Chapter 18
Not that many people arrived on the planes. Just a dozen. As I understood it—Cap's personal team. The other four aircraft dropped weapons and ammunition. That's the kind of help you get from the allies. Like: "We helped with what we could. From here on out, figure it out yourselves."
On the other hand, it's surprising that these planes even made it to Poland. There's no direct corridor. Consequently, there is absolutely no possibility of evacuating people either.
So that's how it is. Personally, I don't understand what Nicole is counting on. Somehow it turned out that Cap's charisma wasn't enough to seize leadership from Fury. She remained the commander of the operation. Everyone listens to her, follows orders; I also listen and follow, but what she hopes for, I still don't understand: all the nearby military units of the Reich have already been drawn in, creating a ring of blockade. And any day now, much more serious forces should pull up.
We took the camp itself. It wasn't difficult: there were only six thousand SS guards there from the "Death's Head" formation. And almost one hundred and fifty thousand prisoners. It only took stirring up this flock of sheep properly, and the SS were gone. Torn to pieces with bare hands, poisoned with their own gas, and shoved into their own ovens... many alive.
But what next... There is no food supply. Ammunition—what was taken in battle. Weapons—too. There is water—at least that's pleasing. And it's an occupied country on all sides. It's a hell of a long walk to the front line, as well as to the sea. And troops are pulling up.
We don't let the Krauts deploy normal artillery, constantly disabling it with sabotage. We burn headquarters. We capture food and bring it to the camp. But we can't be everywhere at once.
I don't care. Whether I was playing partisan in the German rear on the Eastern Front, or doing the same thing here. But what about the people? They are not "super" or "extra" at all. They are dying by the hundreds and thousands. To avoid breeding epidemics and infection, the very same Sonderkommandos carry them to the same ovens as under the Krauts.
And there is another misfortune—aviation. The enemy has complete air superiority. So they bomb us, for no good reason. They bombed us... Until Max lost it. His power level jumped. Now he is our air defense. Extremely effective. At first, he just broke planes in the air. Now he lands them: machine guns and ammo are never superfluous.
But I still don't understand what Nicole is hoping for? On the other hand, even the way it is now is better than the way it was. Now at least there isn't this apathy and dumb submission. They die, but they die in battle.
But tomorrow or the day after, truly combat-ready units will approach. Perhaps Hydra will also show up with its blasters and robots. And they will roll over us like a steamroller over asphalt.
I somehow suggested at a commanders' meeting to go for a breakthrough to the sea. Or to Berlin. It's clear that only a few will survive such a dash, and it will be a kamikaze march. It's clear to me, and everyone understood it. But they didn't support it. They cling to some hope. Prolonging the agony...
On the other hand... Troops and resources are being pulled away from the front—meaning it's a bit easier for the Union. Meaning they will advance faster. Maybe they'll even make it to us in time... Although, who am I kidding? '43, summer. We won't hold out for a year in any case.
* * *
"Check," Logan says to me and places his queen on the board. I chuckle—an unpleasant position, but there are options. With Logan, there are options. With Nicole, there are not. Apparently, it's just a mindset. I don't have a chess one. I don't like to scheme. I block with a bishop. Logan thoughtfully releases a stream of smoke and moves the queen out of harm's way.
"Mate," I place a pawn on black, and Logan leans back in his chair, acknowledging defeat.
Sometimes a pawn delivers a checkmate. And sometimes it ruins the whole thing. But sometimes it becomes a queen.
* * *
The second week of the "uprising" was coming to an end. The people were tired. Doom was beginning to hover in the air again.
Nicole had long ago acquired her famous eye patch, so as not to unnecessarily unnerve interlocutors who constantly glance at it and get distracted from the topic of conversation.
Returning from another carried out sabotage, I found her alone in the staff room. In the building that we ourselves had assigned for the command headquarters.
Carter, Logan, and Cap with his team were still out on business. But I had returned. And what I saw, I didn't like at all: the patch lies on the table with a spread-out map, a pencil and a pistol lie there too, and the unbending Nick Fury sits with her face hidden in her hands.
"VictOr?" she removed her hands from her face and turned to me, reacting to the sound.
"You don't have a plan, do you, Nick?" I asked bluntly, without greetings, gloomily, looking her straight in the eyes. Probably in the whole camp, I am the only one who could calmly look into them in the absence of the patch.
She remained silent and looked away.
I didn't need anything more. And the fact that she caught herself and started talking after that, I was no longer listening to. Empty words. They mean nothing.
I turned around and walked out. Nicole shouted something after me. But again, I wasn't listening. It didn't matter anymore.
I was going to Max. More precisely, first to the former laboratory complex, and then to Max.
I found him sitting near an anti-aircraft gun and looking mournfully at the sky. I walked up to him, my legs filling with lead, my eyes trying to drop to the ground, my step becoming heavy, and my balding eyebrows meeting gloomily on the bridge of my nose.
"Max," I addressed him.
"Victor?" he turned to me questioningly.
"Do you understand that everyone here is doomed?" I started straight, without any tricks.
"But Fury has a plan..." he began and trailed off, looking into my eyes. He wasn't a fool. And he understood everything perfectly from a single glance.
I took out the syringe with the blue liquid and gave it to him.
"But how will this help?" he asked in bewilderment. I didn't have to explain what it was.
"You don't know the scale of your powers," I began reluctantly. What I was doing right now was possibly the main mistake of my life, for which the whole planet would pay later. Possibly. But here and now there are a hundred thousand people. We have already lost fifty thousand in these two weeks. The consequences are in the future, and the people are here.
I do not love Jews. The upbringing of "that" life still shows. But they are people. And you can't do THIS to people. And I am not a politician to calmly sacrifice thousands of people, considering them statistics.
Perhaps in the future I will be cursed for this. But...
"In time, you will be able to extract the core from the planet with your power and throw it into the Sun. But we don't have that time," I told him.
"'But'?" he caught the unsaid part.
"It's a risk," I didn't paint a picture of exactly what he was risking. He already knows everything. He can't not know. Schmidt conducted his experiments without hiding from other test subjects.
The hand holding the syringe trembled, and he hastily handed it to me so as not to drop it.
"Think about it," I said and, turning around, walked away. He knows where to find me.
* * *
In that very laboratory. On that very table lay not me anymore, but a fifteen-year-old teenager. The restraints were not his size and were not placed where they were needed, but he fixed that himself. Just moved them with his power.
And he secured himself too. But I injected the serum. Just as Schmidt had shown, straight into the heart.
Immediately after the injection, I took a running jump out the window, because all the metal in the room began to vibrate and clank suspiciously. And there was a lot of metal there.
Over the next hour, practically nothing was left of the building. Only a ball of freed rebar pins, tables, floor beams, sewer, and water pipes, like a cocoon around a caterpillar, curled up around that laboratory.
And with a sinking heart, I waited to see what kind of butterfly would emerge from this chrysalis.
And next to me stood a quiet and subdued Nicole. Rather, when she was looking for me, she wasn't quiet at all. A fury was looking for me, a commander, a senior lieutenant, whose order some corporal dared to disobey.
But when she found me, all her fervor somehow immediately ended. She understood what I had done (it would be hard not to understand when rebar and pipes are crawling out of the walls like snakes right before your eyes). And, I think, she understood why.
"We still have a transmitter left, don't we?" I asked her quietly. I didn't want to speak loudly. She nodded. "We will fly to the Union."
She threw a glance at me, as if asking if I was sure. I said nothing more. Didn't move an eyebrow. I just kept looking towards the "chrysalis."
A minute passed. And she, nodding to some thoughts of her own, went to command, establish communications, conduct negotiations... To be in her place.
And I was convinced once again that I am not a team player. Even less a leader. People do not follow me.
* * *