After asking my question, there was nothing but silence. May was looking curiously at everyone. Smith looked sullen. Everyone else seemed tired, but it was hard to tell in the low light.

“I wouldn’t lean on the wall,” Kyle said. As soon as he said that, the platform began to rise. When it did, I realized that the walls were staying put. From outside, there was a muffled thump from what I assumed was a rocket hitting the steel door. The walls didn’t even shake. “No worries,” Kyle said. “That door is a titanium-uranium alloy. They’ll need a lot more of those before they even make a dent.”

“I’m actually more worried about the big picture,” I said. “For instance, why are there non-Jumpers capable of teleportation? And why are they dressed up like Nazis?”

“Taylor,” Kyle asked, “would you care to explain to Nathan what the Grenzefrontier is?” Smith just shook his head. Kyle shrugged. “Shame. You know it better than anyone here.” He then began to talk to me again. “Anyway, you know how Hitler was obsessed with giving humans Parahuman powers, tech, and expansionism? And how he was allied with the home of the Jumper?”

“He didn’t…” I said, completely incredulous.

“He didn’t,” Kyle said.

“Thank God,” I said. “Apart from how bad it would be if he survived, the whole idea of…”

“But at least a hundred thousand of his followers did,” Kyle said. “Around the end of World War Two, Hitler managed to get a teleporter device working and sent some people his raceologists determined to be a hundred percent Aryan to a planet called New Nuremberg.”

“I’m sorry…” I said, “But how did they find a Goldilocks planet and make a teleporter? It wasn’t until fairly recently that we even discovered a Goldilocks planet, and, even with modern technology, we can’t even mimic Jumpers, let alone surpass them.”

“Publicly, yes,” Kyle said. “Privately… I’ve heard that’s the first thing the IDRF did and that several other countries have developed them.”

“See,” May said, “you were right. They are Nazis from another planet.”

“Shut up, I was being sarcastic!” I said. “Still, I’ve got one question. What did Smith mean when he said, ‘we have no idea what’s coming?’”

“You know,” Richard said, walking over to Smith, “I’m also interested in what Taylor meant.” He then grabbed Smith’s tie. “You’ve been dropping hints about something called the Dragon’s Teeth ever since we met. I’d be interested to know just what they are.”

For some reason, I was looking at Smith’s hands. That’s when I saw that he was holding something and there was liquid leaking off his wrists. I wondered what it was. Then Smith said, “Shame you’ll never find out, traitor.”

That’s when it clicked. I unholstered my Sig, but Smith’s arms were already moving. It was too late to shout a warning, so I fired. I was still too late. Smith had shoved something directly into Richard’s neck, a little bit below his jaw.

Everyone, including Richard, stopped and stared. A great deal of blood was flowing from the wound. Somewhat in shock, Richard let go of Smith. Smith, despite the fact that his brains were decorating the opposite wall, didn’t let go of the glass shard. When it fell out of Richard’s neck, the blood began to spray. Jared screamed as he got sprayed, but May was running before Smith hit the floor. This all happened in two seconds.

“Shit,” May said, looking over Richard’s body. “His carotid artery is completely severed. Smith knew exactly what he was doing.”

“What about Smith?” I asked, nervous as to how close May was to him.

“Considering the fact that roughly…” May paused, looking at the stain on the wall, “…twenty percent of his gray matter is now a wall decoration, I’d say he’s dead and his brain is gone. Two Star Trek references in one.”

“Damn it!” Kyle said, kicking the wall. Then he grunted in pain. “The entire point of this fucking operation was to bring Taylor and Graff in alive! Not kill them!”

“So, what next?” I asked.

“We get to Project Skywalker,” Kyle said, “and we just take it easy until this all blows over.”

“And Project Skywalker is?” I asked.

“The way it was put to me,” Kyle said, “was that whatever device they’re using to teleport from their planet and back is the Death Star, and whatever these guys are working is basically the torpedo. If this doesn’t work, apparently there’s an aircraft carrier really close by.”

“And what happens then?” I asked. “The only thing they can do is bomb us to pieces.”

“Which is why the President is currently in Switzerland on important business,” Kyle said. “Not that these assholes know that.”

“But they know about this… thing we’re building?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “Oh, just so you know, you shouldn’t ask how it works. They’ll just get more suspicious.”

I was about to ask why. Then I realized that I had just shot someone who had information they really needed. “Yeah,” I said. “Not a problem.”

Finally, we got to the top floor. This was a six-story building surrounded by a bunch of three-story buildings, so it should have moved much faster, in my opinion. When we got out of the elevator, Gupta and Mendes were waiting for us. They both were in tactical armor, so it was kind of hard to tell it was them underneath the Kevlar, gas masks, and sunglasses. Gupta carried a SPAS-12, and Mendes had a P-90. Both had pistols strapped to their hips, probably the Campus Police standard issue Five-seveN.

“Jesus Christ,” Mendes said, looking at all the blood, “what the fuck happened to you guys?”

“May and I got caught outside,” I said. “When Kyle saved us, Smith got suspicious. He then proceeded to fuck everything up for us. Hence why two of Kyle’s crew is dead and Smith’s brains are outside his head.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Gupta said. “All of you, into Secure Experimentation.”

I grabbed the bag and the assault rifle and followed everyone else. We were heading down the hallway. I stopped, however, to look out the window. “Hey!” Gupta said, “Move it or lose it!”

May, however, was curious. “What do you see?”

Down in front of the building was a large group of people in green uniforms. In the center, there were two lines of soldiers carrying something on their shoulders. These lines were somewhat offset. They were all looking directly at the window. Right next to them, an officer had his hand raised. Before I could shout a warning, he brought it down in a chopping motion.

The first rocket hit the window. The explosion knocked me back on my butt, and I could see the window bow in slightly. Another rocket hit the window. “Go prone!” Kyle yelled.

“This way!” Mendes yelled, as he took off running.

“Or not,” Kyle said as everyone began running. As we ducked into a room, I turned to see that the window was only slightly cracked. At least six anti-tank rockets had hit it.

“What the fuck is that window made of?” I asked. We were in a small antechamber. The door Mendes had opened was mostly standard, if a little more solidly built then I was used to. In front of us was a legitimate vault door that was slowly opening. “That glass took six hits, and it only cracked a bit.”

“I wanna know what’s in those rockets,” Mendes responded. “I was there when they were testing it. They fired a couple Javelins into it, and it just kind of flexed.”

“Well,” Kyle said, “either way, it’s going to break. Any plans to deal with that?”

“We just roll down the shutters,” Mendes said. “If the Braxton Glass doesn’t stop them, titanium-uranium alloy should.”

“Uhhh…” May said, pointing down, “what’s that green dot? And what’s that counter for?” We looked down at the ground. Just as May had said, there was a green dot moving around in a circle. Connected to it by a line was a box with a countdown that displayed what seemed to be hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds. Currently, we had about twenty-four hours.

“That…” Mendes said, “…means someone is drilling their way in here. Probably something laser-based, judging by how it’s going in circles. The computer thinks we’ve got twenty-four hours.”

There was a jump. Suddenly, it said twenty. Then it jumped up to twenty-five. “Needless to say,” Mendes said, “I don’t trust the computer.”

From inside, we heard a voice call, “Mendes, Gupta, get the students in here.” We were hurried into a large vault that appeared much smaller due to the huge machine inside. Two other students were working on computers connected to it, and a third was running around, fixing various mechanical problems. In the far right corner, two more Campus Security officers in combat gear were surrounding what appeared to be a captain. The captain spoke again. “I take it you noticed one of our problems?”

“Yes,” Mendes said. “Do you need us to do anything about it?”

“They’re on Level Five. Hook up with the rest of Beta and take it out.” As Mendes and Gupta went off, he said, “You five, can you fight?”

“They can,” May said, “but I’m more of a medic.”

“Good,” the captain said. “There’s going to be trouble. How much depends on how fast these people can get their shit together.”

“Hey,” one of the engineering students said, “This stuff we’re doing? Literally nothing like it has ever been done before in the history of mankind. What you’re doing is the equivalent of asking someone in 1950 to devise a way to go to the moon in six months. It can be done, it’s just a little difficult.”

I couldn’t ask them anything, so I turned to Kyle. “Hey, Kyle, can I have my nine back?” I asked as I set down the bag of ammo.

“Sure,” he said. He reached into his waistband to hand me back my Berretta. I took my pistol back, and began to search for nine millimeter ammo. I figured it had to be in there somewhere because most pistols, including Kyle’s, took it. I quickly found a box and began to refill my two magazines.

“You know,” Kyle said, “that looks like a good idea.” He sat down by me. I noticed that he had brought Richard’s shotgun and pistol as well as his own weapons. Jared joined us as well. After I had refilled my Berretta (there wasn’t any ammo for my Sig) I checked to see why I had run out of ammo for the M-4 clone. It turns out I hadn’t. The quadrastacked mag had shit itself.

A couple minutes into my attempt to fix it, Kyle said, “They do that. Don’t bother.” It was then that I had noticed that no one had spoken for quite a bit.

“You ok?” I asked. “Never mind, stupid question. A bunch of your friends just got shot.”

There was a moment of silence, then Kyle said, “Dragging Richard and Camilla into this was one thing, but Brad…”

“Cap,” Jared said, “It’s ok. He was prepared…”

“It isn’t just Brad!” Kyle said. “Jared, we came in here with five other guys from the team. It was my job to keep them safe, and only you and Brad made it through fucking Hell Semester. I should never have brought you guys along.”

“Well,” Jared said, “you couldn’t stop us, man. Fuck, man, what were we supposed to do? Let the guy who led the team to finals three times in a row go on to face Nazis by himself?” He patted Kyle on the shoulder. “We knew the risks, and decided to take them. Also, if we hadn’t gone with you, things probably would be much worse.”

“Hey,” the captain said, “you four, come over here.” Kyle, Jared, Camilla and I all walked over to where the Captain was standing. He was looking down at a monitor of CCTVs. Most of them were static. “We’ve got another problem,” he said. “We’ve taken out the laser, but a group of the enemy have used the distraction to get up to this floor. They’re cutting us off from our people on the fifth floor. Can you remove them?”

Camilla pulled back the bolt on her AK to check that there was ammo. “How many are there?”

“Not sure,” the captain said. “But I’ve managed to seal off the other ways they can get in here.”

“So, all of them?” Camilla asked. “Not a problem, then.”

“I’m game,” I said, slapping a thirty-round mag into the M-4. “Kyle, Jared? You two in?”

“Sure,” Jared said, “It’s time for some payback.”

“Dude,” Kyle said, “be careful, ok?”

Jared and Kyle looked at each other for a moment. Kyle seemed to be begging Jared not to do something stupid. Jared smiled. “Sure man. I will.”

“Ok,” the captain said, “I’ll open the vault door. Head down the hall and take a left. That’s where the last entrance to this level is. The shutters are all down now, so you shouldn’t have anyone shoot at you from outside. There’s another stairwell on the opposite side of the building, but those stairs have been sealed off.”

We waited as the vault slowly opened, the sound of gunfire and explosions slowly seeping in from outside. When it was finally done, we filed out, checking our corners. When we were almost to the corner, I whispered, “How about we throw in a flashbang?” I held it up to show it was a viable option.

Kyle nodded. “Ok,” he muttered, “then we rush the bastards. Jared, cover our rear.”

I pulled the pin on the flashbang and rolled it down the hall and around the corner. When we heard the thump of it going off, Camilla, Kyle and I ran around the corner. We saw a group of four Nazis staggering back and blinking. Behind them, the door to the stairwell was open. The sound of gunfire echoed from it.

We opened fire. I got one, Kyle got another, and Camilla got the other two. As I was tossing a second flashbang into the stairwell, a fifth came out of the stairwell. Camilla got him too, her AK rounds passing through him and into the door. The flashbang went off as he fell, backlighting him for a split second.

We quickly ran through the bodies. Inside, there were three able-bodied, but deafened and blinded Nazis on the landing, and one who was unconscious and bandaged. I was first. I fired three two to five round bursts, causing the uninjured ones to fall down. Behind me, I heard Kyle fire a shotgun blast into the left corner, and Camilla fire a burst down the stairs. Then her AK clicked. Then she swore in Spanish. I looked to my right.

Down the stairs, on the halfway landing between the two floors, was a group of six Nazis, plus a few Nazi corpses. Most were still dazed, but one was aiming his STG straight at me. Before he could pull the trigger, there was a series of pops. From the fifth floor landing, I could see the distinctive muzzle flash of a Five-seveN pistol. Shortly later, I could see three Campus Security officers rushing the remaining Nazis. The one on point carried a riot shield and a Five-seveN, the second one had a P-90, and the rear one had a SCAR-H with an underbarrel XM-LSS. The remaining Nazis in the stairwell quickly fell down, blood and bullet holes marring the wall behind them.

However, I was distracted by the sound of one of the semi-auto Mausers coming from behind. I quickly headed out the door and saw Jared lying in a pool of his own blood. From farther down, I could see a Nazi lying down on the floor, also bleeding out.

I ran over to Jared. I was relieved to see that his eyes were open and he was still breathing, although it was very shallow. “Shit,” I said. “Ok, Jared, I’m going to get you out of here, man. Just hang…”

There was the sound of submachinegun fire. Then, somehow, I was on the floor and my stomach felt numb. I touched my stomach. There was a shooting pain, and when I looked at my fingers. They were covered in blood. I dropped them. From behind me, I heard someone burst out of the stairwell and fire an AK. The person at the other end responded in kind. I heard Camilla grunt and a crash.

As I heard more footsteps and gunfire, my vision began to blur. My last thought before going black was Damn it! It’s been months since I’ve blacked out. I was really hoping to break that trend… Then darkness took me.