Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/45848.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Weiss_Kreuz
  Character:
      Konrad_Schoenberg, Shelton_Grant, Brad_Crawford, Original_Characters
  Additional Tags:
      Violence, Mindfuck, Character_Death, Work_In_Progress
  Series:
      Part 6 of The_Cross_of_Changes_Arc
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-01-05 Chapters: 19/30 Words: 27917
****** Whom Gods Destroy ******
by GuiltyRed
Summary
     One driven man is determined to bring about the downfall of Schwarz
     and bring at least one of them back to Rosenkreuz alive. The story of
     the search for Schwarz from Esset's standpoint.
***** Chapter 1 *****
1. – Betrayed

The Ritual had been planned out for more than a century. Everything had been in
place, with our best and brightest assigned to make certain it was a success.
We should have entered a new age that day.
Something has gone very, very wrong.
The undercurrent that was Esset has become turbulent, torn: instead of the
constant psychic presence governing our lives, the power of the Elders raged
and vanished like a cyclone spinning itself into oblivion.
They are gone. There is no other explanation.
He has done this.
And now Esset has turned on its own, as a mad beast will snap at its own flanks
with no other target present.
I paced through my apartment, feeling increasingly trapped and beyond my means.
What began as a clearing out of deadwood has become open rebellion. Apparently
the young herd was not so ready to die. They have taken up arms against their
masters and were even now carving their way through this facility. Already I
could hear the gunshots in the corridors. It was now only a matter of time
before they came for me as well.
With practiced calm I unloaded and reloaded my revolver, then checked the
action on the automatic. I would not go without a fight, though it was one I
was destined to lose. Already once I had cheated death by pistol; I knew I
would not remain lucky forever.
Lucky…or fated? My right hand sought the scar on my left shoulder, just beside
the rise of my neck. Once before I had faced down death, once before clung to
life with a fierce determination.
 
Even at the cost of my soul.
[Sixteen; an Esset Youth Captain in Berlin. Dueling to avenge a slight, an
insult – a statement that was, nonetheless, true.
“Your face gains you your rank, Stricher!”
I raise my pistol, hand steady.
If I shoot this boy…it will never stop.
I will never stop…]
Footsteps powered by fear skidded to a halt outside, followed by frantic
knocking.
I aimed both guns at the door. “It’s open.”
The door flew inward, bounced off the wall and nearly hit the wild-eyed student
as he flung himself into the room. “Sir! Herr General! I’ve Seen them!”
Cold fire lit a trail up my spine. I let the guns slip from my hands and
grabbed the youth by his lapels. “Say clearly – whom did you See?”
“Schwarz! They live!”
A clatter of boot heels sounded outside. One messenger was all that was
required; I clutched the boy to me and envisioned a barrier of steel between us
as the executioners rounded the door frame and opened fire. In my arms, the
young precog jerked soundlessly with the impact of two dozen rounds.
“Hold your fire!” I shouted, my unwitting shield now limp meat stinking of
ozone and cordite. “I have information for your masters.”

A/N:
A Brief Note about the Titles:
Unlike the titles in the other stories of the “Cross of Changes” Arc, the
single- or two-word titles are taken from songs which will only be referenced
in passing. The characters have no connection with the music. It is solely a
vehicle for my muse. I will provide the lyrics in their own document on my
website as with the other stories, with no additional commentary in the
Author’s Notes. This is to keep the focus on the mood and not the muse.
1. – Betrayed
The story opens during the Purge of Rosenkreuz, in the aftermath of the fall of
the Elders…
Stricher – boy-whore
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter 2 - Alone
Reprieve, or condemnation? I shook my head as I returned to my apartment. I was
one of perhaps a dozen teachers and staff who still breathed. Should I consider
myself lucky? Or damned?
Pausing to bolt the door, I rested a hand against the heavy wood, tasting each
indiscretion it had witnessed. My eyes closed, allowing moments of my life to
replay behind the lids, a red-tinged home movie I would rather not revisit.
I couldn’t know if my secrets were still intact, but part of me knew it didn’t
truly matter. I had my orders, and I would find a way or they would kill me.
Simple, direct, precise. No more games. I’d been involved in too many of those.
Never again.
One by one I went through my rooms and my desks, seeking out the trappings of
the old order and packing them away. Paperwork unfinished found itself swept
into a box, my responsibility no longer. My bare hands burned with each lonely
scrap of paper, each battered file, the residue of humanity clinging stubbornly
to the debris of a fallen order. The pain grew, driving me onward at a mad
pace; sweat dripped from my forehead, matted my hair. I wiped an arm across my
face, every fibre in my body trembling and on the edge of shock. I clung to the
heavy mahogany desk as though it were an anchor against the storm.
Slowly I regained my composure and put my gloves back on, tugging them into
place with crisp precision, as I always had. Decades of service and not one
whisper that anyone knew of this gift, this curse, this madness that kept me
apart from my fellows and untouched by all but a few.
All but one…
This room still remembered him. I tried, oh God I tried, but without directly
willing it I removed my gloves again and set my hands flat to the wall beside
the office door. He had slept here, his hair touching the wall as he turned in
his sleep, his face as calm and still as an angel’s.
I could almost smell the shampoo. My lips parted and I sucked at the air,
desperate for a taste, a moment of the past to redeem all my pain. Air burned
into my chest, bitter and cold and tasting only of spent freon and dust.
I stood there, embracing the wall, daring the past; my pulse thundered in my
ears. He had been perfect, unspoiled, and for one brief moment mine.
[The phone rings. A secretary’s voice. “I am to inform you that new orders have
been issued in the matter of the boy precog. He is to reside with the general
populace effective tomorrow.”
Panic, dread – that would be like handing him over to a pack of half-starved
jackals! – “There must be some mistake, I was assigned to mentor him and keep
him under personal surveillance for four months!”
“There is no mistake. I have the orders right here, sir.”
Dread becomes horror and I ask “Who signed the order?” through lips gone
suddenly numb.
“Herr Sonndheim, sir.”]
My knees gave way and I allowed myself to crumple to the floor, my fingertips
trailing white fire down the wall. I should have distanced myself, I should
have simply turned away, but I could not bear the thought of that monster
getting hold of that sweet boy. I knew what games Sonndheim favored, and I knew
from the first that he wanted Bradley. Bradley, my sweet young hope. My
diamond, my star.
My retrieval team had found him on my lead, a boy of unusual gift in a humble
corner of the world. I had felt him, known where he would be. What I had not
known was how powerful he truly was, or what he would one day become. Becomings
are not a thing I can taste, they reside in his world, in the immensity of the
future.
Memory tormented me, replaying that damn phone call over and over:
[“Herr Sonndheim, sir.”]
[“Herr Sonndheim, sir.”]
[“Who signed the order?”
“Herr Sonndheim, sir.”]
I screamed, an incoherent roar of fury as I leaped to my feet and began ripping
the desk drawers free one by one and dumping their contents in the packing box
or on the floor or wherever the hell they landed before hurling the drawer into
the far wall with all the force of my training behind it. Shards of mahogany
and brass fittings flew back at my face like shrapnel.
[“Who signed the order?
“Herr Sonndheim, sir.”]
I jumped onto the desk and tore at the ceiling tiles, pulling them free and
sending them tumbling floorward. My fingers searched for the pain among the
wiring and insulation, and found nothing.
As though merely descending from a stair-step I vacated the desk, jarring my
back as my feet returned to the floor but not caring. I had work to do, and
less time to do it. I should have done this years ago, but in the beginning it
was far too dangerous and later it had become meaningless. Now it was the only
thing I had left, the only unfinished business with a corpse, and I was
determined to finish it before taking up my new command.
One by one I scoured each room, climbing onto desks and bookshelves to rape out
the hidden spaces above my home. My hands hurt, but I was without pity or
mercy, just as I was trained to be. I heard myself cry out as my fingers closed
over a length of wire that still carried its origins in its heart. Wrapping it
around my wrist for leverage, I pulled, hard, and heard a satisfying ripping
sound as it came free, nearly plunging me from my perch in the process. The
tiny camera had played silent witness to every moment I spent in my living
room, every meal, every breath, from kitchen to window to sofa. The sofa…
I snarled aloud and continued my rampage, determined to rid my life at last of
that maggot, that miscarriage, that demon that was Erich Sonndheim.
[A dismissive glance. “Herr Crawford, I presume?” A proprietary leer. “Handsome
boy, Konrad. Needs more sun.”
“Always a pleasure to meet one of Schoenberg’s boys. Good evening, Bradley
Crawford…”]
The snarl escalated into a full-throated howl. My body trembled with the force
of it even as it tried to reject the psychic poison that lived in Sonndheim’s
camera wiring. The man was dead, dead and gone, executed by perhaps the only
one who could have pulled it off.
Executed by my star, my brilliant unspoiled diamond.
And with that move, they had both condemned me to a life in hell. I could never
leave here, with Sonndheim dead: someone had to keep watch over the animals in
this monstrous menagerie, and that honor had fallen in turn to me.
My dream of tenderness, of love, with my star shattered; my dream of freedom
scattered into a million fruitless imaginings.
Betrayed.
Red tinged my vision – red fire, red hair, red blood. Breath came in ragged
gulps, bringing dizziness and a sense of euphoria. The euphoria of the damned.
I threw my head back and bellowed at the heavens. “You were supposed to take me
with you!”

A/N:
From “Standing Outside the Fire”, Bradley’s POV: He said something else in
German, pausing in the middle to look me up and down like a side of beef; I
felt my face go red, but I couldn’t understand exactly why.
Here we find the scene from Konnor’s point of view: A dismissive glance. “Herr
Crawford, I presume?” A proprietary leer. “Handsome boy, Konrad. Needs more
sun.”
Bradley Crawford was a farmboy from Kentucky. He arrived at the end of summer.
He would have a healthy tan…most everywhere.
Not much more to add here, I think.
***** Chapter 3 *****

3. – Puppets
I feigned a yawn to cover a sneer and masked it all with the back of my hand.
The interminable bureaucracy of Esset had not died; time and action slid
further away with every damned meeting.
“Yes, yes, we’ve heard this all before,” I cut in. “You’re very good at telling
us what we do not have. I’m rather more interested in what we do have, Herr
Edelmann.” My lips curled into a smile as the young despot squirmed. He had
come here to become a teacher, fresh from the officer’s corps in Berlin, and
now fancied himself our better. Very well, let him prove himself.
Edelmann glared at me, then addressed the assembly. “As I was saying, we know
that the revered Elders are no longer with us, and we suspect that the field
team of Herr Crawford was involved in their demise. We have searched their
apartments and canvassed the vicinity, to no avail. Divers have found no trace
among the wreckage.”
As the pompous little man droned on, I studied my fellows. Most were far too
young. Aside from Garrick and Mendez, I would be the oldest here, and that at
barely forty. These arrogant pretenders didn’t know what they were looking for,
and they had no clue how to find it. They did, however, hold our lives as
hostage. My teeth clenched against the bitter taste of that fact.
“Our stronger telepath units are even now being deployed to Japan, in a wide-
angle search dispersal. They should be able to triangulate on the targets
within a matter of days.”
“Presuming, of course, that they are still on those islands,” Garrick pointed
out, his tone at once bored and frosty. “Come now, what makes you think
Crawford would keep his team within the search zone? He knows procedure, why
would he sit and wait for us to come fetch him up like a lost puppy? Logic,
man!”
A smile tugged at my lips, drawn by an idea of flawless strategy. I wallowed in
my certainty for a few moments, watching the interaction between Herr Garrick
and Herrchen Edelmann as the two began a stare-down across the table.
Hesitation had the power to make some things sweeter, and the coming moments
should be sweet.
Twenty-four days of hyperbole and rhetoric, of accusations and finger pointing.
Three weeks plus three, dead and gone, never to be had again. Plenty of time
for a resourceful team leader to devise a plan and execute it. They could be
anywhere, and this young buffoon couldn’t think of a more effective use of our
time than to sit in meetings and discuss it ad nauseam.
The room fell silent. Edelmann had lost the staring contest, turning away with
clenched jaw. If our little Napoleon were armed or willing to use his gift, and
if he were the fool we thought he was, Garrick would be a dead man by
nightfall.
I cleared my throat and raised my hand, the glove seeming to draw light to it
in the overcrowded room.
“What is it, Schoenberg?” Edelmann snapped, clearly at the end of his patience.
My voice did not betray my smile as I said, “It is customary, is it not, in the
event of an accident, to question any eyewitnesses present? Tell me, who were
the last persons to see Crawford’s team alive?”
Edelmann frowned, thinking hard. But not hard enough. “The Elders. What’s your
point, General?”
“No, you idiot,” I stated, making my point without delicacy, “I mean who are
themselves still alive! I am not a trance medium, nor have I ever met one of
any accuracy.”
The room once again fell silent, but this time my colleagues glanced from one
to another with new interest.
Edelmann had just lost his fragile new command.
“Kritiker,” Mendez observed, nodding confirmation. He addressed me alone as he
said, “There were swarms of Kritiker agents that day, Konrad. Our operatives
dealt with a number of them, but traditionally that organization uses heavy
backup.”
“And we have no idea what happened within the chambers,” commented a young
teacher whose face was not familiar; probably a physical talent. “There was a
fire, of course, most likely the armory. This compromised the structure of the
building itself, but we have no way of knowing if it was set on purpose, or if
it was an accident.”
“Don’t we?” I queried, once more firmly in control and quite pleased with that
fact. I noticed that young Edelmann had seated himself in a far corner; I may
yet find worth in that one. At least he knew when to concede. “Don’t we? Surely
we have one or two telemetrists left among the fold?”
The speaker blanched. “You mean have someone read the debris from a fire that
devoured at least three hundred and sixty lives, General Schoenberg? Do you
know what that could do to a reader?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I do.” I steepled my hands on the table, noting as I did so
a smudge on my left glove. I frowned at it, then turned my attention back to
the assembly. Twenty-eight pairs of eyes were fixed on me, as it should be.
“Gentlemen, ladies, I confess that I have presumed that finding this missing
team ranked high in your priorities. If this is not the case, then please,
allow me to withdraw the suggestion. We should perhaps take a few minutes to
clarify our objectives.” My gaze traveled from the first pair of eyes to the
next, surveying the crowd one by one.
“We do need to know what went wrong,” Mendez murmured, “and Schwarz would be
the only reliable witnesses. They were closest to the Elders. If they still
live, they alone would know the truth of it.”
“Perhaps not,” Garrick offered. “There were Kritiker agents present. Could
Schwarz have been captured?”
“There are several avenues of information,” I reminded them. “I still recommend
the reader, along with a thorough forensics review. That, and…find out who,
precisely, was present in the name of Kritiker, who is not among their listing
of the dead.”

A/N:
Herrchen – diminutive version of Herr (“little Mister”), meant here as an
insult.
Telemetrist – Rosenkreuz term for object reader, rather than the traditional
term “psychometrist”. The initials “TM” are used for their object readers while
“PM” is reserved for the psychometabolic talent family. Similarly, telekinetic
(“TK”) instead of psychokinetic, as “PK” refers to pyrokinesis, a different
animal entirely.
***** Chapter 4 *****
4 – Dance
The new furniture pleased the eye, but I couldn’t help regret the loss of my
mahogany desk. It had been with me from the start, and now it lay in a landfill
somewhere, destroyed in a fit of rage uncustomary of me. I wasn’t a violent
man, or impatient, but every man has his limits, and recent events had
apparently pushed me beyond mine.
Nothing to be done for it now. I seated myself at the new sleek walnut desk and
began sifting through the information we had managed to scrape together over
the past month and a half. Casually I thumbed the switch for the track
lighting, yet another token of my momentary madness. While repairing the
ceiling, the crews had asked if I would like the upgrade, and since they had
precious little else to do with their time, I had accepted, but only on the
condition that I supervised everything. I’d only just gotten rid of the
surveillance devices; damned if I was ever going to put up with that again.
[“Konnor, you should be more careful. You know he’s watching you.”
“I know, Shelley.”
“What did you ever do to him?”
“I told him ‘no’.”]
I shook my head. It didn’t take much to get Erich’s attention, and once one had
it, it was impossible to be rid of. The man was a leech, a barnacle, a human
herpie. Bitter laughter poured from my lips at the thought, though the man did
not inspire humor. Damn it all, I finally got him out of my home, did I carry
him inside my mind, now?
[“You are just like me. We are the same, my dear General.”]“I am not like you!”
My voice echoed off the empty walls, my books not yet restored to the new
shelving.
Dark laughter flowed out through the cracks, those places where corners meet
and let the night seep in.
Cold sweat crept down my back, chilled the belt-line of my trousers. “Erich
Sonndheim is dead. He cannot [dear God don’t let him touch me!]…” The words
fell to silence.
With shaky hands I poured myself a double shot of schnapps. My jaw clenched as
I raised the glass to my lips and I nearly gagged on the potent liquor.
Sonndheim had favored the stuff. At the moment I considered it strictly
medicinal. Use spirits to banish spirits; I only hoped it would work.
I sat there at my new desk, cradling the half-empty glass between gloved hands.
The past grudgingly returned to its grave. I sighed at its passing.
“Done is done,” I murmured, whether to myself or to another I was not certain.
“Cannot be undone.” I finished my drink.
Reports lay strewn across the desk, beckoning to me with their crisp black
letters and scrawled signatures. I picked one up at random, leaned back in my
chair, and began to read.
The apartment assigned to Schwarz during their stay in Japan had been ransacked
in a very methodical manner. The computers had been disabled, no recovery
possible. And no one had seen or heard anything.
Esset was monitoring all known bank accounts, but I knew Bradley well enough to
believe that the money would one day be gone and we would never have seen it
leave. He was too clever, too resourceful; were this not so painful, it would
be a delightful game of chess. To match wits with my own star… I smiled at the
thought. Then reality gnawed away at the edges, reminding me that this was no
boy I was dealing with, but the man. Brad Crawford the team leader was a far
cry from young Bradley of Kentucky.
Set a fox to catch a fox…
“All right, my love,” I crooned to his memory, “we’ll play this your way. You
hide, and I will seek. The world is not big enough to conceal your entire team
for long. No matter how slick you are, your companions will betray you. It is
only a matter…of time.”
I rose from my seat and strode to my bedroom. From the closet I took an old
suitcase. The ink on the airline label was faded, but if I squinted just so I
could still make out the name: Bradley Crawford. I set the suitcase on my bed,
then paused. If I took this step, I would be committing myself to the hunt,
knowing full well that others wanted his death rather than his capture.
Then again, if I played a shrewd hand, I would soon be commanding the search
myself.
I opened the suitcase.
Inside lay a jumble of clothing: nothing important beyond its capacity to
muffle sound. I tossed the clothes aside, unstrapped the garment divider and
pushed it up and out of the way. Below it, fastened so as not to rattle and
surrounded by more castoff clothing, lay a box.
I regarded this box with something akin to reverence. What it contained was
more precious than gold, more rare than jewels.
It contained Bradley’s past.
Slowly I peeled off my gloves.
My hands lingered on the box lid a moment, just barely sensing what lay within.
The old hunger rose up in me; I fought it down. This was hardly the time or
place for such foolishness. With an impatient flourish I tossed back the lid.
A few paperback books languished in one corner, their pages yellowed at the
edges. Beside these lay a broken watch and two old pairs of eyeglasses. The
shirt he had arrived in, a pair of well-worn jeans, some underwear – all these
things seemed to be waiting for his return. My fingers trailed over each item,
affording me brief glimpses of the boy who had once been my everything.
The breath caught in my throat as I touched the dark gray jacket, his first-
issue uniform. He had only worn that jacket four months: his shoulders had been
determined to render it obsolete. Then he had begun to sprout in height,
offsetting the shoulders and leaving him once more a lanky, gangly youth with
big feet and big hands, and an awkward way of running.
I could still taste his fear on that coat.
[“…new orders have been issued in the matter of the boy precog…”]
If there was anything I could do for my star, I would grant him a quick
capture, and his team a swift execution. It may be the only mercy they would
find with Esset, and I wasn’t certain I could manage to obtain it for them. But
I felt I owed him at least that much.
I let my hand move at random across the artifacts in the box. It had been too
many years since he had touched any of these things; still, the trace of him
lingered like a ghost too bewildered to move on.
 
Move on…
The world has moved on… I picked up the first of his books and frowned
thoughtfully at it. Long ago I had read this, craving some insight into my dear
Bradley. The man Roland was chasing someone, or was he being led? My memory
played tricky with me on that, or perhaps it was the author’s intention that I
wonder such.
To be the prey, while believing oneself the hunter – how humbling.
A full smile curved my lips, the sensation pleasant to me. My little lost love,
would you even notice if you were no longer leading in the dance?
Precognitives often played havoc off one another, their gifts creating a vortex
of possibilities. The nature of this was not well understood, along the lines
of chaos theory and quantum physics: too many observers spoiled the outcome,
basically. If more than a couple of precogs tried to snoop around a similar
point in the future, they would wind up with confusion and headaches. Sometimes
having too many clairvoyants and other similar talents at work could achieve
the same mischief. It had never been recorded whether the effect could work
over great distances, but I was ready to find out.
 
Book still in hand, I returned to my desk. I set down the book, and picked up
the phone.
“Yes, I’ll hold.” I waited, allowing my mind to turn and study what it had
latched onto. I could find no flaw in it. “Who do we have on the distant
surveillance side of this?” I inquired. “I need to call a meeting. No, with all
of them. That’s right. And every other clair-talented mind we have access to. I
want to try something.”

A/N: 4. – Dance
Konrad’s comment – “Done is done. Cannot be undone.” – is my little tribute to
another Stephen King novel (Insomnia). Creepy book. Very recommended.
***** Chapter 5 *****
5. – Smiling
My fist connected with cheekbone, sending a thrill up my arm and sending the
other man to the floor. “You fool!” I snarled down at him, resisting the urge
to kick. “How could your men be so clumsy? Now they know beyond any doubt that
we have agents searching for them!”
The report trembled in my left hand even as my right clenched and unclenched,
wanting to wrap around the idiot’s throat and squeeze. Four ops confirmed a
positive sighting of the telepath Schuldig in Tokyo. Four TP operatives who
should have been able to net him with little difficulty. And they had let him
slip through their fingers.
“Tell me why I should not kill you!”
“Entschuldigen Sie, bitte, Herr General!
I turned my attention to the speaker. He flinched as my gaze fell full upon
him. “Was?” If he tried to make excuses for the failure, he would join his
associate at my feet.
“Sir, the DNA traces came back positive. It’s him.”
“A wounded man, sliding down a thorn-covered wall, limps away into the night
and vanishes into thin air.” I shook my head as an unseemly mirth rose up in
me. The absurdity of the situation could not be denied. “Then again,” I
chuckled, “they did outwit the Elders themselves. Why should you have expected
any different?”
The man on the floor nodded weakly.
I offered him a hand up. Once he was standing, I whispered, “You’re off the
case. Get out of my sight.”
He hurried out the door.
The young courier fidgeted, not sure if he should follow or wait to be
dismissed. I made his suffering brief. “You too. Get out.”
The hallways cleared before me as I returned to my apartment. Apparently word
had spread. A good thing, that, as I was not in the mood for chatter. The
crumpled report fluttered to the desktop as though glad to be released at last.
My right glove was soiled. I glared at the oil-smeared knuckles and the faint
pink of blood. Haste makes laundry. With a self-directed sneer I peeled the
gloves off and headed for the bathroom.
I shut and locked the door, then started a sinkful of washwater. Only then did
I remember to turn on the light. Old habits remained fresh; a well-lit bathroom
had been a risky thing for too long in my life. I doubted I would ever truly
overcome that conditioning.
As I wrung the water from the fabric, I caught sight of myself in the mirror,
and frowned. Though the color was wrong, my eyes reminded me of his eyes: dark,
and momentarily haunted. Like that day…
 
I averted my gaze. Let the past die.
Hell, it had died long ago; let the damn thing have the decency to remember it
was dead.
[“I don’t understand! That wasn’t supposed to happen! You’ve got to believe me,
I didn’t do this!”]
I clung to the vanity, my hands white-knuckled. I didn’t need this now, of all
times – I had work to do! Why couldn’t the past just stay behind me? Damn it!
[“Past is past, the future uncertain…”]
The mirror shattered in a cacophony of diamonds. Behind it, the wall plaster
cracked, sending a jagged run up to the ceiling.
“You’re dead, damn you!” I shouted, eyes tight shut in case some fragment of
mirror still lingered to show me a shadow that could not exist. “You’re all
dead, and he’s mine!”
No hand reached out to grasp my shoulder, no laughter mocked me, no pale face
shrank from my touch. Time resumed its forward turn, leaving the past…past.
Slowly my breathing returned to normal.
That’s right, I had work to do.
The glass had fallen around me, missing my person and the sink. I finished
wringing out my gloves, then stepped carefully over the mess and opened the
door.
From my bedroom I retrieved a spare set of gloves, leaving the damp pair draped
over the bedpost to dry.
At my desk, I picked up the phone and called for maintenance. I would need that
wall repaired, and the mirror replaced, as well as any remaining shards dealt
with.
An unpleasant smile curled my lip at that last thought – remaining shards dealt
with, indeed. So young Schuldig was out and about, running through the night
wounded and alone in the wilds of Tokyo. Like any injured beast, he must go to
ground eventually. With any luck, the operatives were not so thoroughly
incompetent as to lose him for long.
Their liaison, however, was finished. The delicate balance of power did not
allow for mistakes. If the younger set didn’t eat him alive, I would.
In any case, my rise to command was ensured. Esset needed someone strong and
capable to lead this hunt, and so far I had been appalled and amused in turns
at the bungling mess being made of things. No, if Esset truly wanted answers, I
was the only one who could provide them.
[“Find out what he knows, or I will.”]
I snarled silently at myself. At least, I could do this task if my imagination
and memory would stop playing me for a fool. There was no one alive today who
had been involved in that butchery, save two. And I, the one, would find the
other or go mad trying.
Could that be it, I wondered? The ghost of that crime, calling out for some
obscene form of justice?
[“Bradley, look at me.”]
[“Look at me, Bradley!”]
Damned? Certainly. Willingly, if it would bring me back my star.
I picked up the report and read it again, searching for any whisper of a clue.
After admitting the repair crew to my rooms, I studied the photographs of Tokyo
streets and shops, and the vine-covered parking garage.
Aside from a few vague mumbles from my circle of clairvoyants and
precognitives, I had no evidence that all four men still lived. In my heart, I
felt Bradley’s presence; besides, without his calming effect, the telepath
would have surely fallen into our clutches by now. Schuldig was desperately
under-shielded, prone to relying upon drugs and noise to stay in control. So
for that alone, I knew that Brad Crawford was indeed calling the shots.
 
One of the photos caught my attention, and I returned to it. It showed the
street where Schuldig had first been spotted. In the background, shops and
people made a touristy clutter that annoyed me. But, something about this
scene…
I felt my lips part in a wolfish smile. Make that three members of the team
alive and well, then. Schuldig may be a brilliant telepath, but he was nearly
illiterate when it came to computers. There would be no good reason for him to
be seen alone, near a cyber café in the late evening hours – unless he was
playing bodyguard.
I dismissed the idea that Schuldig had been there seeking a replacement. If
that had been the case, he would not have been leaving alone, or looking back
over his shoulder as he ran.
Of course, this also pointed out the glaring failure of the operatives, since
they had no visual fix on the boy.
Once again I reached for the phone.

A/N:
“Entschuldigen Sie, bitte, Herr General!” – Please excuse me, Herr General!
“Was?” – What?
Okay, my apologies in advance, but when I first started writing this chapter my
brain went…somewhere silly. Here is the original version of the opening of
Chapter 5:
My fist connected with cheekbone, sending a thrill up my arm and sending the
other man to the floor. “You fool!” I snarled down at him, resisting the urge
to kick. “How could your men be so clumsy? Now they know beyond any doubt that
we have agents searching for them!”
The report trembled in my left hand even as my right clenched and unclenched,
wanting to wrap around the idiot’s throat and squeeze. Four ops confirmed a
positive sighting of the telepath Schuldig in Tokyo. Four TP operatives who
should have been able to net him with little difficulty. And they had let him
slip through their fingers.
“Tell me why I should not kill you!”
“Excuse me, Lord Vader!”
***** Chapter 6 *****
6. – Mine
Smoke trailed from the muzzle of my gun as I lowered my hand. Any doubt as to
who was now in charge had just been extinguished.
To my right, Mendez knelt at Garrick’s side, trying to staunch the flow of
blood.
“Will he live?” I asked, not looking at them.
“I’m not out of the game yet, Konrad,” Garrick rasped. “Just tell me this was
worth it!”
“Oh, it was worth it, all right.” I gazed around at the carnage and nodded. “We
are one layer closer to the Inner Circle of Esset, gentlemen. And once we have
apprehended the rogue team, our rise to power will be unstoppable.” The words
spilled from my tongue like blood, though insincere. Empty promises of empty
power. Still, they were the words I was expected to say, so I said them,
thinking only of my star.
Edelmann had betrayed his potential as a useful tool, showing only his
incompetence to the last. I’d had hopes for the boy, I truly had, but this
fiasco in Japan was the last straw. His strategy had not only failed, but he
had allowed Schwarz to measure its opposition, and that could simply not be
allowed. Crawford was far too intelligent to miss the clues, and once he had a
better idea of just how intensive the search would be, he would find a way to
vanish like fog at daybreak.
“Konrad, you’re a lousy liar,” Mendez murmured, looking up from his work. “If
you were so ambitious, why did you allow yourself to rot away at this damnable
post? You had an offer from Prague, for God’s sake – yet you stayed. If you
won’t bother with the truth, at least give me silence.”
My lip curled in a sneer, and for one moment I considered the pistol in my
hand.
“You do, and you have no allies,” Mendez growled. “Never forget, I know you.”
I sighed and bowed my head. “Well spoken, my friend. All right, silence it is.”
Garrick laughed weakly. “You bastard.”
“Did I ever claim to be otherwise?”
::Once, but not to us,:: Mendez whispered into my head.
::Raus!:: I glared at him. “Don’t do that again.”
“So who’s going to clean up this mess?” Garrick asked. “I’d love to assist, but
I seem to be a little laid up at the moment.”
I kicked one of the bodies out of my way as I strode toward the telephone.
“This is General Schoenberg,” I stated to the switchboard operator. “We need a
phase-one cleaning crew to Edelmann’s office. Oh, and prepare a new nameplate.
Yes. Mine.” A brief tremor of concern touched my mind, and I added, “And send a
healer.”
Mendez closed his eyes as if thanking me. My anger at him had faded now, in our
mutual concern. Garrick was a good man, if any of us could claim that title,
and it would grieve us both to lose him.
Apparently he was not only a good man, but stubborn as well. Garrick showed no
outward distress, even when the healer began working on him. The repair of torn
arteries is not a pleasant process, especially since there was no anesthetic
for field surgery. Rosenkreuz had lost a majority of its medical supplies in
those first few days of chaos, and had not yet been able to replace most of it.
I watched impassively as the cleaning crew removed the bodies and scrubbed
blood from the walls and floor. One young man searched for bullets in the
woodwork, sensing them with his gift and pulling them out in a tiny shower of
splinters. The cleanup took less than half an hour.
 
As Garrick medicated himself with a glass of whiskey, he repeated his question.
“So, Konrad, was this coup worth it? What are you after?”
The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. “I want my star back.”
I glared at my two associates and amended my statement: “I will bring them
back. These fools had no idea who they were dealing with.”
“Do you mean Crawford, or yourself?” Garrick’s gaze bored into me; I could
almost feel it heating my skin.
Mendez held out his hand to silence both of us. “Wait, this is all wrong.
Konrad, you have just taken out the interim director of Rosenkreuz, and his
staff – and we helped you do it. All of this on your claim that you alone can
find that rogue team and bring it to justice. How do you think Esset will view
this?”
I smiled coldly and said, “They have a habit of rewarding acts of ambition and
power, Mendez. I suspect they will send us all the aid we ask of them. We’ll be
able to rebuild Rosenkreuz, resume training, and bring honor back to this
facility.” A dirty chuckle escaped my throat and I added, “What’s not to love
about that? Tell me, my friend, you’re not having second thoughts, are you?
Third thoughts, perhaps?”
“Konrad, think, man!” Garrick muttered, easing himself into one of the few
intact chairs. “You brought us in on this on the assumption that we were only
taking down Edelmann and his two aides. Two aides, not the whole damn staff!”
“They didn’t know anything useful. Did they, Mendez?” I watched my ‘friends’
closely now. All too often throughout the history of Esset, three allies had a
tendency to become two.
The telepath shook his head. “No, Konrad, they did not. It’s still more
wasteful than Esset generally approves of.”
“But necessary. You have both worked with me before; they had not. You
understand my methods, and my goals.” I poured myself a glass of the whiskey
and took a sip. “You will not question those methods, or goals. Will you.”
Garrick sighed. “No, Konn, I know better. You have your reasons, and my trust.”
“And mine,” Mendez added, though his voice was thoughtfully soft.
“Good,” I said, sitting back and resting my feet on the desk. I looked around
at my new office, the command center of Rosenkreuz, and smiled. For too long I
had lived in my orbit around this place, secure in my delusions and content to
wait. Then the strands of my life had shown themselves to be wound about sticks
like a marionette’s, and my dreams had burned away.
And now, in the coolness of a brave new world, my dreams had crept from the
ashes and begun to live again.
Somewhere out there, beyond my reach at the moment, Bradley Crawford and his
team knew they were being hunted. Whether the lunatic was with them or no, he
still had his telepath, and I was willing to bet he still had the boy as well.
Knowing Crawford’s luck, I believed the team intact, madman and all.
And they would be his downfall.
Garrick cleared his throat. “Your next move, then?”
A stray droplet of whiskey clung to the edge of my glass. Absently I licked it
off. “Somewhere in this mess, there should be some information on Kritiker. If
there isn’t, though, I won’t be highly surprised. Still, I favor that lead at
this time. It will take some work to find what we need, but I believe our
answers will be there.”
“How are your clairsentients working out?” Mendez asked as he rummaged through
files and folders, looking for anything useful.
I snorted a nasty little laugh. “They’re dropping like flies. I wish I had some
way of knowing if their turbulence is having any effect at all. If it is,
Crawford must be running at the edge of his own endurance, or close to it.”
“You’re willing to risk his sanity?” Garrick asked.
Raising my glass in a toast, I stated, “Sane or not, I will bring him home.”

A/N:
::Raus!:: – ::Get out!::
I had a Surreal Moment with this chapter. When I typed “Inner Circle of Esset”,
my handy-dandy Microsoft Word put a little dotted underline under part of it. I
clicked on the underline, and this is what it said:
Address: Inner Circle
Display Map
Display Driving Directions…
Remove this Smart Tag
Smart Tag Options…
Anyone else feel kind of creeped out over this?
***** Chapter 7 *****
7. – Courted

Late summer sunlight painted the courtyard in gold. I watched from beside the
doorway as a squad of trainees jogged past, their young instructor chiding
their sloppy form. I could only agree, they did look ragged.
As there were damn few students worth the effort anymore, I debated postponing
my review of the facility. The survivors of the purge were, for the most part,
either too devious or too cowardly to be of much use to me. Still, I had always
conducted reviews in August, and could not convince myself that I had earned a
respite this time.
August. A third of a year gone since the loss of the Elders, and we had no
useful leads. I did not allow this to worry me overmuch; as of yet, I had not
been informed of whom, precisely, I should report to in this matter, so I
waited, and conducted the search on my own terms. With any luck, something
would break and by the time Esset held me accountable, I would have the prize
in hand. On a whim, I decided to pay a brief visit to my crew of
clairsentients.
For the past two months, they had been virtually living on coffee, sugar, and
tobacco. The main room they worked in smelled of stale smoke, fried pastries,
and sweat. I made my way around the desks and tables, their meditating captains
unaware of my passing. Uneven stacks of notes threatened to fly loose in my
wake. With casual disregard, I picked up one sheet at random and glanced at it.
The handwriting was atrocious, a frantic, hurried scribble, but its message was
clear enough: they’re not in Japan anymore.
Out of curiosity, I tried a few other notes, harvested at random and read as I
walked. They will die in a blizzard in the Alps this winter. They will vanish
in the east. They have allies we know nothing about.
Could these all be true, or were my clairvoyants Seeing through a self-
inflicted haze? The chaos that they might cause to a precognitive, was it
affecting them as well? I suspected as much, rather than allow the possibility
that there was no effect at all.
I moved to set the papers down and stopped, my gaze drawn to the notebook of
the young woman sitting nearest to the door. She alone had watched me make my
circuit of the room, and in fact still stared, but her hand moved rapidly
across the paper, the pencil nearly squeaking in its haste. At the end of its
message, her hand went limp, allowing the pencil to drop free and roll to the
floor.
Since I was the main motivator for the search in the first place, my presence
could have inspired her vision. I carefully tore the page from her book.
The past is the key to the future. The dead do not forget – do not forget the
dead. You do not know as much as you think you do…Kort.
“Why did you write this?” I snarled, fear stealing my reason. “Who told you to
write this?”
The woman whispered, “Mach die Tür auf und komm rein…”
A name clawed its way from my throat. “Erich.” Unwilling to stay in this room
of ghosts and their confidants, I hurried to confer with my trusted allies, the
note still clutched in my fist.
Mendez read in silence, one eyebrow betraying when he reached the name at the
end. “She could have overheard it,” he offered, handing the note back to me.
“He wasn’t exactly subtle, you recall.”
“He’s right, Konn,” Garrick stated with a shrug. “She could have picked it up
anywhere – even from your own mind.”
“Ah, but the admonition to open the door and come in,” I murmured, pausing in
my pacing to turn and regard Mendez with a hungry look. “You worked with Erich,
didn’t you?”
“God, don’t remind me,” the telepath growled. “Really, Konrad, I think you’re
going in the wrong direction here.”
“Am I?” I leaned in closer to him and stated, “There is one way to find out.
That apartment has been sealed off since his death, all dealings with it locked
away as classified. But none of that matters now! Don’t you see? There is no
one here to prosecute us should we break that seal and have a look around.”
“You make it sound like raiding a mummy’s tomb,” Garrick half-laughed. “Really,
man!”
“We all knew Erich well enough to know that he would take his secrets to the
grave,” I whispered. “He did not know us well enough to predict we would become
grave robbers. Are you with me, or no?”
Mendez shook his head. “I’ll go with you, Konrad, but as for whether I am with
you… I’m not sure I even know where that is at the moment.”
Garrick shrugged. “What do you expect to find, Konn? What could possibly be in
that room that would make the slightest difference now?”
Bradley’s innocence, perhaps? My own? I couldn’t answer his question, so I said
nothing.
As we each had other work to attend to, we agreed to meet in front of Erich
Sonndheim’s apartment at twenty-two hundred. Time crawled by, seeming to stand
still whenever I glanced at a clock. With a start I realized I was excited – I
hadn’t pulled a stunt like this in a very long time. Indeed, never had I done
anything quite the same; all my sneaking had been against living obstacles, not
ghosts.
Ghosts. One in particular that I had no desire to meet. And I had made up my
mind to break into the room of his execution, boarded up these three and a half
years now.
Actually, I had made up my mind to goad the other two into breaking and
entering, as I had no intention of touching anything in that apartment, gloves
or no.
I found myself in front of that door several minutes early, drawn there by I
know not what. My hands began to sweat within the gloves, and I fought down a
shudder. Erich Sonndheim had possessed such power, such dark charisma, that it
had taken me three years to feel safe enough to dismantle his surveillance
devices in my own home. People still avoided this corridor, they had moved
their offices to other halls, leaving this corner of the facility isolated and
unobserved. It would be the perfect place for a murder, for it had been so,
many times.
Like a nervous student, I found myself staring at the door, the last barrier
between my world, and his. The once-polished wood had grown dark and dimmed.
Upon its face it bore three metal artifacts: the nameplate, the doorknob
assembly, and a sturdy steel loop affixed directly above the lock. Through that
loop ran a length of heavy chain, itself bolted to either side of the door
frame. The measures were unusual, extreme even for Rosenkreuz, but someone had
deemed them necessary.
For one terrible moment I wondered if they had removed the body first.
Footsteps to my right heralded the arrival of my associates. I composed myself
and greeted them. Garrick had brought an electric lantern and a video camera.
Mendez carried a heavy-duty bolt cutter, which he offered to me.
“Ah, no, my friend,” I demurred. “That would be your specialty.”
Mendez raised an eyebrow and lowered the bolt cutter. “Just because I know
where to find the tools does not make me a specialist at espionage, Konrad.”
“Nevertheless, I suggest you get busy,” I stated, taking up a position against
the opposite wall and watching him coolly.
The telepath exchanged a look with Garrick, then set the massive shears against
the chain. He paused. “What if it’s booby-trapped?”
I smiled sharply. “Then I suppose all our worries will soon be over.”
Mendez braced himself, then pulled on the meter-long handles. The snapping of
the steel link echoed off the walls like a gunshot, followed immediately by the
clattering rush of chain spilling through the loop to hang twitching from its
metal tether.
Garrick pushed the door inward.
My breath caught in my throat, held there by a wash of panic that I’d
anticipated, yet still managed to fall prey to. This room had not changed, and
I was nineteen again, young and green and barely more than naïve.
“This is your show, Konrad,” Mendez whispered, his voice low in this place of
the dead.
I shook myself out of the past and strode forward.
Garrick turned on the lights as we went, and was twice greeted with a loud pop
and the sudden absence of light. Soon we had all usable lamps engaged, which
only managed to throw the room into a twilight glow. I would almost have
preferred to just use the lantern
I followed my shadow along one wall. There was the bar, still partially
stocked. Even the scavengers here avoided the opened bottles, with good reason.
I had seen Erich drink directly from the bottle from time to time, and
furthermore…
[I am nineteen, a junior staff member at Rosenkreuz, very much aware of the
differences between myself and those who rose through the ranks at this
facility. Administrator Erich Sonndheim has invited me here, to this room, to
drink with him.
Erich watches me look around the room. He watches me walk. He watches me smile
as he pours the schnapps and hands me my glass. He watches my mouth as I raise
the glass to my lips.
Some whisper of instinct, some hint felt through the glove, I don’t know what,
but I refuse his drink. I refuse his drink, and his eyes turn hard. So I hadn’t
imagined it – Ihadseen anticipation and lust in his eyes, but now those
glimmers have gone cold, replaced with hatred.
As I flee his apartment, I can’t help think that I have just dodged yet another
bullet in my life…]
“Konrad!” Mendez called out softly. “What are you doing?”
I stopped short of the door and rounded on the speaker. “What does it look like
I’m doing?” I snarled. “I’m getting some goddamn air.”
Outside, I leaned against the far wall and tried to catch my breath. The room
smelled like a crypt, dusty and forgotten and full of whispers. A stench of
whispers? I fought down the urge to laugh, for that kind of laughter heralds
madness. Instead, I took a few more breaths then strode back into Sonndheim’s
apartment.
Mendez and Garrick had accumulated a stack of folders and loose papers, along
with a few video tapes and computer discs. I frowned, wondering what might be
on the tapes and yet not wanting to find out.
But, this had all been too easy. There had to be something here… I tried to
think like Sonndheim, though it made the bile rise in my gullet. He couldn’t
expect me to be here, rummaging through whatever things Security might have
left behind after his death – could he? He’d always been several steps ahead of
me, no matter the situation. With the exception of that one time, when I’d
refused his hospitality, at any rate.
My eyes followed the lines of the walls toward the bedroom door. The one place
I swore I would never go – if I were Erich Sonndheim, that is where I would
hide something of interest.
With determined steps, I strode toward that door, and turned the handle.
It was locked.

A/N:
Yes, the title is a bit of a pun.
“Mach die Tür auf und komm rein…” – “Open the door and come in…” Said the
spider to the fly.
***** Chapter 8 *****
8. – Masquerade
At my direction, Garrick forced the lock with his talent. I would have done
this myself, but I didn’t trust myself not to shatter the door into toothpicks.
The door to Erich Sonndheim’s bedroom swung inward on surprisingly silent
hinges.
The room smelled like an abattoir.
Mendez and I covered our faces and followed Garrick inside. None of us was
prepared for what met our eyes when Garrick located the light switch.
A mummified body lay across the foot of the unmade bed, its right ankle
shackled to the bedpost. Fine golden curls still capped the darkened skull,
itself misshapen as though it had been struck with a heavy object.
“Jesus, Konn!” Garrick breathed.
“God, who was that?” Mendez muttered against his sleeve.
I could only shake my head. “I…don’t know.” Suddenly I knew that my hunch would
pay off, that somewhere in this mausoleum waited a message, a clue, meant only
for me. Of what, I could not say. But clearly, Erich had wanted someone to find
this body, and I was the only one who would care to look.
While my fellows tried to decipher the mystery corpse, I set about searching
for that which had brought me here. Erich Sonndheim had been cruel and prone to
gloating; I half expected this whole thing to be some kind of post-mortem joke
at my expense. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he had something of
importance to my current situation, some intelligence about Crawford’s team,
perhaps: some damning photographs, anything I could use to find them and turn
them against their leader. For, without his team, Bradley would be mine.
As I passed by the foot of the bed, my reflection echoed in a massive antique
mirror hanging upon the wall. I paused; something was not right. I turned to
study the mirror more closely. The gilt frame had become quite tarnished, and
cigar smoke residue clung to the scrollwork in a dark amber film. The lower
right corner of the glass showed only a patchy and discolored reflection, the
backing having eroded away decades ago. But instead of either darkness or the
inside of a frame, I could swear I saw…paper. Paper, yellowed with age or smoke
or both, and torn along one side.
I reached up and tentatively checked the frame for a weak spot, but the whole
thing seemed fused together. I grasped the frame and tested the secureness of
its mounting: it did not move, and I found it damn difficult to gain purchase
on the slimy wood. My jaw clenched as I recognized the trap for what it was.
The framed mirror must weigh at least twenty kilograms, by my estimate, and
there was no way I could remove it from the wall without first removing my
gloves. I could hear Sonndheim laughing even now.
“All right, you son of a bitch,” I snarled softly, “we’ll play it your way. I
did it once, I’ll do it as many times as I have to.” With quick, decisive
jerks, I tugged the gloves from my hands, tucked them into my jacket, then
braced myself for what I was about to do.
[“Herr General, perhaps your guests have had enough of your posturing today.
This is not a formal inspection, after all.
“Indeed, some might find your affectation pompous.”
“Indeed, you say?” I reply, my lip curling in a snarl. Behind the speakers I
could see Herr Sonndheim, watching me yet again.
“Unless, of course, you have a more interesting reason for keeping your hands
covered in polite company?”
There is no question about what is meant by this. Everyone knows that object
readers must wear their gloves or risk overload and madness, and I am not
listed as an object reader. If I were discovered to be one, the repercussions
would be dire: one does not lie to Esset, and withholding a personal secret is
considered lying.
I ask my honored guests for their indulgence and proceed to strip off my right
glove. With an air of impatience at such a petty interruption, I slam my palm
flat against the wall. “Satisfied?”
My life depends on my maintaining an annoyed and haughty mask in spite of the
agony burning through my arm. My accusers must watch my face, not my hand; if
they notice that I kept my fingers from making contact with the stone, they
will know I am bluffing.
No one speaks. Sonndheim himself is frowning as though trying to puzzle out
just how he has made such a crucial mistake.
Keeping that same impatient air, I pull my hand back from the wall and inspect
my palm for dirt. I draw a handkerchief from my pocket, wipe at my soiled hand,
and slip the glove back on with a highborn grimace.
The show is over, and I keep my life.]
And now I realized the truth: he had known. Though he couldn’t seem to decipher
the trick, he knew I’d somehow gotten around that trap without proving my
innocence at all.
I could order Garrick or Mendez to deal with the mirror, but I needed them to
find out about that corpse. Besides, I didn’t want them to suspect my hidden
gift; keeping secrets from Esset meant keeping them from friends as well.
But more even than that: if there was something in behind that mirror, it
belonged to me, and I was not about to allow anyone else to intercept it.
I took as deep a breath as I could manage and reached for the mirror frame.
Painlustdreadterrorclimax– my hand jerked away from the gilded wood as if it
had been electrocuted. Sweat beaded on my upper lip, trickled down to tease my
tongue with salt. I glanced at my cohorts. They had gotten the manacle unhooked
from the bed, and now proceeded to methodically search the room, starting with
the bed and closet. I had maybe five minutes before they wondered what was
taking me so long.
Steeling my nerve, I reached up and grasped the mirror firmly at either
side.Coldburningbloodcomescreambegpleadwhisper – something inside of me
threatened to shake loose if I didn’t break contact.
I concentrated on lifting the mirror from the wall, wondering for a moment why
I didn’t just use my authorized talent instead of my vulnerable hands. “The son
of a bitch challenged me,” I growled at myself in reply.
Ignoring the pain and the sweat and the fear, I lifted the frame clear of its
wall mount. Impossible sensations swarmed through my nerves, causing me to
nearly drop the damned mirror as the past infringed on my existence,
superimposing others’ lives upon mine.
For a quarter of a century, this mirror had faced his bed, borne silent witness
to his depravity. For one terrible moment I was possessed by a thousand
screaming boys, and by the memory of Erich Sonndheim.
“You idiot, that thing must weigh a ton!” Garrick took hold of the frame and
guided it to the floor. I followed his lead with a powerful numbness of the
soul.
He regarded me with concern and said, “You look like you pulled something. Are
you all right?”
I nodded, allowing my hands to slip free from the wood. “Damn heavy,” I
whispered, trying to forget.
The dead do not forget…
“What possessed you to take that thing down, anyway?” Mendez asked, joining us
by the bureau.
At his choice of words, that wild laughter threatened to come up again, and
again I forced it back. Possessed indeed. Now it didn’t matter so much what
they found or what I found, I just wanted to get the hell out of there. “I
thought I saw something, behind the glass. There, where the silver’s gone
thin.”
Mendez produced a multi-function pocket knife and tipped the frame forward.
With an injunction for us to hold the pane when it came free, he set about
separating the frame from the glass. As easily as if he did this for a living,
he undid the tiny screws holding the mirror back in place, then tugged the
frame loose.
Garrick propped up the glass while I reached between it and the frame. The
lower right corner of the mirror had indeed lost some of its coating, and my
hand showed through ghostly pale as my fingers closed on a thin sheaf of
papers. I had to peel them from where they’d stuck to the glass, creating a
Rorschach image: half in reverse in the mirror and half in a random spackling
of tin upon the page.
As my comrades moved the unwieldy mirror and frame safely out of the way, I
stared at the pages in my still-bare hand.
Laughtertriumphsatisfactionhatredhatredlust – all in Erich Sonndheim’s
handwriting.
“If you are reading this, then it seems that Imayhave underestimated you, Kort
old man. Congratulations.”

A/N:
About that mirror… Until the early 1900’s, mirrors were made by coating a pane
of glass with a thin sheet of tin-mercury amalgam. Over time, the mercury
evaporates and the whole reflective coating breaks down, leaving bald spots or
blotches, usually discolored or foggy.
Oh, and 20 kilograms is about 45 pounds – not easy to wrestle with a large
fragile item and not draw attention to oneself. Especially while wearing crisp
cotton gloves.
Clearly Konnor did not know the #1 survival rule for situations involving
creepy antique artifacts: Leave It The Fuck Alone. Glowing sword? LITFA! Pretty
jewel lit from within? LITFA! Your mortal enemy’s old antique mirror? (Think,
man! Mirrors capture the soul!) LITFA!
Oh, that’s right – too late on that one, Kort old man.
(Okay, another surreal Microsoft Word moment. I wanted to make sure I was using
the right word, so I highlighted “abattoir” and selected “Thesaurus” from the
menu. Imagine my surprise when it gave me these options for replacing the
unrecognized word: a barrel of laughs, a barrel of monkeys, abase, abase
yourself, abased, abases, abash, abashed, abasing, abate, abated, abates,
abating, abbreviate, abbreviated, abbreviates, abbreviating, abbreviation,
abbreviations, ABC, abdicate, abdicated, abdicates, abdicating, abdication,and
abdications)
***** Chapter 9 *****
9. – Beckon
I wandered from the bedroom crypt into the main room, within clear sight of the
exit. Mendez and Garrick humored me, allowing me to read the letter without
distraction. For indeed, it was a letter – a missive from the dead, addressed
to me.
“If you are reading this, then it seems that Imayhave underestimated you, Kort
old man. Congratulations.
“How long has it been, now? Ten years? Twenty? Not since my demise, of course,
for, as we both know, there is no way in hell that you would be holding my
diary were I still among the living. (Youareholding it, aren’t you? Good man.)”
A diary? I looked closer. The small pages were unlined, faded ivory in color
and ragged-edged on the left side as though they had been torn out of a book.
What might a man like Erich Sonndheim keep in a diary, for the love of God?
“No, how long has it been sincethatday – you can’t have forgotten? The day I
took everything from you. Everything you deemed worth living for.”
I could hear his voice whisper those words, as though he stood right behind me.
I could even feel his foul breath upon my neck. My eyes closed, whether in
supplication to the dead or in prayer even I did not know. In that moment, the
face I saw in my mind was not Erich’s, but Bradley’s. Not yet sixteen, and
begging for his life.
No – begging for his life.
I opened my eyes; the pages rustled with the tremor in my hand. I glanced
around, verified my privacy, then continued reading.
“Ah, so youdoremember. Very good. It would be tragic for you to find your mind
slipping. Some things should never be forgotten – the dead, of course, forget
nothing, and forgive even less.
“Did you train the boy at last? Did he bend to your will, or to your whip,
perhaps? Or, did you continue to bend for him?”
“Bastard!” I whispered, choking back the tears. “You know nothing!” With
effort, I read further. It was as though the letter wrote itself in response to
my thoughts, for the next statement chilled me to the core:
“Never pretend that I do not know your most precious secrets, dearest Kort. Or
should I say ‘Rudi’?”
“Oh, dear God…” I read the rest of it in a blur, unable now to stop.
“Oh, yes, I know all about Berlin. Grant too. You should have picked more
reliable friends. As I write this, he is still with us, posing as a teacher of
linguistics while carrying on his sentimentalist subversions. Just like Davies.
I swear, there must be only three kinds of instructors here: the soft rebels,
the loyal agents…and you, my dear Kort. You are in a category all your own.
“I suspect that Grant at least may have had the balls to shoot me before things
ever went that far.
“Can it be that you were indecisive? That the spirit was willing but the action
lacking? Perhaps you simply could not prioritize? True, you preserved your own
life, but at what cost?
“Are you sleeping well these days?
“Oh, I’m sorry, youweresleeping well, weren’t you – until you read this.
“Dearest Kort. ‘Rudi’. Been to Berlin lately? I suspect you must be aching, if
you have not been. And after pinning all your hopes on your ‘star’ – so sad.
Did your prize student turn out to be not what you expected? Does he despise
you for what you have done?
“Does he prefer women?
“Pity. He was quite the handsome boy. I may still have some film of him, I
shall have to check.
“I could have been your dearest ally, but I am no longer bitter. What was mine
is now yours, in all things. I trust you will make good use of my resources.
Know that you have them with my blessing, and my most sincere encouragement.
“But search quickly. Some things do not die easy, and your worst fear is ever
close by your side. You refused my embrace when I could have changed your life;
now in death I leave you to the beast of your own creation.
“You should never have denied me, Kort.”
“You all right?” Mendez asked, pausing on his way to the door.
“Yes,” I whispered, no longer sure that my mask held, and not caring. “I’m
fine.”
“I think we’re done here,” Mendez told me, “I can’t stand the smell anymore. We
did find a padlock, for the chain.”
“I’ll stay,” I murmured, glancing at my friend, then back at the pages in my
hand. “For a while. Leave the lock where I can find it. I’ll take care of
securing the room.
“You certain, Konn?” Garrick sounded concerned, and I realized I must have
looked a sight.
In fact, I felt I must look as though I had just seen a ghost, which was not
all that far from the truth. “Yes, Garrick, I’m certain. If you want to help
any more tonight, figure out what to do with that body. Any idea who he was?”
Mendez answered for him. “Not a clue. But from what I can tell, he wasn’t
beaten much, and his hands were in fine shape. Died from a crushing blow to the
head.”
“No uniform? No pass?” I asked, intrigued in spite of myself.
“Nothing. It’s as though he lived here.”
“Or, after Erich died, they reclaimed the uniform for recycling,” Garrick
offered.
“But why secure the bedroom afterward? It was locked from the inside,” Mendez
reminded us.
“If I find anything of interest, I’ll include you,” I promised them both.
“Meanwhile, see if there’s anything in the administrative records about this
boy – it was a boy, wasn’t it?” Though the mummified body was quite well
preserved, I had avoided looking too closely.
Garrick rolled his eyes. “Chained naked to Sonndheim’s bed? You know it’s not a
girl, Konn.”
I nodded, still distracted. “Ah, right. What shall we do with it, then?”
“I know what Erich would do with it,” Mendez stated with lewd inflection.
“Gentlemen, lest any of us forget,” I stated firmly, “Herr Sonndheim is no
longer with us. In any form or manner. His ghost can torment that pitiful shell
no more. I suggest we remove the body to medical for an autopsy and possible
identification.”
“In other words,” Garrick observed, “you suggest that we remove the body while
you stay here and commune with the dead.”
“Need I remind you that I hold trance mediums in high scorn, my friend?” I
forced a smile and said, “Get Mendez out of here before he pukes.”
The two fashioned a sort of sling out of bed linens and strung it between them,
its fragile payload nestled in the ivory folds. I saw a last glimpse of golden
curls and one delicate hand before Garrick and Mendez vanished down the hallway
with their grisly cargo.
I returned my attention to the diary pages, re-reading them in search of some
clue. Ashen laughter echoed from the paper, made my skin ache. I had become
quite convinced that Erich Sonndheim knew far more than he should have known,
more than he had any right of access to. Some of that information must surely
have bearing on Bradley Crawford’s team.
Or on Hernandez…
My jaw tightened, and I had to restrain myself from crushing the pages into a
knot. The inquest had been closed, formally and irrevocably. The thought that
Sonndheim might have been withholding evidence just didn’t make sense.
Unless… I scanned the last page again, found the passage that at first made too
little sense, and now threatened to make too much. Filled with superstitious
dread and an equally powerful need to hear my own voice, I read the words
aloud. “But search quickly. Some things do not die easy, and your worst fear is
ever close by your side.”
A soft creak whispered from the doorway. I flinched, reaching for my pistol as
I whirled toward the sound.
Nothing there.
Forcing my attention away from the door, I regarded the letter once again. As
though reading an incantation, the sort that is disastrous to leave only half-
spoken, I finished the passage in a whisper. “You refused my embrace when I
could have changed your life; now in death I leave you to the beast of your own
creation. You should never have denied me…”
The hairs on the back of my neck stirred, dared me to turn – or not to turn:
both options seemed equally absurd, and equally compelling. I carefully folded
the pages and slipped them into a pocket, then drew my gun and turned toward
the door yet again.
Still nothing.
That feeling of menace did not recede, it merely moved with me, taunting me
with poltergeist hatred. I set my gun down on the desk and put my gloves back
on, finally, wearily; my hands were sweaty and trembling.
I realized that my heart was pounding as though I had been running. It was time
to leave this place.
The padlock waited patiently beside my pistol, its latch open but without a key
to reopen it should I have the need. I really didn’t want to use bolt cutters
every damn time; someone was bound to notice the damaged chain, and I had no
desire to explain my actions here. Moving with rapid determination, I began
searching for the key. Surely the man had one: it didn’t make sense for him to
keep an opened padlock without having the matching key somewhere.
I tried the drawers of the desk first, since that would be where I would keep
such a thing. The wide drawer opened easily, sliding forward with a rattle of
pencils and paper clips, and the unsteady rolling of a bottle of correction
fluid. But no keys.
And no diary.
This wasn’t about the damn diary, I reminded myself. I needed a key, and I
needed to get the hell out of here.
The next likely drawer was, of course, locked. I focused my power on the
mechanism and twisted; it opened with a soft click. Impatient, I hauled the
drawer open.
A great sliding clatter greeted my effort, and I sidestepped, cursing. The damn
thing could have been booby-trapped, and I would have just triggered it without
a second thought. Panting harshly, I looked into the drawer for the source of
the noise.
Glitters of silver and brass outlined a mass of keys, strung together on a
lanyard. The occasional paper clip or safety pin dropped out as I lifted my
prize with a sense of awe. I’d never seen so many keys in one place before, and
the experience was weirder than I would have supposed.
Hoping that the one I needed would be among the tangle, I turned the padlock
over and looked for a maker’s mark or a number or some such. Finding it, I
began searching through the keys for a large brass one with a diamond logo. The
irony of this struck me while I worked, and my teeth gnashed. Diamond indeed. I
located a likely candidate, and tried it.
Amazingly enough, I now had a mated pair of key and lock. I smiled at my good
fortune, dismissing the thought of traps for a little while longer. I collected
my pistol and the lantern, then headed for the door. Now that I controlled the
padlock, I could return at my leisure to search for that damn diary. I didn’t
even question when I had decided to do this, I merely took it for granted that
I would indeed return; how could I not?
But for tonight, I was done. I’d spent more time in that apartment now than I
had wanted to, and I had to get out and back into territory more friendly to
me.
As I fastened the door with the heavy chain across it, the relief that passed
through me left my knees shaking. I leaned against the wall and stuffed the
mess of keys into an empty pocket in my jacket, allowing myself time for the
reaction to pass. Though I’d never suffered from claustrophobia, being in there
had certainly given me a taste of it.
Claustrophobia…
Wait a moment – given the choice of a small space or a large one, which will
the phobic take without conscious thought?
Whether it had been his intention or not, I thanked the ghost of Sonndheim for
the inspiration. If my seers were indeed having an effect on Bradley’s visions,
perhaps he could be more accurately herded, rather than anticipated. Given the
choice of the narrow pass or the open plains, which would he take?
They shall have to be subtle, more so than they have ever been, and it will
take some time, but if it works – I shall lead Bradley exactly where I wish to
find him.

A/N:
Does anyone else think the diary is another LITFA sort of thing? Maybe the
entire apartment too?
As for why Konnor might use his gift on a desk lock and not on a padlock, the
reasons are several. A desk lock is a usually on a single-notch tumbler, easy
to pick or merely force, whereas a padlock is more complex. Konnor does not
want to waste time standing in the hallway in front of this apartment fiddling
with the lock when he could use a key and gain access that much faster.
***** Chapter 10 *****
10. – Wake
My own apartment door whispered shut behind me, and only then did I admit the
relief I felt at being safely home. The night had been altogether too odd, with
tauntings from the dead leaving the occasional scrap of unsettling insight in
their wake.
I frowned as my nose reacquainted itself with the familiar scents of my
apartment and told me that I was distinctly out-of-line. When one finds a foul
odor, it’s customary to blame whatever one may have stepped in, but in this
case I had wallowed in it full-scale. The stink of ancient cigars, lingering
death, and dust surrounded me in an almost tangible cloud. I was tempted to
consign my clothing to the incinerator, but I realized with a start that I
would quickly go through quite a number of uniforms if I did so, for I intended
to go back – as many times as it took to find my answers.
I certainly didn’t want any questions raised by the laundry detail should I get
in the habit of sending them clothing more suited to tomb raiding than civil
wear. The only reasonable thing to do would be to use the same uniform for each
visit, and do most of the cleaning of it myself. The thought of it made my skin
crawl, but I had to admit it was my best option. I did keep an assortment of
sanitizing and deodorizing sprays; hopefully one of them would do the trick.
In any case, I had other things to worry about. A low, insistent beeping drew
my attention to the desk, where my answering machine flashed an accusing red
wink in time with the sound. I sighed, momentarily torn between checking it now
and waiting until I had cleaned up from the evening’s adventure. My nose won: I
couldn’t stand my own smell anymore.
I hurriedly stripped for a shower, pausing only to shove my ruined gloves into
the trash bin and drop the rest of my clothes in an inelegant heap on the
bathroom floor. I scrubbed quickly with the harsh disinfectant soap, hopefully
stripping away the stench along with however many layers of skin it took with
it.
When I finally felt a bit more human, I dealt with the uniform, spraying it
with a strong deodorizer until the fumes made me gag. I turned on the vent fan;
it coughed to life, then settled into a steady hum. The beeping of the
answering machine called out as I shut the bathroom door behind me. I fetched
my bathrobe from my bedroom, grabbed some hand lotion and an old pair of gloves
worn to extreme softness, then made for my desk to silence that annoying sound.
The lotion soothed my over-washed skin, and the thin cotton gloves promised
relief for my over-stressed nerves. Only then, after tending to my hands, did I
hit the replay button for my messages.
There was only one.
“General Schoenberg: your presence is required in teleconference. Oh-seven-
thirty hours Saturday, eleventh of August, Rosenkreuz Secure Media Room 12B.
This order delivered twenty-three-ten hours, Friday, tenth of August, on the
authority of Esset, Hapsburg.”
Reflexively I glanced at the clock, and groaned. Not quite seven hours to wait,
and no indication of what the conference might be about, much less why I had
been summoned. My mind spun with potential disasters. Had we tripped some alarm
in Sonndheim’s rooms, alerted someone to our trespass? Had it all been a well-
laid trap, just waiting for some damn fool to come along and fall in? Ah, hell!
Or – was there a lead with Crawford’s team? Had they been captured?
Given a choice between the two options, my heart called a distinct preference
for the first one. If someone other than me had run Schwarz to ground, I would
have no way to safeguard my Bradley, no matter how much I might want to. My
authority ran thin these days, and with the shifting winds at the pinnacle of
the organization, I didn’t even know from hour to hour whom I might be serving,
or who might be engineering yet another change in the weather.
Though my thoughts scampered about chasing shadows, I knew that I couldn’t
realistically anticipate a damn thing until it happened, and that wouldn’t be
for another seven hours. I would have to be sharp in the morning; I didn’t even
know who else might be there, or with whom I would be speaking. I resented
performing on the fly. Someone was yanking my leash, and I didn’t appreciate
it.
The only thing left for me to do this night was to sleep, if I could. My weary
mind slid toward absurdity as I made ready for bed, noting the closed bathroom
door and observing how doors had been the singular focus of my evening. Closed,
open, bolted shut…
Doors…
The rough-hewn door offers shelter from the cold, and I enter. Within, a dozen
other men huddle over drinks. The bartender smiles and waves as I pass by, on
my way to the back of the establishment.
Another door, black enamel paint. My reflection regards me a moment then
dismisses me as not his type. Beyond the black door, a dark room that engages
every sense but vision. Hands paw at me, tasting me with their touch. Musk
fills my nostrils until I swallow the scent. Rhythm and friction echo off the
walls.
Large hands grip my hips, and I realize I am naked except for my belt, my
boots, and my gloves. Leather and linen. The boots are the hallmark of an
archetype, a fashion never to fade from desire. The men at this bar like it
when I leave the belt on, wide dark leather against fair skin. It gives them
something secure to hold onto – and it keeps their fingers from burning my
flesh too badly. I crave what I cannot bear, and so I come here…
For a moment I know this is a dream – I haven’t been twenty in two decades; but
my body doesn’t care. Dream or reality, I’ve missed this.
Face to the wall, hands braced, legs spread, I invite this stranger to me. He
opens me with his fingers, slick with oil, oil that whispers what it has seen,
what it intends. It muffles what his skin might say, and for that I am
grateful. All I want is release, sweet, hard release, with no complications.
Then he is in me, pressing me to the wall, and I know that this time I will
come, the dream will stay on me until I am done, and I ride it. Whether a
memory or a fantasy, it doesn’t matter: the stranger is skilled, and wanting it
just as much as I am.
Close, so close…
Something tickles my neck, and I open my eyes to see a flicker of pale blue:
the handkerchief I wear in my pocket, my calling card. It tightens around my
throat, held there by a stranger’s hands.
Fear and lust overwhelm me, become one. My climax roars up with grim finality.
“I’ve been waiting for you, dearest Kort…”
I awoke flailing, gasping for breath, throwing the covers off and scrambling
backward on the bed until my head hit the wall.
Across my belly, the sticky puddle began to cool.
I sat there panting, staring around at my momentarily-unfamiliar room. Pre-dawn
light glimmered around my window, drawing my eyes to it but not illuminating a
damn thing.
On my nightstand, the alarm clock blared to life. Oh-six-hundred. My heart
finally began to slow to its normal pace as I fumbled for the clock and the
lamp. And the tissues. I tossed my slept-in gloves next to the clock, wiped up
my misplaced enthusiasm, then checked the bedding for spillage. I wanted a
shower. I wanted to clear my head before that conference.
I wanted my life back.
The bathroom door was shut, which baffled me for a moment until I remembered
why. The vent fan hummed tirelessly on the other side, and I groaned. My shower
probably smelled like Erich’s bedroom, unless the spray had worked a miracle
during the night. With no small amount of trepidation, I opened the door.
The air in the bathroom was chill and smelled rather antiseptic, a nostril-
scorching smell right out of the can but mercifully dissipated now. On closer
inspection, I found that the fibers of my uniform still stank faintly of time
and dust and sweat. Couldn’t hang it with the rest of my clothes, or everything
would reek. I hung it on the door hook for the moment, locked the door and
commenced with my shower.
Amazing how long it had taken me to adjust to leaving the light on for this. It
had been such a regular part of my life, to lock the door and shut off the
light before stripping to bathe. And now I slept nude again, and walked through
my apartment without a care.
But still I locked the door.
The night before I had been too distracted, had forgotten. Was that a good
thing?
It didn’t matter at the moment. I had a short time in which to bathe, dress,
and eat something before going into a high-security teleconference the purpose
of which I couldn’t begin to guess.
For all I knew, they were about to order my execution.
I decided to wear my dress uniform just in case.

A/N – Wake
A brief gay culture note – the particular shade of light blue handkerchief
advertises “Rudi’s” willingness to perform oral sex, while the boots, belt, and
gloves hint at a uniform fetish and an appreciation for rough handling. As a
younger man, he took it any way they would give it to him, and the dream tells
much.
***** Chapter 11 *****
11. – Complicate

For one brief moment, I almost reacted. Almost.
As the door to the secure media room opened, I found two men waiting within.
Two telepaths. One was a young, ambitious fellow with a lean and hungry look
about him; if I recalled correctly, he had just been assigned to an Omega team,
which did not bode at all well.
The other was Mendez.
I turned my surprise into a frown and glanced at my watch. Behind me the door
shut with a gentle hiss. I was several minutes early; were there others yet to
come? Taking a seat at one of the console screens, I asked the two this very
question, not directing it to either in particular.
“I was instructed to prepare a teleconference with three secure uplinks,”
Mendez stated, his tone bland. “I would presume we are it, then.”
Though my mind tried to defy me, I forced it to the calm, still, reflective
pool that I needed it to be. Summoned to a private conference with two
telepaths in attendance – someone was either testing them, or testing me. Or
both. Bloody hell. And I couldn’t confer with Mendez without the other fellow
knowing about it. At least the waiting should be over soon enough.
The viewscreen before me flickered, steadied to show the Esset royal seal
emblazoned in gold upon a scarlet curtain. I leaned back in my seat and made
myself as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.
A young man I did not recognize came into view, wearing a crisp uniform and a
wireless headset. “Good morning, Rosenkreuz. The meeting will commence in three
minutes.”
“Good morning, Hapsburg,” Mendez replied, adjusting his own headset and moving
the microphone a little closer to his mouth. “General Konrad Schoenberg,
Alberto Mendez, and Roderik Johannsen in attendance, at your request.”
I found myself idly watching Johannsen. My first impression held out: he had
the seeming of a weasel with a mouthful of someone else’s breakfast. The only
question remaining was his role today, for that would tell me my own. I could
only presume that Mendez was to be the technical mediator, as he would be
listening to a secure channel monitoring the entire conference. The signal
would be fed through a relay station, encrypted, and sent on with a four-second
gap. Mendez and the Hapsburg operator would listen to not only the discussion,
but also any instructions from the relay station. At the first sign of
interception, the link would be severed. The chance of such was unlikely, but
it went against everything Esset stood for to take that chance. Secrecy was
all-important.
The picture on my screen shrank to a small corner, allowing two new windows to
dominate the view. One showed a shrewd-looking man with narrow features and a
well-etched frown; I recognized him as Pfalzgraf Hodert of Prague. The other
showed a dimly-lit room, nothing more.
“Gentlemen, we have confirmation,” Mendez stated. “Relay station informs we are
clear. Hapsburg, do you concur?”
“We are clear, Rosenkreuz. Herr Hodert, your conference is ‘go’.”
“Thank you.” The narrow-faced man’s voice matched his appearance, thin and
taut. “Good morning, Herr General. How is the weather your side of the divide
today?”
I was most certainly not in the mood for small talk. I tried not to sound too
peevish as I replied, “As always, it depends on the nature of the wind, Herr
Pfalzgraf.”
To my dismay, Hodert smiled, a hard and calculated thinning of the lips. So I
was right: I was the one being tested this day. “Let’s get right to the point,
Konrad. I am highly concerned that your methods have become unsound of late.
Prague had very specific hopes for your clairsentience interference project,
long-term hopes that we dared share with those in highest authority.”
The image of that dimly-lit room suddenly made sense to me. Johannsen scowled
slightly as my shields wavered in surprise. Our sixth attendee, then: none
other than the royal house of Hapsburg itself.
“But we have learned,” Hodert continued, “that it simply is not reliable. That
is the only possible explanation, unless you would care to offer an alternate
one, Herr General?”
Now it was my turn to scowl. “You seem to have lost me, sir.” I noticed
Johannsen nod tightly toward his camera, and this infuriated me. The situation
was clearly out of control if Esset needed an Omega-ranked telepath clearing my
every statement. “Possible explanation for what?”
A fourth window appeared on my screen, showing a vista I knew all too well: the
Officers’ Corps at Berlin. Small plastic markers denoted five separate points
of interest, clustered tightly within a bare meter’s radius. Hodert’s voice
served as narration as he said, “Approximately three weeks ago, Berlin was
compromised.”
“What?” I blurted, unable to stop myself. The instructors there had always been
fiercely protective of their students, their protégés. The students themselves
received the best training, on a par with Prague itself. It seemed
inconceivable that we should even be discussing this! “Compromised? How?”
“Really, Konrad. I am surprised that you do not already know.” Hodert’s tone
had gone quite icy. “Are you not in the business of watching every possible
move that your renegade team might make? It seems that either your experiment
is a blatant failure, or you have withheld crucial information on the movements
of that team.”
This couldn’t be happening! I had no control over what my mice might See or
uncover. My only goal had been to determine if foreknowing in any form could be
baffled by so much interference. Surely Hodert wasn’t serious in his
accusations?
::Deadly serious, Konn.:: Mendez showed no emotion in his eyes as he said, ::
I suggest you answer him.::
My teeth ground together hard enough to ache. I turned my attention to the
image of the empty room and asked, “Am I being charged with a failure, or a
mutiny? What is the position of Hapsburg?”
A softly distorted voice replied, “No charges today, Herr General. We merely
require whatever information your sources might provide, along with your full
cooperation.”
Bloody hell. “Hapsburg has always relied upon Rosenkreuz. I have endeavored to
maintain a strong foundation for that trust.”
That masked voice spoke again. “And for that, you have our gratitude. However,
it is in our best interest to assign a Gamma unit to oversee your project. Herr
Pfalzgraf will see to the details.” A shadow moved across the picture of the
room, as of a man pacing in his study. “We are concerned that you are spreading
yourself too thin, Herr General. With the failure of Rosenkreuz to adequately
represent itself, we have conducted a search for appropriate leadership. After
our appointed delegates arrive there this afternoon, your duties shall consist
solely of leading the search teams as their liaison officer. The care of the
facility itself shall be left to more suitable hands.”
I swallowed and tried not to think. This was at once outstanding good news, and
a terrible setback. There would be a new layer of authority above me, probably
watching and hampering every damn move – but I had not been removed from the
search for Crawford’s team. I struggled to find the proper response. “Your
concern is unnecessary, sir, though it is graciously received. I shall offer my
commander my full cooperation.”
“You misunderstand, Herr General.” The shadow in the picture shifted, seemed
pensive. “Rosenkreuz shall offer its new master its full cooperation. You,
however, shall answer to me.”
I couldn’t help thinking that this was easier said than done, as I had no
indication of which member of the royal house had just co-opted my loyalty.
“Where shall I begin, then?” I asked, choosing a carefully neutral question.
Hodert rejoined the conversation. “Did your experimental team have any
foreknowledge of the espionage at Berlin?”
“Not that I know of,” I told him quite candidly. “Their notes are erratic,
unpredictable. Believe me, if I had had any indication that the rogue team
would turn up in Berlin, I would have driven there myself to intercept them.”
Then I had to ask: “What happened? What did they do?”
Referring to the picture of the hillside, Hodert began to explain. “Flags three
through five denote the positions of three youth officers. Number five denotes
Youth Captain Gunther Albrecht, a dog handler with four units at his disposal.
His was the only coherent account of the incident. And I quote: ‘Two men,
civilian attire. The taller one – slender, red hair, fair, blue eyes. The other
– stockier, possibly albino except for eye color – amber; left eye missing,
standard black patch. I issued challenge. The taller man showed to be a
telepath, assault-trained. He incapacitated my squad. His associate threatened
me and my dogs with a dagger. The telepath forced me to command the dogs to
stand down. He called me his messenger and placed words in my head, followed by
a command to sleep.’” Hodert paused, shuffled his notes, then went on.
“Albrecht relayed the message itself as follows: ‘Schwarz lives. We were
stronger – you could never stop us. Remember.’”
My heart raced, with excitement at how close they had been and with concern for
young Albrecht: I had been a Youth Captain once myself. His squad had been
overwhelmed, he himself used as a living message. What price would he pay for
his failures? “Herr Hodert, if I may, what was the final outcome of this
situation?”
“The squad has been remanded to Prague for more intensive training. Dogs and
all.” He did not seem happy about this.
“I see. And might I interview these witnesses in person?”
Hodert offered another of those coolly polite smiles. “You don’t have the
clearance.”
Anger boiled through me. “You demand my assistance yet deny me any in return?
What kind of miracles do you expect from me, Herr Hodert?”
“We do not demand assistance, Herr General.” That soft computerized voice
preempted anything Hodert may have intended to say. “We demand loyalty.”
“I see.” Esset had no intention of allowing me free rein, only the illusion of
it. “And how deep shall this loyalty run?”
The camera jittered and moved as though the shadowy figure had lifted it from
its stand and now carried it across the darkened room. It paused over an
ornately carved desk, upon which rested the official royal stationery and a
brass seal.
The seal of the Lord High Prince himself.

A/N – Complicate
To quote Mel Brooks’ “History of the World, Part One” (spoken by a down-and-out
comedian who’s trying to find something he can discuss without, er, losing his
head): “Politics! Politics, politics, politics!” Didn’t work so well for him,
but it does get my point across here, I think. The many layers of the new form
of Esset are starting to reveal themselves, as the factions begin consolidating
their positions and separating the loyal from the overly ambitious.
Yes, Konnor himself refers to the precogs and clairsentients as “mice”. The
mental static they create isn’t choosy, and it isn’t easily controlled.
Suggestions are given, and received. After a while, it must be difficult to
know whether one is coming or going. This is the desired effect against Brad
Crawford, true, but it is also the very reason Prague needs to investigate the
practice. How much quantum interference can accumulate before the very essence
of space-time bends? Good question…
Pfalzgraf Hodert – the Count-Palatine of Prague; in his own domain, his word is
law. One of the true liegemen of der Fürst von Esset.
“The Lord High Prince” – also known as der Fürst von Esset; headquartered in
Hapsburg, Austria. One of two (at least) factions contending for control of the
organization (and hence, the world).
Special reference note: from “Coming Home”, chapter 57-58 – Schuldig’s exact
message to the dog handler was quite different from what Konrad has just been
told…
***** Chapter 12 *****
12. – Friends

I watched Johannsen gather his notes and scurry off to make his report as
Mendez cleared away the remnants of our meeting. The Omega telepath was
trouble, no questions there but two: how much, and for whom?
Mendez secured the equipment in the cabinet marked for erasure. A Gamma detail
would come by and make certain that no trace of the meeting remained in any of
the circuitry. Briefly I contemplated the difference between being thorough and
being paranoid before realizing that for Esset, there was no difference.
::Konn, if you don’t calm down, someone besides me will notice.::
I glowered at my “friend”. ::I didn’t invite you.::
::You think I requested this?:: Mendez finished locking up and headed for the
door. ::I’m having coffee at ten, find me if you like.::
As crisply as strangers, we went our separate ways.
I retreated to the sanctuary of my apartment. The new facility head would be
here this afternoon, apparently with his own pre-selected entourage. My own
inner circle stood on shaky ground, and I had only a few hours in which to
steady it. Bloody hell.
There was one peacemaker who had always known the right answers, no matter how
difficult the questions. He had ensured that Garrick, Mendez, and I had stuck
by one another this long, forging an alliance of friends that even Esset could
not break – until today. Had my trust in Mendez faded so badly that I no longer
knew if he was my friend, based solely on one staged event? I slumped over my
desk with a weary sigh. “Shel, what would you have had me do?”
Emotionally drained, I rested my head on my arms and tried to think. I hadn’t
heard from Shelton Grant in years. In fact, in the aftermath of the slaughter I
didn’t even know if he still lived. There had been very little communication
between the facilities in the best of times, and now damn near none. If he was
still doing the same sort of work as before, he wouldn’t have a set address
anyway. Esset valued his language skills to the point he had become their
roving specialist, delivering intensive training seminars throughout the
organization. The man hadn’t stayed in one place since…
I frowned. Had that been another instance of Sonndheim’s puppetry, ensuring
that my one best ally was nowhere to be found when I was most in need of his
wisdom? Inwardly I’d blamed Shelley for not being there, and that coupled with
his extensive travel had driven a wedge between us. Still, I would trust him
with my life, for I’d already trusted him with my secrets.
[“You should have picked more reliable friends…”]
Damn him.
A tiny voice whispered in my mind: Damn which? Shelley was too clever to be so
easily played, even by Sonndheim. He wasn’t there when you needed him…
[“I suspect that Grant at least may have had the balls to shoot me before
things ever went that far.”]
Damn Sonndheim.
Because of him, I had seen things that no man should ever be made witness to.
Because of him, I carried those nightmares in my soul.
Because of him, my one chance at redemption lay in ashes.
And now the site of that abomination would come under the scrutiny of
strangers. For the first time since my own arrival so many years ago the
facility would have a new layer of command. No mere pretender grasping power in
the wake of disaster, this man and his attendants had been appointed by the
hand of Hapsburg itself.
Would they seek out Sonndheim’s secrets, declare his rooms their own? Would
they interfere with my search for answers there?
Bloody hell.
“Ah, damn it, Shel.” For a moment I debated trying to find him. Then I came to
my senses. Whatever distance lay between us now could not be safely bridged. If
he was still alive, his best chance to remain so depended on my absence. There
were too many strands, too many games being played; I could not ensure his
safety if he came back into my world.
I closed my eyes, allowed memory to give me what comfort it might. Shelley’s
laughter, his quick wit and quicker venom, had always managed to bring me out
of whatever darkness held me in its power, if only for a few precious moments.
He had never been fooled, by any of it. Not by me, or Berlin, or Erich
Sonndheim.
I truly doubted Shelton Grant to be among the living. That would be asking too
much of my fate.
As ten o’clock approached, I imagined Shelley’s advice on the day: “If you
don’t meet with Mendez this morning, you will not be able to count on him this
afternoon, and this afternoon is going to be crucial. Go to him, Konnie. He
isn’t the enemy. He never has been.”
“And neither have you,” I whispered, then felt quite foolish. Part of my mind
had forgotten that I’d only imagined the familiar voice. I’d half expected to
see Shelley sitting across from me, that wise half-scowl telling me we both
knew he was right. Shel was almost always right.
God, how I missed him.
As I entered the cafeteria, our usual place for mid-morning coffee, I saw
Mendez standing near the wall. Garrick was with him. I swallowed, suddenly
convinced that the coffee would taste like paint on my tongue, tainted by my
conscience.
::Glad you could make it, Konn.:: Mendez sounded genuinely relieved. ::I took
the liberty of filling Garrick in. I figured you’d want all bases covered
before this afternoon.::
::Thank you.:: I sipped my coffee and found it not so brackish as I’d expected.
Forgiveness had its own rewards, and it was clear that in this case it was
mutual.
“Not a pleasant meeting, but at least it brought no bad news,” Mendez observed
aloud. ::You stayed there late last night, didn’t you, Konn? Did you find
anything?::
“Not bad, no, but I’m not thrilled at the prospect of training a new commander.
I hope he’s housebroken, at least.” ::Hints and puzzles,:: I replied. ::A huge
string of keys.::
::What was that note you were reading?:: Garrick asked. “They’re making you
deal with his in-house training? That’s raw.”
“Not in so many words, but we all know how it goes around here,” I stated,
trying not to sound too bitter. Sonndheim had taken it upon himself to oversee
my transition, and that had been the start of too many problems. ::Garbage. It
was garbage.::
Mendez raised an eyebrow, but did not comment on our silent conversation.
Instead, he suggested, “There is always the chance that the new commander will
be spot-on, you realize. Hapsburg doesn’t do things half-way.”
Garrick looked momentarily startled, but recovered quickly. ::You didn’t say
anything about Hapsburg. I thought they were coming from Prague.::
::They are,:: I explained, coming to Mendez’s defence without a second
consideration. “And neither does Prague. When the two are in league, that means
much.”
“Much politics,” Garrick muttered. ::Watch your back with this, Konn. I don’t
like it.::
I accepted his comment without elaboration. It was one thing for him to confide
his doubts, but another thing entirely for me to do the same. I tried not to
smirk as I said, “Politics make for strange bedfellows, as they say.”
Mendez snickered and shook his head. ::Try not to piss these off, all right?
They’re not Sonndheim, Konnor. Try to get along?::
For his efforts, Mendez received a mildly disapproving look over the rim of my
coffee cup. ::You and I both know whose bed I belong in now. He made that quite
plain.:: I took a sip of the bitter, cold liquid and added, ::Let’s just hope
that our new acquaintances aren’t the jealous type.::

A/N: – Friends
For Konnor, it seems that Shelton Grant’s wisdom is the balance to Erich
Sonndheim’s evil. One has to wonder which of the two is stronger, and whether
time or distance really matter in this case. Of course, that does presume that
we are asking these questions of a rational man, and unfortunately, Konnor has
not shown himself to be completely rational these days.
***** Chapter 13 *****
13. – Master

The sleek black sedan parked in front of the Administration building, where I
waited with ten other men to greet our new masters. Mendez and Gerald Thornton,
as senior telepaths, stood to either side of our group as a sort of honor
guard. Everything had been arranged according to Esset protocol.
The sedan, of course, had arrived late.
The eleven of us were sweating in the mid-afternoon sun by the time the car
pulled into the Rosenkreuz courtyard. We hadn’t had the option of leaving and
coming back out, as we had to keep the appearance of readiness. The fifteen
minute delay was not significant by most standards, but considering the
circumstances I took it as a personal affront.
The back door opened, and a uniformed Intelligence operative stepped out to
take up position at the rear wheel – guarding the next man out of the vehicle,
then. I suppressed a grim smile. They, too, were playing this by the book. For
whose benefit, I wondered?
On the far side of the car, the other back door swung open, revealing yet
another operative. Only when he had surveyed the courtyard did the second
vehicle pull in behind the first, allowing the massive gates to swing shut with
a dull screech.
That grim smile struggled against all my discipline, wanting to be seen. They
were following the script of securing a hostile facility. Would the assassins
be next?
The passenger door of the first car opened and a young officer stepped out onto
the hard-packed dirt of the courtyard. He straightened his jacket with a well-
rehearsed touch, tucked his cap under his arm, and strode around the front of
the car, his every move exuding extreme confidence and very mild disgust.
::That’s him, Konn,:: Mendez informed me, confirming what I already knew. ::Oh,
hell, just what we need…:: I doubted he intended me to pick up this last
comment, but his surprise came through clearly enough, bringing the words with
it.
I saluted sharply, trying to see past the fresh-faced youth and find the Prague
officer behind his cool façade. I swallowed down a snarl and greeted him per
the script. “Lieutenant Colonel Vandemeer, welcome to Rosenkreuz.”
The young man graced me with a bored glare and a disinterested salute. “Herr
General. Is everything ready?”
His voice, a clear tenor, further belied his youth. Beyond that, the tone
itself annoyed me. He spoke with that lazy, cultured drawl associated with
aristocrats and well-connected upstarts. Keeping my own tone neutral, I
informed him, “Your quarters have been prepared, in the north wing of our staff
apartments. Our own Gamma division will be housing your men.”
“Not acceptable.” Sharp gray eyes studied my face as Vandemeer stated, “We
require adjacent suites. My work will be closely connected with that of my men.
I am surprised you were not informed.”
His lack of surprise turned his eyes flinty. This was a test. I bowed slightly,
not relinquishing my calm for this ill-delivered bait. “Information is a rarity
these days, no matter how trivial. If one of your agents would accompany Herr
Thornton, we can get this straightened out within the hour.”
“Very well. Dominguez, see to it.”
The fellow standing guard at the near wheel well saluted smartly and followed
Thornton into the relative coolness of the Administration building.
“And,” I added before things could take any other unpleasant turns, “if you
will kindly accompany me, Herr Vandemeer, we have much to discuss.”
“Indeed. We have not a moment to waste, Herr General. Time…is of the essence.”
With that, the young Lieutenant Colonel preceded me into the building.
::Konn…::
::I don’t give a damn about regulations,:: I snapped back at Mendez. ::This
punk has no clue what he’s gotten himself into here!::
::Good thing you don’t have to follow his orders, then, isn’t it.::
As I paused just within the doorway, Mendez bustled past me and hurried toward
his own office, leaving me momentarily dumbstruck. Of course, he was right – I
answered to the High Prince, not this petty little usptart! My mood lifted
immediately, bringing a fresh spring to my step as I followed after the
delegation from Prague.
“We shall speak in your office,” Vandemeer stated, apparently willing to
overlook my brief hiatus. His smile, however, warned me very clearly as he
observed, “I understand it’s one of the few suites in this building not under
constant surveillance.”
Bloody hell. The son of a bitch had been watching me under orders? With great
effort I composed myself and nodded a fractional bow. “Of course.”
“This place never seems to change, does it, Herr General?” Vandemeer ran a
casual hand across the wood railing that set this building apart from the
others here. “Mock elegance amidst the carrion exhibits. I am pleased that not
every familiar face is gone from here. Not yet, anyway.”
That sense of warning distracted me, urged me to try to remember this young
man, to know who I was dealing with. But I had not had much contact with the
Gamma Division trainees, and if this officer had come from Rosenkreuz
initially, I did not recognize him. Hell, I didn’t even know what his talent
might be. I trusted my shields to keep him out, should he be so inclined as to
look; Mendez might slip past, but we had known each other for years.
As we mounted the stairs to my floor, Vandemeer paused at the level below mine.
He shook his head, then continued up.
I followed, trying to ignore the panic screaming through my mind and coursing
through my body. This young man was poison to me. Every instinct told me to
draw my pistol and shoot him in the back, before we reached my floor.
Sometimes it is in our hesitation that our intentions are fully realized.
Vandemeer had paused to pay his final respects to Erich Sonndheim.

A/N:
13. – Master
Esset Intelligence arrives, heralding a power shift at Rosenkreuz. It is a
bitter thing, being replaced in authority by someone half your age.
The past has just repeated itself.
***** Chapter 14 *****
14. – Snake

This time, my apartment door did not shut the nightmare out, but rather trapped
me inside with it. The young serpent from Prague meandered through my home,
admiring the sanctuary I had made for myself over the years. In his posture I
could read his disgust at the excesses of my décor, though the only
extravagance I ever allowed myself was books.
“You’ve done well for yourself, Herr General.” Vandemeer turned, his expression
almost contrite. “May I call you Konrad?”
“As you prefer, Herr Vandemeer.”
His pale lips curved in a practiced smile and he held out his right hand to me.
“Lenard.”
I accepted the handshake and the offer of his name, still trying to recall if
I’d ever met him before. A tiny corner of my mind whispered: you have but to
remove your glove and know him. I commanded it to silence before any rogue
telepath might catch sight of it.
“May we drop the formalities, Konrad?” He gave my hand a final squeeze before
releasing it and helping himself to a glass of brandy. “My orders are simple.
Keep this facility running in spite of its losses, and oversee the Gamma unit
that will be investigating your innovative practices here. I must confess, I am
actually quite excited by all this.”
That dark corner of my mind whispered again: I bet you are. Keep talking, boy.
Impress me.
“Do you have any means to measure the success or failure of your experiment?
The idea of using a linked series of metapaths intrigues me. However did you
come up with it?”
I swallowed, my throat unaccountably dry. Before answering, I excused myself to
the kitchen. The chilled bottle of Coke soaked through my glove and brought my
own memories to the surface, memories of another warm day so long ago, and the
reason for all this madness. Returning to my guest, I toasted him with the
bottle, then said, “I was his mentor.”
“Ah, yes. Your dossier did mention such.” Vandemeer watched me closely, as
though we were playing high-stakes poker. “So you took it upon yourself to try
and track down your wayward charge. Admirable. You above all others should have
some insight into him, am I right?”
“I would like to think so.” For some reason, discussing Bradley with this
outsider did not set well with me. He was too young to understand. He looked to
be the same age I had been when I was handed this pigsty of an assignment. The
same age that damned Hernandez had been… I poured some of my Coke into a glass,
added whiskey, forced it down. “I knew him well, until last year.”
“Indeed?” Vandemeer regarded his own drink. Only one slender uplifted eyebrow
betrayed his suspicion before he stated, “I was under the impression he caught
you quite by surprise, Herr General. That doesn’t sound like a close
relationship.”
I hoped he couldn’t hear my heart pounding as I asked, “What are you
suggesting?” I had the sudden, awful feeling I had just invited an executioner
into my apartment.
But the young officer smiled that dainty, elegant smile, and said, “Why,
nothing sinister, Konrad. Merely that you should bear in mind the possibility
that you never knew him as well as you imagined.”
“You haven’t met him, have you?”
“Met him?” Vandemeer set his drink down and gazed at me with mild surprise.
“Brad Crawford recruited me to Esset. I was thirteen. He said something at the
time that I did not understand. He told me that I was the last talent he would
locate, as a personal favor to his liaison officer. I don’t suppose you could
shed some light on that? Six years can be a lifetime, after all.”
To my amazement, it was not shock but laughter that nearly undid me. I turned
away to compose myself, hoping he hadn’t noticed the brief but profound slip.
I’d felt my eyes light up with mirth, so inappropriate to the situation, but
unavoidable. My dear Bradley had managed to outmaneuver me, in advance! Had he
foreseen this meeting, this uneasy alliance between myself and Prague, with
Hapsburg the looming chaperon? “Six years can, indeed, be a lifetime,
especially here.” To my relief, my voice sounded normal. I took a deep breath
and turned back toward my guest. “Brad Crawford anticipated his own promotion,
Lenard. He was too skilled to be wasted on recruitment, when retrieval suited
him so much better.”
“Ironic, that.” Lenard sipped his drink, his eyes thoughtful. “And I am here to
retrieve him. You are right to admire him, Konrad. Though…your admiration
wouldn’t compromise your efforts, would it? Your desire to see Crawford excel
might lead you to believe he’s better off free.” He paused to lick a drop of
brandy from the rim of his glass. “Which is it, Konrad? Do you so delight in
his outwitting you that you no longer desire to come out on top?”
And there it was. The accusation behind the politics. “You may as well just ask
me whose side I’m on, Lenard.” I stared unflinching as I stated, “I know my
duty. I shall perform that duty. I would prefer to bring him in alive, at any
cost, because a precognitive man of his caliber is an anomaly that Esset cannot
afford to overlook. Any personal sense of gratification in his skill as a
survivor and a leader is not relevant, though I would be lying if I denied that
gratification. Brad Crawford is an amazing man. Strong, determined, shrewd, and
capable of betraying Esset on many levels. Do not underestimate him.”
“I see.” Again, that tiny smile. “You are his staunchest advocate. Among the
many players who would see him dead for his crimes, you alone hold fast to a
hope of recovery. Tell me, what can Esset possibly offer him that would bring
him back to you?”
I replied without hesitation. “The lives of his team. They are the key to his
future. I believe he would sacrifice himself before allowing them to come to
harm. And they would do anything to protect him. Capture any one of the four,
and the other three are yours for the taking.”
“Are you so certain, Konrad?” Lenard set his glass down, his gaze seemingly
caught in the cut crystal of the brandy bottle. He glanced up at me through
wheat-gold eyelashes. “He certainly seemed ready to sacrifice the whole lot in
order to kill the Elders.”
I shook my head, certainty no less clear now than when I’d first learned of the
betrayal. “No. Not sacrifice. He fully intended to go with them, whether in
life or in death. That’s not quite the same thing.”
“No, you’re right.” Lenard’s voice had gone soft, thoughtful in a dreamy sort
of way. “It’s not the same, is it. There is a nobility to him, something
ageless and rare. Something that Esset was not prepared to deal with.” He
straightened, then bowed to me. “I think we shall work well together, Herr
General. I have many questions to ask of your Mr. Crawford, when we find him.”
My heart caught in my throat as I asked, “Then you mean to take him alive?”
“I do.” Lenard offered me a different kind of smile then: a sad one. “If he
allows it.”

A/N:
Lenard Vandemeer: ally, enemy, obstacle? Hard to tell. But the real question
is, is he the real problem? Konnor would do well to remember the old adage that
warns how easy it is to become that which one most despises.
metapath – any mental talent (not physical) other than telepath or empath; a
blanket term including all far-seers and the more unusual mixes of talents
(clairsentients, precognitives, dream seers, illusionists)
***** Chapter 15 *****
15. – Decisions

Our first meeting had gone from frosty and unwelcome to a fragile alliance.
Now, as I stood in Lieutenant Colonel Vandemeer’s new office three days later,
that balance shifted over to uneasy.
“I have reviewed your project, Herr General. In all candor, I cannot see any
usefulness to it. Without a way to measure results, you may as well be shooting
arrows at the stars.”
“The exhaustion of the participants should be indication enough!” I braced my
hands against his desk and leaned down to glare into his face. “If the project
were ineffective, I doubt that we would be seeing so much backlash from it!”
“I doubt,” Lenard began, rising from his seat and meeting my glare directly,
“that there would be much difference whether they were effective or no, Herr
General. Unless someone can report to me that Brad Crawford is experiencing
some distress related to this, I cannot accept such flimsy evidence.”
“Don’t cancel the project,” I snarled. “It’s the best chance we have, damn it!”
“Best chance for what? For allowing him to move about unhindered and
unobserved? How many of your metapaths have even Seen him, Konrad?” The young
officer’s face went pink with anger as he finally allowed his rigid control to
slip. “He is hidden, you fool! He knows exactly how to avoid your agents – he’s
been running circles around you!”
“Of course he knows how to avoid them, he used to be one!” My own words caught
me by surprise, and I backed off, blinking.
Lenard, too, backed down. He watched me closely, one hand no doubt on the butt
of a pistol underneath the edge of his desk.
I composed myself with difficulty. At first I’d wanted to despise this arrogant
young officer. Then I’d dared consider him a potential ally. What was the truth
here? Could I trust him with Bradley’s life? Lenard had claimed an interest in
retrieving him alive; dare I believe that?
Dare I not?
Lieutenant Colonel Vandemeer served Pfalzgraf Hodert directly, reported to him,
carried out his orders. What were those orders, and what might they say about
the value of Brad Crawford’s life? Or of my own?
Cool gray eyes studied me as I ran through my options.
“Don’t make me decommission this project, Vandemeer,” I growled. “Do what you
must, our Gamma division is wholly at your disposal. But do not end the
Farseeing Project.”
“You are personally involved, Konrad. This clouds your judgment.”
“It does not. Not about this.” I met his gaze, held it. “Consider this a long-
term gamble. If you need the personnel for another assignment, we can discuss
it. But I seriously doubt that you will find a better use for them. Allow me
this eccentricity, against my service record. If you find me unfit, then I
request transfer to Berlin.” I hated saying this, I hated playing this card,
but if I could not manage at least a portion of the hunt for Brad Crawford, I
did not want to watch what might unfold in my absence.
“‘This eccentricity’?” Lenard allowed that high-born smirk to cross his lips
again, and he let his eyes drift from my face to my hips. “From all reports,
‘eccentric’ is an understatement, Herr General.”
I almost choked on my reaction as a mixture of dread and betrayal made my
stomach churn. My face twisted into a hard sneer as I leaned over the desk once
more, glaring into the pale eyes that had dared to mock me with such
casualness. “You will conduct your business here, and leave me to my own,
Prague. I was running this facility before you were even a vague speculation on
the docket. I will continue my work for Esset – for Esset, not Prague – and I
will hand them this fugitive in chains before your dogs are even on the scent!”
Vandemeer sat back in his chair, his expression maddeningly familiar: bland
amusement with a hint of satisfaction and just a touch of hatred. He clapped
his hands with theatrical exaggeration. “Well said, well said, sir!” His eyes
narrowed. “But I must correct you. The time for masquerade is long past. If
this is news to you, I regret being the bearer of it but let’s get it over with
quickly, shall we? You have never been this facility’s commanding officer.”
I resisted the urge to find a chair and sink into it. Instead, I stood and
hoped that my reaction did not show on my face.
Deep in my mind, a raspy chuckle echoed over and over.
“From the end of the second world war until the mid-1970’s, Rosenkreuz
underwent a transformation into Esset’s premier research facility. I can see
you already knew that part of it. Everything here was part of the research.
Everything, Herr General. Even the staff.”
This boy, barely half my age, had just torn my reality apart. I struggled to
maintain some sense of calm in the face of the whirlwind, felt the futility of
it, struggled anyway.
“I know everything about you, up until the day you dismantled your surveillance
equipment.”
As though I no longer controlled my own body, I found myself glancing around
the office and wondering at the lack of armed guards. I could kill Lenard and
no one would stop me. I could make him shut up, make him stop turning my world
upside down. Instead, my hand reached back and tugged a chair close enough to
be useful. My legs deposited my weight on the sturdy wood and leather, and once
again I found myself eye-to-eye with young Lenard Vandemeer.
His eyes no longer harsh, he regarded me with an almost sad expression. “My
orders, Herr General, included bringing your project into line with our needs,
and, if you resisted, giving you a final choice. You have the truth now. You
may continue to serve Esset, no longer a research subject yourself, or you may
request a private execution.”
No longer a research subject? Was that all I had been? Was that why they gave
me Bradley, then took him away? Was that why…?
The ghosts of my past rose up, begged me to take the second option. The boy I’d
shot so long ago at Berlin, the boy I’d used as my shield just this past spring
– their eyes implored me to take my place at their side, to cast all this
behind me and put an end to it.
Bradley’s eyes begged me, pleading [“No, please, not him! I’ll do anything!
Please, stop!”]…
Flickering tongues of flame whispered grim accusations that I could never deny.
[Does he despise you for what you have done?]
A soft sound brought me back to the present: the scraping of metal on wood.
Vandemeer reached across his desk, hand flat upon its surface. His eyes were
unreadable. “Many errors have been made here. You can learn from them. Make
your choice in your own time, not in mine. The future has not been written
yet.” He lifted his hand.
On the desk lay a key.
I picked it up as though in a dream. “What is this for?”
Lenard smiled the sad, real smile again. “When you can tell me, I will be
waiting to hear it.”

A/N:
Prague is now more mystery than before, and Vandemeer’s role even less obvious.
Konrad has just learned much he would rather not have known. Some things should
just stay locked…
***** Chapter 16 *****
16. – Pieces

My bootheels echoed against the tile, keeping me company as they tapped out a
proper cadence. I had no idea where I was heading, only vague concern for where
I had been.
In my pocket, the small brass key weighed heavy as a curse.
I had compared it to the keys on the lanyard twice now. It is similar in size
and shape to any number of desk keys or filing cabinet keys, but it is older,
dull with tarnish. It is not a spare key to anything connected with that
lanyard. Why should it be? It had come into the keeping of Prague, and I had
not the slightest clue how – or when. Naturally I presumed it to have once
belonged to Erich Sonndheim, but if I had not found that strand of keys would I
still have come to that conclusion?
If I only dared touch it with bare skin…
Turning right, I entered the medical department. They had older style filing
cabinets and such; perhaps the key had once lived here.
A thorough survey of locks and keys confirmed without a doubt that this was not
the case. Everything here was aluminum or steel – no brass.
As I left that lead behind me, I began to consider locks outside the confines
of Rosenkreuz proper. Perhaps the key unlocked a bank box or a locker
somewhere.
I stopped dead in my tracks. A locker, somewhere? Sonndheim had known about
Rudi; had he known where? I swallowed, forced myself to walk as though I had no
worries. Myriad possibilities taunted me now: a car’s glove box, a private mail
drop, a suitcase, a desk…
Upon returning to my apartment, I tried the key in my own desk, breathed a sigh
of relief when it didn’t work.
This was crazy.
Vandemeer had set me on a fool’s errand to distract me from his dealings, it
was that simple. By now he surely has decommissioned the farseeing project,
perhaps going so far as to send the participants to other facilities. He could
even be planning my execution for the moment I began asking questions.
Crazy.
I reached for my phone, intending to call my truest confidant – then remembered
that Shelton Grant had not been at this facility in years.
Vandemeer’s words echoed in my brain. Everything here was part of the research.
Everything, Herr General. Even the staff.
Even me.
I should be used to this by now, I’d had three days to come to terms with it,
and yet I felt as though I were running slowly in circles. I could not
reconcile the hours of my life with the date on my calendar.
It was as though the past week had not happened.
Was I in shock? Was that it?
Or…did I instinctively know that I was going about this the wrong way?
Biting back a snarl at adversaries no longer present, I tugged off my gloves
and pulled the key from my pocket.
Minemyownmysecretsworthmorethangold – I gasped, dropping the key on my desk.
This had been Sonndheim’s key, then. But why was it at Prague
Flexing my hand as if to work out a cramp, I cautiously picked the key up once
more. What are you? I asked it. What do you unlock, my tiny conundrum?
A dossier. A file. Classified, locked by Esset Intelligence. The cabinet, an
ugly green metal affair, heavy, with chipped paint along the right-hand
side…and Erich Sonndheim, locking that cabinet for the last time, intending it
to be the last, and sending the key via secure courier to Prague.
Per his orders.
The images faded, eroded by time passed, until the key became merely a
deliberately cut piece of metal.
I didn’t consciously plan to do so, but I found myself in the bathroom,
collecting the uniform I had worn to Sonndheim’s apartment and changing into
it. I slipped my pager and the lanyard of keys into my pockets, added a spare
clip for my pistol, then tucked the brass key in a breast pocket to keep it
from getting misplaced. My gaze fell upon the mocking letter I had retrieved
from Sonndheim’s mirror; it joined the brass key.
Electric torch in hand, I left my apartment in search of answers.
I had intended to search through Erich’s apartment once more, but instead found
myself entering the burned-out wreckage of the old research wing. Though the
medical clinic had held no matching lock, perhaps here I would find some clue
to the key’s purpose. The thought of locked files brought up images of
experimentation and punishment, things that made my hackles stir to life as
though hearing the whispers of ghosts.
This building had been the first physical casualty of the Purge, the student
uprising in those mad days back in April. While I had been locked away in
meetings with the remainder of the staff, the students brave enough and skilled
enough had done quite a lot of damage. They had targeted the medical centers,
which came as no real surprise. Even the least sane knew whose hand held the
instruments of torture; the fires had raged unchecked for two days.
There had been no move made to rebuild this wing, either. Perhaps it was a show
of good faith, to keep the remaining students from slaughtering what was left
of the faculty. Perhaps it was simple lack of interest.
Perhaps Rosenkreuz had already been decommissioned.
I picked my way through the rubble, drawing occasional curious glances but no
challenge. Briefly I wondered what sort of toxins I might be walking through;
then I reminded myself we had all been breathing the smoke, so it probably
didn’t matter so much now.
Twisted metal cell doors lay where they had fallen, reshaped by the heat when
the labs had exploded. And there, scorched and likely gutted by fire, two tall
filing cabinets lay propped against each other. My heart sank. If the key did
indeed fit either of those, the chance of finding anything useful within seemed
nonexistent.
Bracing my feet against the rubble, I leaned over and tried the key in first
one, then the other. The answer was the same for both.
It fit.
It did not, however, turn.

A/N – Pieces
Oftentimes it is the case that the wrong key will still slide smoothly home in
a kindred lock, though lacking the power to affect it. Until the matching lock
is found, the key is impotent. A metaphor? Perhaps…
***** Chapter 17 *****
17. – Care

“You’re pushing yourself too hard, Konn.” Garrick’s rough voice covered the
obvious concern as he offered me a drink. “When’s the last time you slept?”
“Irrelevant,” I murmured, accepting the glass from one of the very few I
trusted enough for such civil moments. “Sleep isn’t what it’s cracked up to
be.”
“Interesting turn of phrase, ‘cracked up’.” Garrick took a sip of his own
drink, watching me over the rim of the glass. “Once, a long time ago, I told
you I had your back. I’m worried about you, Konn. So is Al. You’ve gone
erratic. You know that’s not good.”
“I’m fine, my friend,” I told him, suddenly aware that the uniform I wore
smelled vaguely like a crypt and held secrets in its pockets. Erratic indeed. I
felt more weary than I had in years, with a distinct lack of optimism. Is this
how Sonndheim had endured his tenure here, with quiet resignation? Was he even
now seeping in through my skin?
“I’ve seen fine, and you are far from it.” Garrick set down his glass, half-
finished, and sat opposite me. “Look at yourself, man! You’re a shambles, a
walking shipwreck waiting to happen.”
“Spare me the poetry.” I glared at my friend, vaguely aware that I’d taken my
own drink far too quickly. In any other company, I would excuse myself and
retreat to the safety of my home. Here, though, I felt compelled to stay and
hear him out. I did not, however, have to put up with his notorious
pontificating.
“Hey, you invited yourself, Konrad.” Garrick took up his glass again, drained
it. “If you didn’t want to talk, why are you here?”
I sighed, allowed the breath to take most of my stubbornness with it. “I…I just
needed a haven for a while. A brief respite, if you will. Things are moving too
fast lately, in directions I never anticipated. I’m…”
“Exhausted,” my friend offered. “Wrung-out, at the end of your rope, badly in
need of some decent rest. You’re not trapped here, Konn, why don’t you take a
few days, clear your head?”
Because that would leave the mystery untended.
I pushed that thought to the back of my mind, where I knew it would continue to
fester until I had solved it. He was right, and we both knew it.
Apparently Garrick took my silence as obstinacy, which would not be far from
the truth. He scowled and folded his arms across his chest. “You’re being
reckless again. You know this, right?”
“Your point?”
My friend rose and refilled both our glasses. “My point is only this. That boy
we found in Sonndheim’s bed? He doesn’t exist.”
I gaped up at him, numbly accepted the fresh drink. “Say again?”
“There is no official record that I could find linking a blond-haired boy with
Erich Sonndheim at the time of his execution.” Garrick paused, sipped his
whiskey. “I went back another six months, then two years. Nothing.”
“Bloody hell,” I growled, annoying myself with my choice of words: Shelley’s
pet phrase reminded me keenly of his absence. “No record anywhere?”
“Well, I wasn’t about to ask Vandemeer,” Garrick muttered. “No record in
medical, intake, supply, or corrections. There’s something decidedly odd about
this, Konn. I don’t like it.”
“We are talking about Sonndheim,” I reminded us both. “Odd is to be expected.”
“Not this kind of odd.” Garrick returned to his chair, leaning forward as he
spoke as if to emphasize his words. “Have you ever known him to smuggle someone
in from outside? I have no evidence this kid was even a psi-talent.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Now it was my turn to abandon my seat. I started
pacing, no longer noticing the smell that clung to me like a shroud. “He had
his pick of any boy here, why would he bring in someone like that?”
“Hell if I know, Konn. But I’ve been going through the medical records for the
past two days, and there’s nothing. No intake forms, no passes, nothing. I
haven’t checked the basement yet, but those files are mostly –”
The rest of his words slipped past my attention. The files in the basement. The
locked disciplinary actions. Of course! What else could the damn key possibly
hide? My throat tightened as ghosts rose up around me in a chorus of
accusation.
[“You’ve got to believe me, I didn’t do this!”
“Muzzle your dog, Erich, or so help me I’ll do it for you!”]
[“This is insane!” My voice cracks as though I were a boy again, as though I
were the one condemned to this degradation, this horror.
“No, it’s quite simple. Find out what he knows, or I will.” Hooded eyes above a
serpent’s smile, showing only delight at a devil’s bargain about to be struck.]
[“I know too many of your secrets for you to deny me time…Stricher.”]</em>
[“All right,” I hiss, my throat raw with another’s screams. “You’re done.”
Sonndheim regards me with cool excitement, anticipation dotting his upper lip
with sweat. “Are you defying me, General?”
“No, as always, I am going through proper channels.” I throw the papers down at
his feet like a gauntlet. “Your orders, Erich. This inquest is closed. It never
happened!
“Konrad?” Garrick snapped his fingers in front of my face and tried my name
again. “Konrad!”
I stared dumbly at him, momentarily lost between past and present. The whiskey
in my glass has spilled across my fingers, the glass itself perilously close to
falling from my hand. I swallowed, nodded, hoping to reassure, knowing the
gesture to be futile. Garrick had rarely fallen for my best lies, and never for
my worst. “I’m all right. Just…thinking.”
Steely gray eyes bored into mine, allowing me no chance to talk my way out of
this. In other circumstances, long ago perhaps, I might have found his boldness
intriguing. Now I knew it for the desperate protectiveness of a once-dear
friend who no longer knew his place with me. Sadness gripped me, and I nearly
told him everything.
But secrecy had been my friend even longer than Garrick.
I gripped his arm in a one-handed embrace in the way of men who do not easily
acknowledge closeness. “I am all right, Gar.” I took a deep breath, then
another. “We both know damn well what files are in the basement.”
“Don’t do this to yourself, Konn,” Garrick grated, frustrated concern narrowing
his eyes to slits. “You weren’t responsible for what happened.”
My hand tightened on his arm until my fingers cramped. “I was responsible
enough! He made certain of that.”
Moving slowly, Garrick gently pried my fingers loose from his bicep, pinned my
arm to my side as though trying to control an hysteric. “Drop it, Konn. You
can’t change anything now. It’s past.”
Momentary outrage gave way to the weight of time. I sagged against the
inevitability of his words, the futility of my own. “The past is with us, my
friend. We can’t escape it.”
“Then why do you keep trying?”
Emotion welled up in my throat; I choked it down, reminding myself that, though
Garrick was a confidant, he was not Shelley. I dare not allow myself to slip.
Garrick smiled gently, reassuringly, his hand still firmly on my right forearm.
His eyes were wise and calm. “Take a break, before the break takes you.”
Absently I nodded, wishing he were someone else. I had dreamed of having
Bradley with me, of having him to comfort me through the difficult times, of
giving him comfort…
Whether he picked up any of that or merely knew me too well, Garrick caught my
gaze again and stated, “You’re not rational right now, you’re worn out and
you’re not getting anywhere like this. I’ll do some more digging tomorrow, see
what I can find out. Take a few days off, Konn. Get some fresh air, get some
real coffee.” He smiled that gruff, reassuring smile that meant he was up to
something on my behalf. “I’ll handle Vandemeer. You pull yourself back
together. Believe me, you’ll have the easier job.”
I smiled back at him, wishing we had only just met and all our mistakes lay
unmade in the future. So many possibilities, so many paths not taken… “All
right, my friend. I’ll leave you to it.” In homage to our long-lived trust, I
said, “If, in your wanderings, you come across an old green filing cabinet with
the paint chipped along the right-hand side, make note of it for me.”
Garrick frowned slightly. “What, are you missing one?”
I gave him my most innocent grin and said, “Noticed one in an old photograph of
Sonndheim’s. Wondered what the old rat may have been hiding in it.”
“Not another body, I hope…”

A/N: – Care
It is clear that Konrad trusts his friends, but only just so far. He is close
to a breaking point: trust them, or toss them aside? He needs Garrick, more
than he knows – his is perhaps the only physical contact Konnor has allowed in
months, and yet Konnor keeps him at a safe distance. Would Garrick offer more?
I doubt it. Garrick knows his friend well enough to know it would never be
accepted, and so he is unlikely to try. But one does not need to be a lover to
recognize the pain inside another man; one must only care.
***** Chapter 18 *****
18. – Pilgrim

Returning to my apartment, I chastised myself for even mentioning the green
filing cabinet. I could tell by the way he’d looked at me that Garrick hadn’t
bought the photo story for a moment. Still, I counted him as one of my few
trusted allies, and as such I should be able to enlist his help in my quest.
I changed out of the uniform I had come to regard as my “safari gear” and
washed the real or imagined smell of it off my skin, lingering a bit longer
than usual in the shower. A vague sense of optimism kept me cheerful as I
towel-dried my hair, then ran my hands through it leaving it rakishly ruffled.
The buzz of the whiskey kept me moving forward along an impulsive track,
something I had needed to do for some time now.
Standing naked before my closet, I regarded my clothes with a thoughtful scowl.
How long had it been since I’d taken a holiday, gotten out of this godforsaken
place and breathed clean air? Long enough that my street clothes were surely
out of fashion; I added a bit of shopping to my agenda and hauled down my
larger suitcase to handle whatever I might bring back.
As I packed, I could almost feel my ghosts watching me through a veil of smoke,
as though curious what I might do next.
Reeling a little from the whiskey and the lingering heat of the shower, I set
aside a suit for tomorrow’s journey, then wandered into my kitchen for some
chilled water. There were no perishables in my refrigerator to worry about,
nothing that couldn’t last a week without me, at any rate. I sipped my water
and meandered toward the phone.
Briefly I wondered if there were still surveillance equipment in my home,
alerting Prague and God knew who else that I was packing for a trip before I
could call it in. That thought made me laugh. I’d become so used to having no
privacy that I would probably never know what to make of it. I called the motor
pool and requested a private sedan for the next week.
Only after arranging that did I contact Vandemeer.
“Seven days? Very well.” Lenard sounded vaguely intrigued. “Will you be needing
an escort or expenses?”
“No, just a car,” I told him, hoping he couldn’t hear the whiskey in my voice.
“Destination?”
“Personal.”
I held my breath, waiting for the challenge, but it didn’t come. Vandemeer
merely said, “Take your pager, and do stay at a pleasant hotel. My treat.”
“Thank you, sir,” I replied, then hung up before he could say anything else.
I debated a moment, then rang Garrick.
“It’s about time,” he growled when I told him of my plans. “Come back a little
more Konrad and a little less wrecked, all right? I’ll hold down the fort while
you’re gone.”
He promised to tell Mendez, wished me a good night’s sleep, and bade me safe
travels. As the line went silent, my hand moved to dial another number before I
remembered that it wasn’t relevant: Shelley wasn’t here.
Sleep came quickly, and with it vague dreams, the sort remembered for only a
moment upon waking. I rallied to the day, deciding to grab breakfast on the
road rather than spend another wretched moment within these walls.
I secured the last few items, toiletries and the like, and checked my
appearance in the mirror. Timeless business suit, vest and tie, neatly groomed
hair showing far more gray than the last time I’d traveled for pleasure. I
scowled at my reflection. Two decades I had lived here, if one could call that
living, and it had aged me three.
With a sigh I returned to my bedroom and snapped the suitcase shut. I traded
out my white cotton gloves for black driving gloves, tucking the white ones
safely in my coat pocket. As I flexed my fingers in the stiff leather, I
noticed with distaste a bald spot in the cotton lining. It hit the tip of my
left ring finger; shouldn’t be a problem, but I would be on the lookout for a
new pair. It would grieve me to break in a new set; these carried their own
memories deep within the fibers of the lining and the creases in the leather.
My head hurt slightly, reminding me that I’d had a little too much whiskey the
night before. I grabbed a Coke to silence the pain with sugar and caffeine,
slipped my pager into the vest pocket, and carried my suitcase to the door.
Then I paused, set the case down, and turned back toward my desk. I unlocked
the large drawer to the side and took out Erich Sonndheim’s lanyard of keys and
his diary pages, and the annoying little brass key entrusted to me by Lenard
Vandemeer. Dare I remove them from the premises? Dare I leave them behind?
After a brief deliberation, I put the lanyard back into my desk, retaining only
the key that fit the padlock across Sonndheim’s door. The other keys were
Rosenkreuz property, no matter whose desk they lived in. The little brass key
and the diary pages joined the padlock key in a small pile. I rifled through my
desk for any other incriminating items before locking it securely and carrying
the select items back to the suitcase. They fit neatly into the inner lining
pocket, next to my gun and ammunition.
Once more I shut the suitcase, this time locking it as well. I took up my drink
and suitcase, switched off the lights, secured the door and headed toward the
motor pool.
A sleek black Mercedes awaited me, its nose aimed toward the gates and freedom.
Relative freedom, anyway; I wasn’t about to be picky. As I always had so many
times before, I had to suppress a chuckle at the urge to tip the “parking
valet” – this wasn’t a five-star hotel by any means, but the service was just
as good. I thanked the young man and settled in behind the steering wheel.
The massive iron gates swung open, slow as wisdom. The very sky looked
different when they no longer blocked the view. As I directed the car onto the
road away from the facility, a sense of relief swept over me. I had done it, I
had wrangled a little bit of precious time just for me.
But what to do with it?
Esset would be monitoring me via the pager, of course. I had no illicit
dealings, no improper destinations; never had, really. Uncouth, perhaps;
undignified, certainly. But nothing that would send up red flags in the Esset
observation deck.
I only knew of one place to go anymore.
It would take me most of the day to get there, but I didn’t mind. In my heart,
I had already known; I’d decided when Garrick first suggested I go on holiday.
Berlin.
My breath caught in my throat as I realized that Bradley had been there barely
a month ago. Would he still be in the area? Then reason set in: they hadn’t
seen Bradley, only Schuldig and Farfarello. I had no indication that Bradley
had even been in Germany.
Still, as I drove, I couldn’t help but glance at the other drivers and compare
them to a memory. What irony that would be, finding him as I flee the very
facility that wants him back! If I did see him, what would I do about it? A
corner of my mind suggested throwing in my lot with him, begging Bradley to
take me with him.
Then I remembered the second brutal lesson of Rosenkreuz: never beg.
I choked back a sob as past and present blurred, and the trusting face of young
Bradley was replaced by the grim visage of Brad Crawford, leader of the most
notorious Alpha unit ever fielded. I had made him this, I had given him the
strength to rebel. Had I given him his reason as well?
This would be a long damn drive with only my own company. Aggravated at myself
already, I switched on the radio.
The road rolled away beneath me, almost mesmerizing in its constancy. When I
noticed the time, I found I had been driving nearly two hours and still had not
bothered to find breakfast. At the next opportunity I stopped and forced myself
to eat like a civilized person. It had been a long time since I had been around
non-Esset folks, and paranoia kept me on a fine edge. My back felt knotted with
tension.
Were any of these people really Esset assassins, waiting for me?
Were any of them hunting Bradley and his team?
Had they seen him?
As I left the establishment, I cautiously removed my right glove and tested the
door. Thousands of imprints, but none of them Bradley. I ground my teeth
against any visible reaction, though my step faltered as I hurried back to the
car. Stupid, that had been incredibly stupid! But I had been no more able to
resist then than at any other time in my life.
How long would I be ruled by my desires, by vague impulses that drove me to
recklessness? I could control every other aspect of my life, but this need to
know – this need to taste the lives left behind, in search of one – made every
new place a shrine for Pandora ’s Box. One of these days I would open one that
I could not safely close again, and I would be lost.
Was that what I was after? An oblivion of the senses, an overload that would
erase all my pain? That would explain much.
It would explain the excesses of the flesh that drew me like a moth to flame,
as they had done since I was a teenager.
It would explain why I had nearly accepted Sonndheim’s offer.
Could it explain the emptiness I now felt, echoing through my soul?
Take a break, before the break takes me – how certain was Garrick that it had
not already done so?
Nothing to be done for it now. I had set upon a course of action and would see
it through, as I did in all things, for good or ill. Was this stubbornness, or
pride? Or fear of seeming indecisive? In any case, it was what drove me, what
had driven me all through my career with Esset: a grim doggedness that clung to
my decisions and damn the outcome.
When had a pleasure trip become something dire and irrevocable?
No wonder Garrick was worried.
Another glance at the clock: thirty minutes since breakfast. I would be raving
mad by the time I arrived if I did not stop this line of thought, and quickly!
Again I entrusted my sanity to the radio, finding a music station and turning
it up as loud as I could bear. This was my vacation, damn it! And no one was
going to sour it.
Not even me.

A/N – Pilgrim
And so a man will seek out a known refuge, no matter how much time has passed.
A part of Konnor’s mind recognizes that Rosenkreuz is poison, that fleeing is
his only option for sanity. Yet, in the quiet of his own company, uneasy
questions begin to surface, painful questions that are not so easily answered.
It is said that the line between madness and sanity is marked by those who know
the difference; I wonder where, exactly, Konnor would be on that continuum as
he drives from nowhere…to nowhere.
***** Chapter 19 *****
19. – Residue

Berlin.
Once my favorite city.
Now a place of empty memories and ghosts.
What I had known as West Berlin lay before me, East behind. I stood before the
shattered wall and fought down a profound surge of homesickness. Though I had
not been born here, it was here I had come of age, and now everything has
changed.
I have changed.
Ironic, the timing of such things. As nearly all of Esset had focused on the
reunification of Germany, a tiny drama had unfolded in its darkest facility,
unchecked and irrevocable. A frown creased my brow as I wondered sharply
whether it had, indeed, been only irony or, instead, a carefully staged coup.
In either case, if I could erase that month from my life I would do so without
hesitation.
I swallowed down the bitter memory, consigned what remained of my conscience to
its care. Like the Berlin Wall, my soul lay shattered, the remnants serving
only as memorials to the past.
Memories and ghosts, indeed.
My feet carried me toward once-familiar streets, the early-morning sunlight
mocking my sorrow as church bells began to ring. Sunday tourists had yet to
flock to the boulevards; for a moment I felt as though I had the world to
myself.
I dared wish in that moment that I might become forgotten to the world and to
myself and become one with the city, as I had done so long ago.
Once, when the city had been mine, I would stay at a youth hostel or rent a
room at a cheap motel, or sleep in my car for fear of discovery. I had spent my
money and sold my flesh all for a few minutes of normalcy among the madness
that was my life. The seediest gay bars were my refuge, and my cage.
At one such bar I had met for the second time the man who would become my best
friend in all the world.
Had he been the loose link all along?
I caught myself before saying his trademark “bloody hell” and smiled bitterly.
Would he have come here too, to recapture some lost moment in time? Doubtful.
Shelton Grant had always been one of the most rational men I’d ever known, in
spite of Esset. He would not come here because Berlin was not his city.
It had been mine, and now I felt like an orphan.
Last night I had checked in at an upscale hotel, one with a spa and numerous
amenities. I hated it, not because of Vandemeer’s generous offer but because it
simply did not suit me. I longed for the rawness, the realness I had left
behind in this city of duality, not some over-civilized façade.
Berlin mirrored me too well.
I wandered through the Sunday crowds, wasting time. Strangers ignored me in
that polite way one reserved for college professors and other oddities, the
middle-aged men who did not seem to belong anywhere. At forty, I felt utterly
used-up. No wonder people gave me that tiny non-smile as I passed: I was lost,
and they knew it.
Shopping didn’t take long. Old habit moved me to buy fresh clothes for the bar
scene, though I really didn’t expect to fit in. As I made my way back to the
hotel with my packages, I wondered if I would even dare to venture out to the
bars. And if I did venture out, what might I find there? Hope refused to
abandon me entirely on that score, and I found myself awaiting nightfall with a
nerve-wracking mix of anticipation and dread.
My second night in Berlin found me holed up in my hotel room, feasting on beer
and sandwiches and watching horror movies on pay-per-view while my club gear
and ambitions languished in the closet.
On Monday, dressed in new jeans and old shoes, new shirt and old sunglasses, I
toured the city that remained so damnably familiar to me. Careful not to touch
anything I did not absolutely need to touch, I made my way without gloves,
though I carried a handkerchief in my pocket just in case the contact became
too much.
Within a few hours my tolerance had been reached, my nerves screaming for quiet
as the echoes of a hundred years sang through my fingertips. The slats of the
park bench pressed against my spine as I leaned back against it, seeking
comfort from the wood as my hands slowly stopped trembling. Reckless again, and
stupid for being so; yet I found the pain so very comforting. Simple human
existence, even in a city as complex as Berlin, served to remind me that Esset
was not the only force in the world, a reminder that I sorely needed these
days.
It also reminded me that my hidden gift did not diminish with disuse but rather
grew more wild for lack of taming. I used to come here regularly, to Berlin,
and I would eventually leave the gloves behind as I explored my own limits. The
last time had been… I frowned, calculating. It had been nearly thirteen years,
now.
Thirteen years of solitude, of longing for the impossible.
I closed my eyes behind my sunglasses, the glare of the past harsher than the
sun. Instead of risking my own safety, I had destroyed Bradley’s, taking my
pleasure with him as I wished. A part of me knew that I had hurt him, that I
had betrayed all trust and given him not love but anguish.
Another part insisted that this was exaggeration, that there had truly been
desire in his eyes.
This was the part of me that I feared, the part I instinctively knew was beyond
mad. In daylight, in the fresh air of anyplace not Rosenkreuz, I could see it
and know it for what it was: delusion. But delusion fed upon the darkness of
Esset, thriving in the soulless void of Rosenkreuz and devouring all that fell
before it. Without these sojourns beyond those walls I had spiraled further
into the madness and lost sight of the ladder back out. Today I felt clear
enough to dread my return.
I could still request transfer, to the Berlin facility or – no, not Prague.
That door had been closed a long time ago. Copenhagen, perhaps?
But that would leave the hunt for Brad Crawford in the hands of strangers.
I fought down the impulse that shouted MY Bradley! and looked at it quite
objectively for a moment. Yes, I still regarded him as mine, but in what
context? My discovery? My protégé? My love?
My destiny?
Infuriating logic pointed out that he had clearly loved another, and my claim
to him was pure vanity. My heart felt leaden as the truth sank in, revisited
after so many years. Bradley did not love me. He never had.
That didn’t change what I felt towards him. I would forgive him anything, if he
would only – but no, that was the voice of madness again.
It suddenly occurred to me that I would have to choose between Bradley and my
own sanity, if either could truly be salvaged at this point. Outside of
Rosenkreuz it all seemed so obvious; was the place genuinely haunted, then, to
keep it a haven for the damned?
Did it matter?
I took a deep breath, really tasting the air of freedom for the first time in
over a decade. For the first time since…since Berlin saw its last days of
duality. My eyes stung; I tugged off my sunglasses and wiped at my face. The
price of cowardice is eternal flight, even after the enemy is long since gone.
In this case, my enemy was now myself, taking up the lash after other hands had
left it behind. I was truly driving myself mad, and I knew no way to stop it.
Before I could draw attention to myself, I replaced my glasses and rose to my
feet. The path led me through the park, where late summer held court in lush
colors and rich fragrances. I urged my senses to relax, pausing to touch a
flower here, a tree branch there. The worries I carried would just have to
wait; I refused to wallow in them any longer today. Today, there was beauty,
and stillness.
I would contemplate those other things later, in the company of my revolver.
A profound calm came over me and I knew that this was right. I should enjoy the
day, the week, even, and decide my future at the end of that time. Many others
had been forced to choose between Rosenkreuz and death – even Bradley had faced
that choice, spared by the fickleness of luck. I would not speculate on my own
outcome, for that would taint the moment.
[“Past is past, the future uncertain. You have no time but now.”]
My lips curled in a sad smile as my fingers snagged on a rose bush, tearing
skin. The words had been a mantra, a shield, pulled from an unwilling mind to
take up lodging in my own. Sheer pathos, that they described my own life and
Bradley’s in such honest terms.
Lifting my wounded fingers to my lips, I suckled the blood and considered the
symbolism of it in the context of that philosophy. The only moment that matters
is the one in which I now live; all else is folly, fantasy and hubris. Very
well. I would take every moment in the next three days and taste the life
flowing through it, and then I would face myself in the mirror.
After that? Either way, it would really make no difference.

A/N – Residue
November 1989. To most of the world, a time of freedom and hope.
A handful of men would recall it as a time that would live in infamy, if only
in their own troubled hearts.
By that time, “Rudi” was quite dead, abandoned as events spiraled out of
control in Konnor’s life. Now, a dozen years later and faced with his own
lingering desperation, Konrad seeks solace in the past – but we all know that
the past only remains static for object readers. The world…has moved on.
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