The pale spring sun shone upon the majestic roofs of Prague, casting long and golden shadows across the ancient cobblestones. It was the first truly warm day of the year 1940. It was the first day of spring. It was March 20th, 1940. Prague was in a state of extraordinary excitement, the air thick with the anticipation of the important state visit happening today.
The open topped Mercedes moved slowly through the streets, flanked by rows of soldiers in pristine uniforms. The crowds lined the boulevards, their cheers echoing off the stone walls of the city.
"You have to wave," Paul said toward Elisabeth, who sat beside him.
She looked at him, her hand trembling slightly as she adjusted the collar of her coat.
Slowly she began waving, a slight smile appearing on her face as she listened to the rhythm of the cheering crowd.
Deep under the street, in the winding canals of the city, the atmosphere was entirely different.
"Quick!" Heydrich shouted. He held out a flashlight, the beam cutting through the damp and gloomy sewer air. He looked with visible disgust at his feet. His black leather boots, usually polished to a mirror shine, were sullied in sewage and filth.
"I will kill them for this," he whispered. His voice was a low hiss that echoed off the slime-covered walls. He looked behind him at the row of Gestapo men struggling through the muck. Among them was the young Section Chief Keller, whom Heydrich had towed along on his extensive hunt for the partisan group.
Every time Heydrich had found them, every time he had them within his grasp, they managed to flee at the last moment. They had suffered casualties, and their numbers had shrunk with every skirmish, but their morale remained unbroken. Most importantly, their leader continued to live.
"Leon Vasily," Heydrich murmured. He whispered the name he had finally discovered through sheer luck and the brutal interrogation of those left behind.
"Sir!" A voice suddenly came from far behind him.
Heydrich quickly turned once again, looking for the man who had called him. He pushed past the row of men until he reached the end of the line. There stood a young looking Gestapo man, looking at him with wide eyes and a pale face.
"What is it?" Heydrich asked impatiently.
"This door." The man pointed toward an old, rusty metal door set into the stone. "I think I saw light coming from it."
"Light?" Heydrich repeated. He turned toward Keller, who had hurried back to join them.
"Shouldn't these doors have been sealed?" Keller asked, raising an eyebrow toward Heydrich.
Heydrich nodded slightly, his hand already moving to the holster at his hip. "Their traces end somewhere here. It is possible that they haven't ventured far. Prepare!"
He raised his voice, a sharp command that cut through the humid air of the tunnel. His men collected before the metal door, crowding into the tight space. The dirty water splashed upward with their movements, soaking their uniforms as they readied their weapons for the breach.
Heydrich stepped back, nodding to two overly large men . With a synchronized grunt, they smashed their feet into the rusty metal. The door groaned, its hinges screaming as they were torn from the wet stone. It swung open with a hollow bang, revealing not a small room, but a vast, echoing cavern.
They had found an old, abandoned sewage treatment plant.
Huge circular vats filled with black, motionless liquid lined the floor, while a network of rusted iron catwalks crisscrossed the space high above. Steam hissed from old pipes, creating a thick, white veil that obscured the far corners of the hall.
"Go!" Heydrich barked.
The Gestapo men surged forward, their boots clattering on the metal grates. But they had barely crossed the threshold when the darkness above ignited.
"For Poland!" a voice screamed from the shadows of a high catwalk.
Bullets rained down from above, hitting the first Gestapo man and riddling him with bullets. He could not even scream before he went down.
"SPREAD OUT!" Heydrich shouted. He raised his pistol and returned fire while sliding toward a large pipe in search of cover. Heydrich squinted his eyes, trying to adapt to the even darker room. Then suddenly he saw a silhouette. With a deadly shot he hit the Pole right in the head. The corpse fell down over the metal railing and crashed onto the group below, blood and bone splinters splattering everywhere.
The heavy firefight continued with the Polish entrenched on the higher floor, using the pipes just like Heydrich for cover. They even threw bottles of Molotov cocktails. One hit an unfortunate Gestapo man, who suffered only mild burns as he quickly shed his burning coat.
"Shit," Heydrich cursed. He carefully raised his head over the pipe, before suddenly lunging downwards as he saw something flash before his eyes. The sound of glass shattering could be heard, with a fire erupting on the forefront of the pipe.
Heydrich groaned in frustration, his anger threatening to boil over. That was when he suddenly saw something in the corner of the room. A handful of heavy metal plates were leaning in a row against the concrete wall.
A brilliant idea came to his mind as men screamed from both sides, getting hit with bullets.
A few moments later, Heydrich's head appeared again from behind the pipe.
One of the Poles witnessed his chance and pressed the trigger, but in the next moment, a large iron plate blocked the bullet. The trajectory changed into the opposite direction, the projectile flinging only centimeters from the shooter into the wall.
"Hahaha!" Heydrich suddenly laughed.
He held his metal shield before him, his leather holster pulled around it to form a space for his hand to hold it firmly. Together with him, three other Gestapo men had created such shields. Eager for revenge, they stormed forward. The bullets of the resistance bounced off the iron plates with sharp, metallic pings as the distance between the hunters and the hunted vanished.
With the other hand they retaliated, erupting in a barrage of bullets while climbing the stairs upward. Although they too were targeted, their iron shields blocked everything. Even when one of the Poles threw a Molotov cocktail, Heydrich foresaw it and punched the bottle to the side with the heavy metal. The glass shattered on the floor below, the flames licking harmlessly at the stone.
More and more Poles fell, their bodies littering the ground before another simple metal door.
Heydrich threw away his metal shield. The plate struck the catwalk with a clanging sound that echoed through the complex. Without hesitation, Heydrich kicked in the door before him with his pistol raised.
Suddenly he tore open his eyes, pressing his trigger. While blood flowed from his temple, stemming from a bullet shot by the man sitting behind an old wooden table, Heydrich's own shot flew toward that very man. It hit the man's right hand, making him let go of his pistol.
Slowly Heydrich stepped forward, his Luger still raised and steady.
"Had I not dodged, you would have hit my head," he murmured. He touched the blood coming from his temple with his free hand.
"Stop talking, German dog," Leon said, spitting toward Heydrich.
Heydrich finally looked around the small room. On the walls hung dozens of documents, maps, and papers. Slowly his heart's pace quickened as he processed the information pinned there.
"Are you finally realizing it?" Leon laughed, leaning back into his chair despite the blood dripping from his hand. "It is too late. The bomb is already planted."
Heydrich shook his head, his mind racing through the parade schedule.
"Contact the Führer! Tell the column to stop immediately!" Heydrich shouted toward one of his men, who turned and ran quickly toward the outside.
"The route was changed last minute. I knew you had fled somewhere into this country, but to think you would actually try..." Heydrich muttered. He grabbed Leon by the collar and threw a brutal punch that sent the man's head snapping back.
Suddenly Leon's laugh erupted once again, this time even more diabolical than before. He looked at Heydrich with eyes that saw a dead man walking.
"AS I SAID HEYDRICH, IT IS ALREADY TOO LATE!"
The Column, Above Ground.
Paul looked toward the sky. A black dot appeared there suddenly, circling high above the procession like a vulture waiting for carrion.
"Look, Heinrich, an eagle," Elisabeth said. She pointed into the sky, her voice light and filled with innocent wonder. She did not notice that Paul was already looking at it. She did not see that the predator was looking back.
Suddenly Paul's eyes began to shimmer with a golden tinge. The sounds of the cheering crowd faded into a dull, underwater roar as he sunk deep into a vision again.
He saw his car. He was sitting there in the back. He was alone. He was smiling and waving to the crowd, a perfect image of the leader he had become. That was when his vision shifted. He saw the car column from the side. Suddenly something on the ground before the car moved. It was a sewer cover being lifted right before the Mercedes. A hand reached out from the darkness below and carefully laid out a large packet of some sort.
His car went forward, unbeknownst to the danger. When the heavy tires hit the packet, a massive explosion engulfed the metal and the Paul sitting inside, tearing the world apart in a blinding flash of white.
A cold shiver ran down Paul's spine as he snapped awake. The vision ended, but the terror remained. Every muscle, every nerve, every instinct screamed at him with a single command.
Survive.
"STOP THE CAR!" He shouted.
His voice tore through the air, louder than the crowd, louder than the engine. He was already opening the door while the driver slammed on the brakes. The tires screeched against the cobblestones.
Yet Paul knew that they had nearly reached the cover. With no time remaining to think, he jumped out. He hit the hard ground, rolling across the stones.
He came to a stop and scrambled to his knees. Suddenly his eyes widened with absolute horror. It was not because of the bomb. It was not because of the shocked onlookers.
It was because Elisabeth remained in the car.
She looked at him. Her gaze was not fearful. It was confused. It was questioning. She looked at him as if asking why he had left her there alone.
The car nearly stopped. Nearly. Its momentum carried it forward just a few more meters.
Elisabeth reached for the handle. She too opened the door. But before she could move, the rear tire rolled over the dark metal of the sewer lid.
The silence of the moment was shattered by an roar that seemed to split the earth itself.
Paul was still running, his hand outstretched as if he could reach through time and pull her from the seat. Then everything went white.
BAAM!
A massive explosion engulfed the Mercedes, the force of it vaporizing the glass and turning the luxury vehicle into a hollowed-out shell in a fraction of a second.
The car flipped through the air like a toy, the fire blistering across the metal and erupting in every direction until it formed a massive fireball in the mid air.
Paul felt the heat on his skin, but before the shockwave could tear him apart, something slammed into his side. Gustaf had reached him. The giant of a man threw his entire body over Paul, shielding him from the primary blast. The secondary concussive wave picked them both up and threw them backward across the cobblestones like ragdolls.
His head was spinning, the world a blurred mess of grey and orange. Still, he pushed Gustaf away with a desperate strength, scrambling until he was kneeling before the burning wreck of the Mercedes.
A single drop slid down from his pupil, tracing a path along his nose, his lips, and his chin. It fell toward the ground, wetting the dry stone for a fleeting moment before the remaining heat of the blast vaporized the little water Paul's eyes had mustered.
WHY DID YOU NOT SHOW ME? WHY? WHY ONLY ME?
Paul's mind screamed the question into the void. His head tilted upward toward the eagle that was still making its circles in the pale spring sky. It flew as if nothing had happened, as if the world below had not just been shattered into a thousand twisted pieces.
The bird offered no answer.
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That is it. This marks the end of Volume 2: Standing In Darkness.
Thank you everyone for your continuous support. I love this story and I fully intend to continue it until the very end. To help me improve both myself and my writing, I ask you to share your feedback in the form of a review or a comment. You are also welcome to share your wishes or ideas for the future of the plot. I will try to use what I can and what fits the path ahead.