being held-up by one of photosynthesis’s components proved to be a bizarre situation but Aelwin found her attention drawn more to the far weirder pair of powerful gold eyes peering out at the team from the dark.
It had spoken, whatever it was.
“You mortals don uniforms far different to those of disagreeable motive,” the voice spoke. “Still dressed in furtive black and grey, yes, but not adorned in the regalia of tyrants.”
Aelwin couldn’t put her digit on it. There was something peculiar about the voice. She could detect the slightest warble upon the conclusion of each word; an echo that was only bold enough to reverberate once and no more. It spoke with a polite tone, one so welcoming that Aelwin would almost be tricked into treating the mysterious individual as a friend if not for the foreboding circumstances of their meeting.
Alvotolini struggled to stand. The pair of eyes shifted to the wounded feline without a word. Slit irises watched as the team leader fought to get onto his hind paws, steadying himself as he rose.
“We’re compliant,” he clarified. “We’re all calm here. There’s no need to have our guns pointed at us.”
“To the contrary,” the voice spoke. “If I had taken the liberty to approach you in the open, you would have fired upon me out of fear of your lives. It would not have done much, granted, but I would rather not have my garments riddled with holes.”
Alvotolini glanced at the tree roots, somehow unphased. The eyes continued to stare at him.
“You seem far less surprised than most mortals,” the voice said.
“We’ve seen plenty of things just as weird as tree roots holding our guns,” Alvotolini said, returning his gaze to the pair of eyes. “Who are you? Are you one of them? A Neowehrmacht project that’s broken loose?”
“It is us who should be asking you of your identity. The soil here has nary been trodden upon by mortals for many a generation before your life. This impenetrable canopy, these towering trees, have remained uninhabited for a very long time.”
At the corner of Aelwin’s vision, shifting in the dark, she could see traces of sunlight. Looking up greeted her with vivid shimmering hallucinations of a forest far different to how it was now; a sky of leaves and branches that permitted only pinpricks of light through, leaving forest corridors in darkness. Shifting ghouls frolicked between the hallways and laughter bounced off the trees. The forest was alive, piercing the uncomfortable inaction of the present, if only for a few seconds.
“How?” Alex muttered. “This can’t be possible.”
The visions receded. The light faded. The laughter died. The ghouls were remanded to the void.
The team stood there, stunned.
“How the hell did you do that?” Alex yelled. “Was it…gas? Are we being drugged? What is going on?”
Aelwin looked right. Alex stood there, trembling and heaving, glaring at the stranger. Her tail stood stiff, agitated.
“Hey,” Aelwin said. “Alex—”
“We just want to fucking go home, damn it! What the fuck is all of this?”
“Alex!”
Alex’s enraged fervour as she looked over at Aelwin.
“Let’s keep our cool, okay? Let’s hear what this person has to say before we start panicking.”
Aelwin could see Alex fought to restrain her anger – to control her rage at a situation that seemingly worsened by the minute – but that fight ended well. Alex committed herself to silence and the pair of eyes returned to Alvotolini.
“I don’t know who you are or what you want,” Alvotolini said. “But those people of disagreeable motive? The ones in the regalia of tyrants? Those are Nazis. Neowehrmacht soldiers. We hunt them and stop their experiments from killing people.”
“You do not have names?” the voice asked.
“We can’t disclose that information. They have people holding places in government and institutions. If our names get out, they can trace our identities and—”
“I’ll take your first name and that alone. You need not fear me.”
Alvotolini hesitated, mindful of the guns levelled at them.
“Do I get a name in return?”
The voice said nothing. The eyes continued to stare. Alvotolini capitulated.
“Luciano.”
“Luciano,” the voice said, taking time to enunciate each syllable slowly. “A wonderful name for a mortal. It is nice to make your acquaintance, Luciano, and your forthcoming honesty is noted.”
Alvotolini said nothing. The voice spoke again.
“I am aware of your tragic appearance here. The crash you all survived. My condolences for your friends.”
“Thank you.”
A tree root dangled the radio in front of the team.
“I am to assume you are expecting some manner of evacuation, Luciano?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
The tree root wrapped tight around the radio, forming a cocoon, before disappearing into the soil. The transponder soon followed.
“I regret to bear such terrible news…but you cannot leave. Not yet.”
Alex stirred. Aelwin shushed her, murmuring comforts. Another tree root carried the objective box to the front and dangled it before Alvotolini.
“You are aware of what this is?”
“Be careful with that. We don’t know if the inside is radioactive, toxic—”
“This, my mortal friends, contains a potent fast-acting poison. As to where it was synthesised, I am not privy to, yet I am aware that it was manufactured by this ‘Neowehrmacht’ for the purpose of being delivered here.”
Alvotolini frowned.
“How do you know that?”
The ground in front of the ditch bubbled up soil and underground debris. The team receded a step as a thick tree root broke through the surface, dragging out some tall artefact with it and dangling it up high. A second of scrutiny was all it took for Aelwin to discern the silhouette of a corpse suspended in the air before them and only one more second to notice the red band around the arm. Clumps of dirt soiled the grey and black uniform, accumulating between the plates of padding over the chest and in the raised collar around the broken neck. The tree root dropped the Nazi unceremoniously onto the ground – almost disgusted to have even held them – before disappearing into the soil.
“There have been many a fool such as this scouring the forest in search of you,” the voice said. “In search of this box you courier to safety. This one was forthcoming enough to tell me of such a mission.”
“Why do they want it?” Alvotolini asked.
“To eradicate a mistake they made within this sprawling forest.”
The tree root placed the box down on the lip of the ditch before Alvotolini.
“These fiends have populated our home with their insidious beliefs for many years, lurking in shadow as they flew helicopters carrying excavation equipment for discrete missions. They tunnelled beneath the soil, knocked over our trees, and desecrated sacred ground to establish some den of hedonistic pursuit. They numbered too many to dispel without letting them know of our existence. We were reduced to bystanders of our home’s destruction.”
The tree roots eased their tips off the triggers of their hijacked weaponry and eased the stolen arsenal to the ground, disappearing into the dirt.
“But then a…compatriot, let’s say…imbued one of the many denizens of our court with power to dismantle this threat. They were dispatched here to complete a goal similar to your own…but the monsters were far too prepared. They ensnared our agent and trapped them in some impenetrable chamber in the hopes of harnessing their power.”
“This denizen is like you?” Alvotolini asked.
“Not dissimilar. With the power granted to them, they are not to be trifled with. But they have been ruined – warped and malformed – by the cruel experiments carried out beneath this soil. That is our problem. My compatriot, a lord of our venerable court, is unable to retract the power they imbued this courtier with. The captive grows stronger without restraint, contained only by that fragile chamber that they shall soon break free from. If they escape, they shall take to this mortal plain with a level of malice that shall not bode well for neither ourselves nor you.”
The stranger’s eyes gazed at the box.
“You must descend into that hive of villainy…and apply the poison to spare our friend the grief of such prolonged torture.”
“And if we don’t?” Alex asked, clutching her gun.
The eyes focused upon her.
“You die at dawn.”
Alex glared. Alvotolini spoke.
“Is that when it breaks out? Dawn?”
“Indeed,” the voice said. “You must make haste. Your adversaries gained access to the secret location by a solitary elevator positioned within the stony walls of a nearby cavern.”
“How do we get there?”
The darkness engulfing the mysterious figure lit up with a hundred glowing eyes. First one pair, then another, and then many more. Blue circles in the dark regarded the team with apathetic glares, souls committed to the mission beyond any care for their mortal acquaintances’ wellbeing.
“My compatriots shall guide you. Trust in their direction.”
The eyes faded one by one, leaving only the stranger’s glare as another tree root snaked up through the soil and dragged the Neowehrmacht corpse back below the dirt.
“Beware the depths of that place. This courtier has an affinity for deceit and cunning. They shall attempt to trick you. You must remain dedicated to the mission and, no matter what they say, grant them the peace they deserve.”
The eyes focused upon Alvotolini.
“Careful, my dear Luciano,” the voice said, almost affectionate. “I hope to see you again.”
With that, the stranger’s eyes disappeared into the dark.
Aelwin stood there, left with the sound of her own breathing.
Alvotolini broke the stunned silence.
“Regroup on me, now.”
The team rushed to the centre of the ditch, crouching beside the team leader. Alvotolini grunted as he knelt.
“I need you all to stay calm. Okay? Stay calm and stay with me. Today has…today has been a very weird day. A bad one. The stress, for all of you, must be unbearable.”
He looked over at Alex, who noticeably still trembled.
“I want to go home too. Not just to honour our dead friends but because it’s what we all deserve.”
“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “I didn’t mean to lose it, I’m just scared sir.”
“I am too. But being brave is acting strong even when we know we’re scared. Being brave in the face of danger, of whatever ugly face the Neowehrmacht has conjured up for us, is what Brutta Notte lives for.”
“What’s the plan, sir?” Giancarlo asked.
“We do what they say. Those visions, those glowing eyes, those tree roots…disagreeing isn’t much of an option.”
“How do we know they’ll let us go after?” Maxim said. “They could kill us the moment we’re done.”
“You saw that soldier. I got the impression that if that thing wants to kill someone, it’ll do it. We’ve been kept alive for a reason.”
“What if it’s just using us to go down there?” Aelwin asked. “The moment we finish the mission, it’s not going to let us go.”
“I got a sense of whimsy from it. Something…fanciful. There’s sentiment, there’s motivation, there’s…something personable about them. Like it really did hate the Neowehrmacht it just killed.”
“Hear, hear,” Alex said.
“It must know we’re not like them. If that’s the case, we’re going to have to hope it likes us enough to let us go once we’re done. We go down there, we kill whatever we have to, we go home and then we down enough alcohol until we’re on the floor. We’re Brutta Notte, cazzo, we don’t die this easy.”
The team nodded, tired and uncertain. Alvotolini took to rallying their spirits with that fateful mantra.
“In bocca al lupo?”
“Vive lupo,” the team responded.
“Good. Up and ready.”
The team stood, preparing themselves. Aelwin cast her gaze back to the darkness north and saw a pair of blue eyes leering at them.
Their guide waited.
“We ready?” Alvotolini asked, picking up the objective.
The team confirmed they were good to go. Aelwin followed Alvotolini into the dark, doing her best to keep her fear at bay.
…
After minutes of pacing through the eerie dark of the forest, their silent trek accompanied by the crispy crunch of leaves beneath their boots, the team arrived at a clearing. It was small, offering a small hole of space for the moonlight to peer in. The moonlit grass and foliage preceded the gaping mouth of the cave on the opposite side, daring to go no further than the threshold. Aelwin shone her torch towards the cave, driving the shadows back a few feet.
“There it is,” Alvotolini said. “Helmets on. Maxim, take point.”
“Da,” Maxim said, placing his helmet on before easing in front of the team leader and taking the team across the clearing. The moment was tense, pregnant with anticipation. None said a word as they crossed, ignoring the glowing eyes observing them as they moved.
Aelwin raised her torch and shone it into the cave. The beam of light illuminated the traces of person-made architecture; the concrete walls painted over in urgent German lettering, the abandoned wooden crates stacked high, and the reinforced security gate left wide open.
“Nobody’s home,” Alex said, lowering her rifle.
“Not in here, at least,” Giancarlo said. “Down below is anyone’s guess.”
Aelwin shone the torch to the back. An empty cargo elevator stood abandoned, bathed in shadow.
“There’s our way down,” Aelwin said.
“Move,” Alvotolini ordered, pistol ready.
Maxim and Giancarlo moved ahead, Alex behind. Aelwin stayed close to Alvotolini. She noticed how he struggled along yet said nothing, moving with the team as if he hadn’t been wounded in the crash.
“Sir, take it easy,” she said. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“I’ll take it easy when we’re out of here,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
She knew better than to argue. The team rallied to the elevator, stopping shy of the open doors. It was formed of crude metal, studded metal panels making up the floor whilst smooth metal sheets acted as the walls. There was enough room for a few palettes of crates to be placed inside with just enough space at the fringes for people to stand.
“In,” Alvotolini ordered.
The team filed in. Maxim took the front right corner, Giancarlo took the front left, Alvotolini stood against the wall, Alex stood in the back right corner and Aelwin took the back left. Giancarlo hit the single button on the control panel and, as he did, a bulb above their head flickered into stuttering life. The doors closed and, a second later, the elevator made its whining descent.
Aelwin checked her magazines.
Not too many. Got to be careful.
Aelwin looked right. Alex stood there, checking all her equipment with nervous fervour. To her left, Alvotolini rested against the wall. Giancarlo and Maxim stood prepared, guns held in the low-ready position.
The light above burst, throwing the elevator into darkness.
“Sloppy,” Maxim scoffed, turning on his torch. “Didn’t expect Neowehrmacht to leave things like this.”
“I don’t think they left on their own terms,” Giancarlo said.
A polite ding notified the team of their imminent arrival. The elevator slowed to a halt. The team braced. Aelwin stood ready, her fealty to the organisation holding her in place.
“Hey,” Maxim said. “This should be fun, right? It’ll be a nice story to tell back on the ship.”
“Let’s make sure we live to tell it,” Alvotolini said, pushing himself off the wall.
The doors slid open. The team aimed ahead, prepared to fight whatever horror resided on the other side.
Thud.
Aelwin’s gaze and rifle lowered as the corpse slumped against the doors fell into the open elevator, its ruined face gawping up at the team. Dirt and roots burrowed into the eye sockets and spilled out of the mouth. Shards of wood protruded from its chest, javelins hurled by a mysterious marauder.
Parts of the floor were slick with congealed blood.
“Well,” Maxim said. “This is a good start.”