Once Upon an Us

In Which Being Bulletproof is Nice, But Not A Normal Human Quality

Thea arrived at Marie’s house nearly an hour and a half after she’d left Carol.  Marie didn’t immediately open the door, but Thea wasn’t surprised. When she finally did pull the door open, it was just wide enough for Thea to slip through and shut behind her.  If Marie was surprised to see Thea, she hid it well. Instead, she glanced at Thea before returning to the kitchen where she’d been about to eat dinner.

“I know the man Pengin’s looking for and what Hoffman has planned,”  Thea told her. Marie raised an eyebrow at her as she took a sip of her soup.  Thea sat in one of the wooden chairs at the dining room table and looked up at Marie.  “Do you want the short story or the long story?” she asked. Marie shrugged and sat in the chair across from Thea.

“I don’t got anywhere to be,”  she replied. Thea nodded and recounted the story from the beginning.  She told Marie how Jude and Fritz had both reported suspicious people appearing whenever it seemed convenient.  Marie nodded along and frowned when Thea gave her a list of people who were working with Hoffman and how she knew them.

“Hold up,”  Marie interrupted.  Thea paused in the middle of telling her about Jude recognizing Mendeler when Marie waved her hands.  “Where did you see him if he wasn’t at the embassy?”

“He was at the bar Tuesday,”  Thea lied easily. She wasn’t sure telling more people about the secret meeting on the pier was a good idea even if it was Marie.  The fewer people that knew, the safer the secret would be. She finished telling Marie everything and the room fell into silence.

“You’re absolutely positive?”  Marie asked quietly. Thea nodded.  “Then I’ll call Pengin and get him down here.  He’ll want to know everything.”

Thea walked back to the bar at a relaxed pace.  She could see the officer tailing her but didn’t give him any indication she knew about him.  She let him follow her back to the front of the bar doors, glancing out of the corner of her eye before tugging on the doors.  They didn’t budge and she frowned. She tried again, but they remained locked. The officer was still walking towards her as she peered inside the windows, frowning more when she noticed all the bar lights off.  She didn’t want to tip the officer to where the spare key was hidden, so she shrugged and walked down the street further. She turned the corner in the alley and sprinted towards the garbage bin. Before she could open the lid to climb in, a gunshot went off in her direction and she dropped to the ground.  She looked up to see the officer that had been tailing her and two others running towards her. Before they could shoot her, she ducked behind the garbage bin and reached for the gun she kept stowed away under the bin.

“You can’t hide, Rossi!”  an officer barked. Thea glanced around the corner then stuck out her arm and fired three times.  Two of the officers slumped to the ground, but only one was dead. The other one moaned as blood seeped from his chest.  The third one was completely unharmed.

“Who says I was hiding?”  Thea smirked. She fired at the third man again, but he dodged the bullet and shot at her.  They shot at each other until Thea ran out of bullets. She cursed and ducked behind the garbage bin.  The third man kept firing at her, but the garbage bin provided a safe cover.

The bullets stopped raining down on her and Thea looked around the corner of the garbage bin.  She jumped when she saw the officer hardly an arm’s length away. He lunged for her, but she dodged and kneed him in the gut.  He barely stumbled and punched her in the face. Thea’s eyes watered at the impact and she blinked rapidly as she darted around the officer.  He spun around quickly, snatching her arm when she tried to strike him. He twisted it painfully and tried to slam his elbow into her back. Thea dropped to the ground before he could make impact and he stumbled forward.  She twisted out of his grip and wrapped her legs around his torso, using her momentum and weight to throw him to the ground. He rolled out from under her but was unable to stand up before she had pounced on him again and held a knife to his throat.  She glared at him but he didn’t seem worried.

“How did Hoffman find me?  How does Markovich know I’m alive?”  she demanded, pressing the knife against his throat hard enough to cut him.  The man didn’t even blink at her. She punched his face and growled again. “How did they find me?”

“You were never invisible,”  the man snarled at her. Thea’s grip on the knife tightened and she pressed harder.  The man barely shifted under her, but she pressed the knife harder still to his throat.  “The beauty of it all is that you’ll never know who betrayed you. That’s what trust does: blinds you to--”  Thea slit his neck before he could finish. She climbed off his body and threw it in the dumpster. She walked over to the officer that was still bleeding out and slit his neck without hesitation.  She carried his body to the dumpster as well then threw in the third officer before climbing inside herself.

She didn’t realize she was covered in blood until she climbed out of the tunnel and into the light.  She closed the tunnel door then headed to her room to change. Tony wasn’t in his den as she passed through and the halls were pretty empty.  She frowned but focused on getting changed before going to find the others. The last thing she needed was to explain how she got to be covered in dead Nazis’ blood.

“Where have you been?”

Thea looked up at the sound of Tony’s voice to see him standing in the doorway to their room.  He looked incredibly relieved to see her and as much as she wanted to tease him about being a worry-wart, she knew something bad must have happened for him to have been so concerned.  She closed her dresser drawers and brushed her hair out of her face as she turned to face him.

“I went to talk to Marie,”  she replied. Tony pursed his lips and Thea frowned.  “What happened?”

“Carol’s missing,”  he told her. Thea tilted her head, telling him she’d sent her back to the bar only twenty minutes or so after they’d left.  “Yeah, well she never showed up. You know what did show up?” Thea shook her head and Tony motioned for her to follow him. He led her back to his den where he pulled up footage from inside a building.  It was a short video clip he’d saved to his computer, but it didn’t take long to figure out why. Carol was being escorted into the room by a large officer, hands cuffed behind her back and a cut on her cheek.

“When did this pop up?”  Thea asked, watching as the video restarted.  Tony closed out of the clip and typed something into his computer to try and find the live footage.

“It didn’t,”  Tony answered, causing Thea to frown even more.  “Jude called and said something stupid like “the baby is crawling” and after a horribly complicated game of guessing, he finally just said Hoffman had left in a hurry.  I tracked him through the Nazi security channels and found this.”

“How long ago?”  Thea asked. Tony paused a moment to think, calculating the hours in his head before grimacing.

“About four hours ago,”  he said. Thea groaned, glancing at the live footage from the camera.  The room was empty, but that probably didn’t mean they had let her out.  Tony was able to scan through the footage and find out they’d removed her from that room about three hours earlier, looking much more beat up and nervous than she had when she’d gone in.  He didn’t scan back far enough to find out just what they’d done to her.

“Jude and Fritz are still at the embassy?”  Thea asked, walking away from Tony’s desk. She paused in the doorway and looked back at Tony who nodded.  They had another hour before they’d be let go for the night. “I’m gonna call Marie then. She’ll need to know about this.”

Jude sat at his desk, tapping his pen on his desk.  He was never given any work that took him very long.  He had the suspicion it was because the embassy didn’t trust him or knew what his real purpose was, but he couldn’t be sure.  His tapping had become a game to him; seeing how many times he could tap the table before someone new showed up to visit Hoffman.  However entertaining it had been when he’d first come up with it, it was getting boring now. He was about to throw his pen across the room when his phone rang.

“Good afternoon, thank you for call--”  he was interrupted before he could finish his scripted greeting and frowned.

“You need to get back now,”  Tony said on the phone. “Don’t ask questions, just grab Fritz and come quickly.”

“I’ll see what I can do,”  Jude promised. That wasn’t good enough for Tony who demanded he leave right now before hanging up.  Jude rolled his eyes as he hung up the phone then stood up. He knocked on Hoffman’s door and entered when he was told to.  Hoffman looked up from his desk, shifting some papers when he realized it was Jude who had entered.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Weiss?”  Hoffman asked.

“Sorry, sir,”  Jude said, nodding his head in respect.  “My wife went into labor and I need to leave if possible.”

“Of course,”  Hoffman said, nodding back at Jude.  Jude thanked him, raising his arm in salute then left the room.  Hoffman uncovered his papers and continued his work, barely pausing to answer when his private phone rang.  “Hello?” he asked.

“Whatever you do, don’t let your secretary leave the building,”  the caller said. Hoffman paused his work and looked up at the door Jude had just walked through.  The caller didn’t say anything else before hanging up. Hoffman frowned at his phone then reached for his other phone.  He dialed the phone number for the security office and waited for them to pick up.

“Yes, this is Head Commander Hoffman,”  he said calmly, putting aside his paperwork for the day.  “It appears that my new secretary is working with what remains of the OSS.  You will find him in the elevator headed to the first floor. Please arrest him at any cost and take him to the detainment center on Sunset Avenue.”

“Yes, Head Commander Hoffman,”  the man said. Hoffman hung up and put away his private phone.  He packed up his papers in his briefcase and locked it, tossing the key in his desk drawer before locking that as well.  He grabbed his jacket and hat then left his office, walking towards the elevator on the far side of the building.

“Leaving so soon, Head Commander?”  a man asked. Hoffman turned to see Head Service Leader Andrew Schuess. 

“I’m afraid so,”  Hoffman replied, stopping to humor the man for a moment.  “Something came up that demands my immediate attention. Do me a favor, Andrew,”  Hoffman said, turning to face Andrew and lowered his voice. “If anyone asks where I am over the next few days, tell them I was needed in Berlin.”

“Of course, sir,”  Andrew nodded, saluting Hoffman proudly.  Hoffman smiled and saluted him back before continuing his course toward the other side of the building.

Jude stood in the elevator, watching as the numbers went from thirty-three to zero as he rode down to the base level of the embassy.  He was on floor ten when the elevator stopped and the doors opened. A group of security guards stepped in the elevator with him but didn’t press any buttons.  Jude frowned but didn’t say anything. They continued their descent and were on floor three when the first guard tried to shoot Jude. He barely managed to dodge the bullet as he kicked the gun out of the guard's hand.  Another guard grabbed him from behind and Jude threw him over his shoulders.

The elevator came to an abrupt halt and the doors opened to reveal a whole array of guards with guns pointed at him.  Jude’s eyes widened at the sight and he turned to jump through the glass elevator, but a guard shoved him to the ground.  Multiple people jumped on him and Jude was unable to throw them off. He struggled to lift his head up from the floor, only to receive a hit to the base of his skull that caused his vision to go black.

Fritz was in the middle of mopping the men’s bathroom on the fifteenth floor when an announcement came over the intercom.  He paused his work, trying to understand what the grainy message was saying, but couldn’t make it out. He didn’t speak very good German in the first place, so to hear it over an intercom didn’t help.  He shrugged and continued to mop the bathroom, taking his time before moving on to the next bathroom.

As he stepped out of the bathroom, he paused.  The entire floor was silent and he couldn’t see anyone working in their cubicles.  He frowned and pushed the mop and bucket into the elevator to go to the next floor.  He stepped out only to find the sixteenth floor just as deserted. Instead of getting out, he pressed the button to take him to the ground floor.  Maybe someone downstairs could tell him what was going on.

He was between floor three and two when he got the feeling something wasn’t right.  He hit the button that said ‘2’ on it and the doors opened a moment later. Just like the other floors, this one was deserted.  He walked to a desk and picked up the phone, dialing the number to Jude’s office. It rang and rang, then the line went dead. Jude wasn’t up there.  He tried again and the same thing happened, confirming even further that something was wrong. He walked toward a window and looked down at the parking lot.  It was still full of cars and the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street was bustling with people, but the one in front of the embassy was empty. He walked back to the desk and called the front desk of the embassy.  The phone rang for a while and Fritz was about to hang up when someone answered.

“Good afternoon, thank you for calling the Nazi Embassy of New York,”  the woman greeted happily. Fritz frowned, not recognizing her voice as Laura’s, the woman who usually worked at the front desk.  “How can I help you?”

“Hello, it’s Peter Oss,”  Fritz said, glancing at the name on the desk he was standing at.  “I was just calling to say I can’t seem to find anyone on my floor.  I was in the bathroom and came out, only to find everyone gone.”

“There was an announcement on the coms a few minutes ago, Peter,”  the woman told him sweetly. Fritz sighed.

“I wondered,”  he replied. He glanced out the window again as a large SUV pulled up to the curb and a group of men stepped out.  “I fear the intercom in the men’s bathroom must be broken. I didn’t hear anything.”

“I see,”  the woman said.  The men outside marched into the building, but Fritz didn’t miss the way their jackets rested unevenly on their backs.  He frowned as a jacket shifted just enough he could see the gun one of the men was carrying. “I’ll send someone up to come get you.  Just sit tight.”

“Alright, thank you,”  Fritz said. He didn’t hear the woman’s response as he hung up the phone and hurried to the far side of the building toward the fire escape.  Something was definitely wrong and he needed to get out of there. He’d had the sinking suspicion he and Jude had been discovered, but now he was certain of it.

He pushed through the door, causing it to slam against the brick wall of the stairwell.  He hurried up the stairs until he came to a door that led him outside on the fourth floor.  He could hear shouting from above and below him as he pushed the door open and an alarm sounded.  The door slammed shut behind him and he looked down. It was a long jump onto hard cement, but he didn’t have many other options.  He jumped over the side of the railing, dangling from the bottom of it. His feet were still two stories from the ground, but if he rolled, he could land with minimal damage.  Just as he let go of the fire escape, the door flew open and armed guards began to shoot at him. He hit the ground, a sharp pain shooting up his ankle, and rolled to slow himself down.  The bullets rained down around him and he jumped to his feet, ignoring the throbbing coming from his left ankle.

Fritz covered his head and ran.  He ran in a zig-zag pattern, making it harder to be hit but making himself dizzy.  As he turned a corner, he stopped zig-zagging and broke into a dead sprint across the town.  He could hear car sirens behind him and ducked into an alley, nearly crashing into a garbage bin and knocking it over.  The sirens seemed to be coming from all sides and he barely had time to dive behind a pile of trash bags before a group of officers ran past him.  He was panting but tried to hold his breath as they raced by. Once he was sure they were gone, he climbed out from behind the trash bags and continued running through the alley.

He’d barely ducked into a new alley after crossing the street when he came face to face with a large rifle.  He stopped abruptly and looked up to see three officers standing in front of him. They had helmets on so he couldn’t see their faces, but he was pretty sure patrol officers didn’t have access to such heavy-duty guns.

“On the ground,”  one of them yelled.  Fritz slowly kneeled down, not looking away from the three men.  The middle one stayed put as the other two moved around him to cuff Fritz’s hands behind his back.  They pulled him to his feet and the third man stepped to the side. Fritz was led out of the alley and into the back of a government car, officers appearing from multiple side streets and keeping their guns locked on Fritz.  The guns didn’t go away even after Fritz was safely inside the car. Two more officers ducked into the car to ride with him, keeping their guns at the ready until they came to their destination.

It wasn’t a short drive and as the minutes ticked by, Fritz began to wonder where they were going.  He knew where the main detention centers in New York were and relatively how far away they were, but as far as he could tell, they weren’t headed toward any of them.  The officers around him didn’t relax, though, never letting their guard down for the entire trip. When the finally did come to a stop far from the city and in front of a building Fritz had never seen before, they seemed just as ready to shoot him as they had in the alley.

An officer barked out an order in German and the door to the building slowly pulled open.  Fritz was pushed through the door and down a dark hallway with nothing but the officers behind him for guidance.  They stopped him in front of a door and he waited as an officer came around and unlocked it. The door was pulled open and Fritz continued down the hall.  Rusty metal bars formed jail cells on either side of him. Most of them were empty and filthy, but a few looked like they’d been recently cleaned. They were almost at the end of the hall when movement to his right caught his attention.

“Carol?”  he asked, stopping in his tracks.  The woman looked up and her dark eyes met his.  His eyes widened just as hers did, but he was shoved forward before she could scramble to her feet.

“Fritz?  Fritz, what are you doing here?”  she yelled, hurrying to the bars of her cell and rattling them loudly.  An officer pointed his gun at her and she recoiled immediately. Fritz pushed against the officers holding him back, twisting around to look back at Carol.

“Carol?  What happened?”  he asked, struggling to talk over the officers pushing him down.  He didn’t hear Carol’s answer as an officer punched his gut harshly.  He groaned and the officers continued to drag him down the hall. He heard Carol yelling behind him, but the officers pushed him through a door and her voice was blocked.

Thea and Tony waited in the den for half an hour before realizing Fritz and Jude weren’t going to show up.  Tony was about to double-check outside the front doors of the bar to make sure they weren’t banging on locked doors when Marie and Pengin walked in from the backroom entrance.  Thea had told him Marie was bringing Pengin, but he still didn’t like seeing the man standing in his den. He knew Pengin had tried getting onto his computer multiple times in the past and Tony tended not to trust people who dug through his things (unless it was Thea; that was a whole different story).

“Where’s Brannon and Gelfand?”  Marie asked, looking around the den in case they were huddled in a corner.  “I thought you were calling them in.”

“I did,”  Tony told her, leaning back in his chair.  “Brannon even answered and said he’d be here in a few, but as you can see, they didn’t show.”

“Do we know why?”  Pengin asked. Tony stared at him blankly and Thea sighed irritably.  She knew Tony wasn’t Pengin’s biggest fan, but the least he could do is answer his unobtrusive questions.  “I need to know where two of my agents are, Rossi.”

“I don’t know,”  Tony replied sharply.  Pengin narrowed his eyes at him, clearly not believing what Tony had said.  When Thea confirmed that they did not, in fact, know why Jude and Fritz hadn’t shown up, Pengin seemed to take the answer seriously.

“Let me get this straight,”  Pengin said, crossing his arms and looking down at Tony.  “We still don’t know who the Nazi spy is, Carol Bayer, Jude Brannon, and Fritz Gelfand have gone MIA, all within the last five hours, and you don’t know anything?”

“No,”  Tony objected, looking up from his computer screen.  He looked directly at Pengin as he told him, “We know Carol was kidnapped by Nazi officers who were tailing her and Thea this afternoon; we know Jude and Gelfand were compromised at the embassy; and we know that Hoffman is back on Thea’s tail, probably responsible for tailing her and Carol earlier.  So no, Mr. Pengin, we do know things, we just don’t know the right things. That’s where you--” he pointed an accusing finger at Pengin “--come in: to tell us just what’s going on here.”

Pengin stared at Tony blankly, daring him to continue.  Tony had finished, though, and sat back in his chair to wait for Pengin’s response.  He looked up at Pengin expectantly, crossing his arms over his chest and throwing his feet up on his desk.  Pengin looked at Thea, but she didn’t reprimand her brother for snapping. Rather, she stood behind his chair with a smug smirk almost too small to see.  When Pengin realized they really weren’t going to do anything until he gave them some answers, he sighed and looked around the room for a seat. The only thing that resembled a seat was the bean bag Thea had stuff in a corner and he was not about to sit on that.

“If you want some answers,”  Pengin said, “You better find me a nice chair and some food.”