Konrad Feldpetzer

November 5th, 1943

Somewhere in Picardie, Northern France

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After having spent the past few months near exclusively underground in the ramshackle Partisan base, eating lunch at a sunlit table seemed luxurious.

The scene was rather chaotic. Dolorés and her mother—whose name we learned was Audrey—were seated at the table, along with a man who I assumed was her father, who seemed to have a coughing problem. Another woman, this one maybe in her late teens to early twenties, had also come downstairs. There were only five seats for the eight of us, though, so the mother had gone outside and gotten us cut logs to sit at.

The table itself was also crowded. We devoured our MREs, sharing some extra bits of food with the family while they ate bread, cheese, and some salted meat. Everyone was quiet apart from the occasional cough from the man, seemingly just thankful to be eating something. Even Wolfram had shut up, his mouth too filled with some sort of sausage.

As we ate, I tried to keep my mind off of my earlier little episode. I kept myself busy by observing the house itself, the first time I had actually given it a good look. We were in a relatively large central room, with a small kitchen off to one side. A staircase sat in the back, with a hallway adjacent to it. It seemed all their bedrooms were on the top floor, with the bottom floor serving as a common area.

Bookshelves, photos, and paintings decorated the empty walls where there were no windows to look through. The few gaps remaining displayed a pale cream-colored wallpaper, peeling in some places.

It truly felt like my house with some small tweaks and floorplan changes. I tried to ignore my growing homesickness as I ate. There was one photo a few meters away on the wall, so close I could make out the people in it.

They were obviously the family, posing and grinning. Audrey and the man looked younger, so probably a few years ago. Dolorés too, and her sister Vanessa that we’d met earlier that morning. I the noticed that there was another man, this one looking closer to my age with curly black hair and a lopsided grin.

I hadn’t seen him yet. I idly wondered who that was before my mind flashed back to last night.

Gaston.

My attention was brought back to the table when the older man cleared his throat, beginning to talk, “So I understand that you four need a place to lay low.”

I saw Niko quickly translate for Rueben who seemed to grow weary at the man’s tone. Apart from that, I only nodded.

“And I genuinely wish we could harbor you all,” the man frowned, pausing to loudly cough into his hand, “But we’re already in a tough situation as it is.”

“If it’s alright to ask… what is the situation?” I quietly inquired. I already had a sneaking suspicion as to what, though.

The man sent a weary gaze at Wolfram, “Are you sure these people are trustworthy?”

Wolfram gave a resolute nod, the most somber I’d seen him so far. I couldn’t tell if it was genuinely serious or Wolfram just didn’t know how to speak eloquently enough in French to give a self-satisfactory answer.

The man just sighed, “We’ve been having issues with the Germans in the area over our son, Gaston. He’s about your age and got swept up in the local contingency of the Ceux de la Libéracion resistance group. Gaston got… a bit too arrogant and sabotaged a local munitions depot, so the Germans are after him specifically now.”

“But he wasn’t taken,” Vanessa piped up from her seat, making her presence known.

A glare from both of her parents shut her up. Her father slowly continued, “Yes, they haven’t found him. He’s… he’s hiding out in the nearby woods. We’ve been sneaking him food every few nights. I honestly don’t believe we’ll survive another round if the Germans show up asking to inspect the property and then find you, not even to mention the food situation.”

“Not to intrude,” I carefully started, “But the food isn’t that big an issue. We have our rucksack with plenty of MREs and other things. We’d be happy to share.”

“Yes, I can certainly see that,” the man breathed, the noise harsh and wheezing.

“I also grew up on a farm, so I could help out as well as teach everyone else in my group,” I stacked the cards.

The man was about to respond before he began coughing again, this time loudly so. He hunched over, raising his hand and gripping the table with the other. After going on for a minute, Audrey glanced at Vanessa before speaking, “Vanessa, please take your father up to bed. He needs to rest.”

The younger woman sighed before nodding, getting out of her seat and guiding her father out of the chair and up the stairs. We stayed silent the entire time, just watching. Dolorés was much too absorbed in her food to care much, and the same could be said of Wolfram.

“Look,” Audrey said, “Henri’s worried. Not only does our son run off with some rebel group, but now sheltering partisans… again? And now a group? It’s… a lot, to say the least.”

I kept my mouth shut, hoping there was a but at the end.

“…but…”

Yes. I heard Niko mutter a similar sentiment behind me

“We truly are indebted to Wolfram; he’s the only reason Gaston is alive. I’ll see what we can do. If you can all help out, I think it might work out.”

I clasped my hands together, ignoring the aching from my arm, “Thank you so much. We’ll try to pull everything together as soon as we can and see what we’ll do from there.”

“Wolfram is staying?” Dolorés glanced up from her plate, mouth full of bread.

Audrey let a tired smile spread on her visage, “Yes, Dolorés, Wolfram is staying for now.”

“Yay!” she threw her hands up in celebration, her face breaking into a grin.

Her mother turned back to us, “If you’re all done, we should clean up the table.”

I got up with a groan, using my good arm to push myself up. The rest of my little partisan group got up as well, with Wolfram still biting down on a sausage in his mouth. I moved to pick up a plate but Niko stopped me. I gave him a quizzical glance, the question obvious.

“Your arm,” he gestured to it with his head.

Oh right. I’d gotten so used to the aching and pain that I had forgotten it was injured.

“I ate, so I help,” was my reply. It was the rule we’d followed back home, so it was a rather deep-seated habit.

Niko quirked an eyebrow, “And pass up on sleep?”

Okay, sleep actually did sound pretty good. I was barely keeping on my feet even with those 7 hours last night. I knew I wasn’t going to win this argument either way. Niko just had that “boss energy” about him.

“Alright, fine,” I raised my arms in a surrender motion, hiding a wince at the gesture, “I’ll go sleep.”

X-X-X

Annette Boissieu

Sometime in November, 1943

Makeshift Prison, Paris, France

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Time starts fucking with you when you can’t tell it’s moving. It felt like I’d been in that dingy cell for both seconds and centuries. I’d had to start measuring the passage of time by how many beatings I’d gotten from the guards.

Even then, I was lucky. I got beaten to a pulp but they made sure to not fuck up my face ‘cause I was “too pretty to spoil,” and I was too angry to roll over and do nothing. So beatings it was. It had become so common that I could’ve started using it as a benchmark to measure how much time had passed, right after the one meal a day.

Or at least I think it was during the day.

Even then, I got off better than some. A few of the male inmates were punched and stabbed within an inch of their life, and the other female partisans… I didn’t even want to think about it.

All I could do was just sit in the cell, watching Erhardt—no, Johan—look guilty and drown in self-loathing and try not to freeze. I had to avert my gaze after every few minutes; the sight of him made me too angry for my own good.

Regardless, I sucked it up and kept moving. It worked for all the other ops I’d been on; this was no different. Keep a poker face and an eye out for opportunities that’d let you leave outside of a body bag.

So I’d memorized the guards’ routines after… I don’t know. A week? A month? Hell, it could’ve been a year. I kept an eye on what prisoners were taken for what reasons, inventory of their gear and apparel, while trying to shelve the envy that they got decent-looking coats while I was stuck in my smallclothes and little else to fend off the elements.

Shouting jarred me out of my daze. Or had it been sleep? I honestly didn’t know. It sounded like someone was yelling from a few cells down to my… left? It was a woman, and she had a Parisian accent, so an inmate. Erhardt—fuck, Johann—seemed to have also been jarred from some sort of sleep.

“Help! Clovis is dying!”

I blinked at that, taken by surprise. Johann shot a worried glance my way, but I didn’t bother acknowledging it.

It was barely a few seconds before several German soldiers rushed into the room, judging by the amount of footsteps, one shouting, “Was zum Teufel soll das ganze Geschrei?”

“Here! He’s bleeding!”

The group passed by my cell. It was a trio, and they seemed to be lightly armed. Only one had an MP40, the other two just had pistols that were most likely taken from the civilian population. And just as fast as they had appeared, they disappeared out of the cell’s view.

“He needs help! Get the doctor!” the woman cried, her voice shuddering. It was followed by the screeching of a cell door being opened.

“Was zum Teufel ist mit ihm passiert?” one of the soldiers asked, his voice gruff.

I heard another one grunting, lifting something, “Ist mir egal, bring ihn einfach so schnell wie möglich zu Fürst. Ich möchte nicht verantwortlich sein, wenn der Chef es herausfindet.”

Johann glanced at me again, seemingly catching something.

“Egon, schließ die verdammte Tür ab und pass auf, dass sie nichts tut.”

“Positiv.”

With that, I heard some strains and relatively rapid footsteps. This time, only two of the three soldiers rushed past the cell. The man was being carried between the two like some sort of table. He was dressed just as pitifully as I was for the temperature, a torn undershirt covering his torso and briefs over his legs. The undershirt had a growing red stain on its left side, though, and blood dripped from his back. It left a grisly trail as the two soldiers did their best to take him wherever.

They hurried out of view. and it was followed by… surprising noises to say the least. The noise of a punch and someone groaning seemed to echo through the hall. The same person cursed in German; it was the soldier.

I heard another punch, and this time it was the woman who cried out in pain. And then the sound of metal slamming into something hard sounded out, followed by uneven bootsteps. When the final soldier passed by, he had the woman in a vice grip in front of him. He was almost a foot taller than the woman and had no trouble all but pushing her to move.

Her condition wasn’t much better than the man, torn clothes that barely offered any protection against the cold paired with the deathly thinness that everybody in this hellhole seemed to possess. The right side of her face was covered in red, blood dripping down from a gash on her forehead.

“You Nazi dogs! You mongrels! You’ll all be sent to the deepest pits of hell!” the woman snarled as she fought back against the soldier’s grip, the fury evident on her face even through the gore.

“Es ist mir egal, was du sagst, du verrückte Hure. Du wirst den Boss für diesen Scheiß besuchen,” the soldier responded, his tone almost bored even with its pained undercurrent.

With that, they passed the cell bar and presumably left the makeshift prisoner. I honestly identified way too much with that woman.

The hall fell back into a tense silence, only interrupted by distant coughing and the occasional pained groan.

As if making after sure the soldiers wouldn’t return, I started hearing the faintest of whispers. I doubted they were intentionally quiet. The room we were in seemed to absorb sound well, with only the distinct noises of things such as jackboots able to really bounce around.

“Judging by that conversation, I don’t think they’re actually allowed to kill anyone. At least randomly,” Johann mumbled, his voice somewhat slurred by exhaustion.

My eyes were glued to the trail of blood that laid just beyond the cell bars. I could only bring myself to whisper, “…what’d the fuckers say?”

“They were somewhat panicked,” he paused, as if trying to figure out how to phrase it, voice still deathly quiet, “One of the soldiers didn’t want his superior finding out that they were responsible for a death. They also mentioned someone called Fürst. I think he’s the doctor.”

“Same one who patched me up?” I asked, finally tearing my gaze away from the crimson liquid and to the floor.

“Probably.”

“And the last one?” I grunted.

“That the woman was going to his boss.”

I grimaced at the thought, “I really hope she survives. She looked pretty weak already.”

The groaning of the hall door immediately shut everyone up, and even I tensed up. After that we immediately heard the creaky wheels of the food cart. I calmed, sighing a bit in relief.

“Food time, you crazy people,” a bored voice sounded out down the hall, the French marked by a thick German accent. I watched the man pass by my cell, carelessly throwing two cans of expired food through the bars.

I grabbed the can, lifting it up to try to read it better in the dim light. Dogfood again. I had nearly barfed when I had first been thrown in, refusing to eat it, but skimping on food just wasn’t an option when I’d surely last nearly 20 pounds by now. I was already skinny beforehand; any less weight and I’d be a skeleton. Despite that, my mind wasn’t thinking about the vomit-worthy can as I leveraged it open. Far from it.

As I forced down the dogfood, I was coming up with a plan to escape.