General Krüger cleared his throat loudly. “Please everyone, calm down.” Once there was silence, he asked Greg, “Does that conclude your report?”

Greg replied, “Yes, that was everything we—”

Marvin interrupted him, speaking barely above a whisper. “The beans.”

“What about the Beans? I am positive that we attended to everything, correct?”

Marvin repeated himself. “The beans. In the jar. The sample we brought back.”

General Krüger’s eyes narrowed. “A sample? What kind of sample? There was no reference of a sample in your report.”

Marvin paused, his eyes hidden by his hair. “Was I the only one that remembered that we took a sample? Before we found out that the Beans had people inside of them.”

Greg’s eyes went wide before he smiled. “Ah yes! The sample Schmidt took! Thank you for mentioning that, Marvin! That sample will be immensely valuable in future Bean—”

General Krüger stood up, booming, “Lieutenant Kaplan, please explain why you did not feel it necessary to report that you obtained a sample of the Beans.”

Kaplan jumped, avoiding Krüger’s eyes. “Well, uh, general… my soldiers, zey did not inform me of zis, either. I am just as surprised as you are… My sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you…”

Greg added, “I am truly sorry, general. I was so dumbstruck by the realization that human corpses were inside of the Beans that the sample must have slipped my mind.”

As Greg spoke, Marvin removed a small item wrapped in parchment from his jacket pocket. Krüger, who returned to his seat, motioned for Marvin to bring it to him. Marvin hesitated before bringing the item to the table, his eyes cast downward.

Krüger studied it, then glanced around the church. Everyone was staring at him expectantly; even Reist had looked up from her lap.

He slowly began to unwrap the parchment.

As the parchment fell, it revealed a small glass jar filled with beans. Krüger held it above the table, his eyes narrowing as he focussed on the beans inside. They were tightly packed together, some crushed against the side, rotting fluid spilling to the bottom of the jar. Krüger rotated it in his hands to get a better look at the beans inside, which had seemingly begun to move.

Sauer chuckled softly to himself as he rubbed his eyes. There was no way the beans in the jar were moving; that would mean each bean was its own living entity, not to mention that even if they could move on their own, they would have been without food, water, or light for a week. He returned his gaze to the jar.

The beans were definitely moving.

Again, discussion broke out among the people in the church. Reist stiffened next to Sauer, and Schubert giggled to himself. A group of guards behind the officer’s table moved forward to protect Krüger, who put up a casual hand to stop them. Through the chaos, Sauer heard Rob shout, “They weren’t moving when we took them off the Bean, we swear!”

“This… is excellent news,” Krüger boomed. He was smiling, though his eyes did not share the same enthusiasm. “This may be just the advantage we needed to finally strike back against the Beans!” He turned to a soldier behind him. “Please bring this to the doctors’ quarters, and be very, very careful.” He turned to the doctors’ table next. “I expect research to begin first thing tomorrow morning. In the meantime, however, I feel we must finish asking these brave soldiers about their encounter with the Bean in the field. There is still so much that has yet to be determined about the enemy!”

The soldier behind Krüger complied, quickly exiting the church. A few doctors and tacticians followed, eager at their first chance to see the beans up close.

As the commotion in the church died down, Greg asked, “Are there any specific questions you would like to ask?”

Sauer stood up before anyone else had a chance to speak. “You said that the beans, the small sections of the creature, not the creature itself, were immobile when you took them off the paralyzed Bean in the field, correct?”

Schmidt noticed Sauer and Reist for the first time and smiled, replying, “Yeah, they didn’t even move when I picked them up, which made me think that the Bean had died somehow.”

“You picked them up? Was there anything between you and the beans when you touched them? How, exactly, did they feel in your hands?”

“There wasn’t anything between my fingers and the beans, which probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do. They felt cold, even colder than the air. The individual beans were hard, but the layer of beans on the Bean wasn’t solid, closer to a thick mud than flesh or a shell.”

Rob added, “Since the outer layer isn’t solid and the individual beans can move by themselves, maybe that’s how they’re able to manipulate their beans to suffocate people.”

Sauer sat down. He had no idea what any of this could mean, but he could tell that it was very important. He took his journal out from his pocket and wrote down what he had learned.

On the other side of the church, a tactician began asking the scouting group a question. Schubert glanced over Sauer’s shoulder as he wrote in his journal. “Cold… able to manipulate smaller beans… human corpses… how are they connected… Wow, your question marks are really cute, Thomas my boy, but you could work on your handwriting. And is that a drawing of a Bean in the corner? I haven’t seen one in person, so I wouldn’t know.”

Sauer ignored Schubert. “They have to be connected somehow, but how? What is the significance of human corpses? And when they attacked in Dijon, I could feel heat radiating off of them, I am sure of it…”

Schubert’s eyes lit up. “Hey, hey, I just realized! If the Beans are using human corpses, then does that mean they can use animal corpses too? Imagine a horse covered in beans. That would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?”

Reist put her hand over her mouth. “Thomas, I think I figured it out.”

“Yes?”

“If the Beans that attacked us in Dijon were hot, and the Bean paralyzed in the field was cold, then that would mean that the Beans need heat to move.”

“Yes, I already assumed that.”

“No, I mean… The Beans need to be hot to move. Think about when the Beans attacked. Think back to that morning.”

Sauer paused. “November 8th. It was…” A look of recognition crossed his face. “It was unseasonably warm, was it not? I did not even think about it in the commotion, but the clothes I wore were fairly light…”

“Exactly! What if the attack was strategic? What if the Beans knew that winter was coming and that they wouldn’t be able to move, so they attacked the Empire’s western front to buy themselves time? What if the Beans knew the Empire was preparing to move west, anticipated it, then attacked the Empire to prevent them from advancing on Bean territory over the winter.”

“But that would mean—”

General Krüger stood up, motioning to Kaplan’s soldiers and speaking so loud it put Bösch to shame. “If that is all the questions we have, then I would like to thank you men for bringing us this information. This was precisely what we needed! The ride from Nuremberg has made me tired, but this excellent news has put me in an excellent mood! I propose we host a party to celebrate this advancement in Bean knowledge, and begin planning to advance on Bean territory once we learn all we can from the sample brought to us by these brave men.”

Kaplan and his soldiers stood in the center of the church, confused. They were not expecting a party.

Bösch turned to Krüger, speaking for the first time in the meeting. “What do you mean you want to throw a party?”

“I mean, Humbert, that I want to celebrate!”