The Man of the Zeroth Reich (2)
"Cough, cough!"
A cough.
A raw, burning throat.
And—
"You're awake?"
That familiar man's calm, even voice.
"You slept well. I only meant to knock you out lightly, yet you were out cold for a full day. Then again, from the look of things you had been handling a great deal of work alone, so the fatigue was bound to catch up with you."
I heard the soft sound of a book being closed.
Matching it, I pushed myself up little by little.
"I apologize for handling you roughly."
"…Hitler was trash. Coming from someone of the Zeroth Reich, no less."
"You are free to voice your opinions. All the more so when the subject is a hundred-and-twenty-something-year-old man whose status as living or dead is, at best, ambiguous."
"According to your superiors, German technological superiority might have kept him alive."
"Let us admit what ought to be admitted. You and I both know perfectly well that is nonsense—especially if one considers how Nazi Germany actually fell."
I could move. That meant I was not restrained.
But—
Hans was holding the German pistol he had clearly taken from me.
Wiping it down with a handkerchief, stroke by careful stroke.
…At least the absolute worst had not happened yet.
"Allow me to reintroduce myself. Major of the Zeroth Reich—Hans Schulz."
"So you lied about your name as well?"
"Unavoidably."
I looked around.
Empty iron bars lined the space; no other sounds reached me.
A prison, and I might well be its only prisoner.
"Looking at you, I find myself with more than one or two questions."
"That so?"
"You were knocked unconscious and locked away, yet you show not the slightest sign of panic."
"…Should I sit down and cry, then?"
"Which leads me to a conclusion. I hardly need so grand a word as 'conclusion'—simply that you have met us before. That you may have been one of the inhabitants of the countless settlements we raided."
"Who knows."
Different names.
Different genders.
Different occupations.
I had been executed, killed in firefights, even used as a plaything before.
So in a way, he was not wrong.
There was only one thing that truly worried me.
Had the Omen family gotten out safely?
"Still, you could be considered fortunate. Had my colleagues or my superiors taken you instead, you would have been put to work at once—cleaning, menial labor, or simply as… entertainment."
"Tied up, whipped, used like human furniture—that kind of thing?"
"You know the routine well. And what of hospitality duty?"
"The clients would be men, of course."
"Aha."
I forced a chuckle along with the one he let out.
But one thought cut cleanly through my mind.
"Not you, though."
"What an impertinence. I have no interest in such unsanitary acts."
"Homosexuals exist, you know."
"I am the sort of man who feels profound revulsion at the idea of putting a part of the digestive tract to other uses. Oh, I am aware that homosexuality and same-sex rape occur commonly enough in nature. Even so, I find them distasteful."
A gray uniform, meticulously kept.
Boots with a high polish.
The pistol sliding back into its holster.
This particular "early game" version of the Zeroth Reich seemed rather well-funded.
"But as I said—using something for a purpose other than its intended one… is unpleasant, is it not?"
"So you will put me in charge of the Zeroth Reich's infrastructure."
"This is precisely why conversation with an intelligent person is so enjoyable. The discussion advances quickly, does it not?"
"…If I report this fact to your superiors, I doubt the experience will be a pleasant one for you."
"My superiors… Ah. If you mean those fools who sincerely believe Hitler is still alive, who have become so immersed in the novel they are writing that they can no longer tell truth from fiction—those people have no future."
He crossed one leg over the other.
From inside his coat he drew a cigarette, set it between his lips, and lit it.
He lit a second one as well and held it out to me.
…I could accept a little help, at least.
"What we need now is the maintenance of our facilities and the training of competent soldiers. Not the mindless consumption of stockpiled supplies, but methods to secure and use limited resources as efficiently as possible—and the expansion of our numbers."
"While your superiors hole themselves up as if everything is already finished, demanding playthings and drinking themselves stupid."
"They issue orders to bring back instruments of immediate luxury and pleasure rather than the means and materials that would actually sustain this 'empire.' So I will ask you. In your judgment, how long do you think the Zeroth Reich will last?"
"If a major who dreams of a coup succeeds, quite a long while."
It was an interesting turn of conversation.
I had heard such things were not entirely unheard of.
The Rebirth Church fracturing into rival sects, for instance.
Or players boasting that they had become the cult's leader and ground its doctrine into powder, leaving chaos in their wake—there had definitely been posts like that.
"The moment I encountered the small community you had built, I understood it instinctively. This was a revelation from heaven."
"Nearly getting killed by Land Bats was a revelation too, then?"
"The gunfire we fired to clear out that nest of spiders could also be called a revelation, in a manner of speaking."
"So. What is this revelation of yours?"
"An opportunity to pour new blood and vitality into my rotting community. And that I must not let it slip away."
"You could simply have joined my side instead."
"That might have been acceptable as well. But—taking orders from someone has never been particularly pleasant. All the less so when the person above you is incompetent. The same holds true when someone puts the brakes on what I believe to be right. Besides, the instant you realized I was from the Zeroth Reich, you were ready to pull the trigger."
No matter how I looked at it, this man—Hans Schulz—was dangerous.
If things went poorly, he could expand the Zeroth Reich's sphere of influence without limit.
He might even be the sort of leadership-class NPC who could pursue the ending "For a Unified Empire"—the one that involved tunneling all the way to Europe—without any player intervention at all.
And NPCs like that had always gotten in the way whenever I tried to drive the story myself.
"But as you can see, I did not pull the trigger. On the contrary, I am offering you a choice… which makes this a reasonable option for you as well, does it not?"
"Let's hear it, then."
—Click.
He flicked his fingers once, and footsteps sounded outside.
After a few stamped military boots, a familiar shotgun was passed through the bars along with a standard salute.
—Clack.
The shell that had been in the chamber leapt into the air; Hans caught it with easy skill.
Then he held the weapon out in front of me.
"Bullets made of nothing more than paper wads soaked in grass, powder, nuts, and sharply filed rivets. Water filters built by dismantling gas-mask canisters. Heating units assembled from scavenged parts."
"…"
"When a man with craftsmanship like this is given proper tools and materials, does it truly matter that he is of the yellow race?"
"So. I hate Nazis."
"Not completely, I think. How shall I put it…"
"You want to swallow what is sweet and spit out what is bitter."
"…An excellent expression. A proverb from your country, I take it?"
Leaning toward me, Hans smiled.
"I do like the rule that places me in a superior position simply because of how I look. More than that, assertive women with black hair and blue eyes are also very much to my taste. One may call them an excellent race—but I prefer to think of them as excellent people."
"…"
"But treating that rule as absolute… is simply foolish, is it not? The finest bloodline is Aryan, therefore everyone else must die? The Third Reich made enemies of the entire world and fell because of it. And the Zeroth Reich is supposed to follow the exact same path? Why walk a road of predetermined ruin? It is idiocy."
He gave a short, derisive snort.
Handing the shotgun and the shell back to the guard behind him, Hans let out a long breath.
"If you promise to stand with me, I will provide you with living quarters fine enough to make you forget the facility you used to inhabit. Women as well, if you wish. And if women do not interest you, I will supply other diversions as I acquire them. We have game consoles brought down from the surface, and more than enough discs to run them."
"And in return I give you—"
"Ammunition with which to arm my soldiers. The knowledge and labor to maintain and repair this facility. That is all."
"Same work as before."
"Better treatment. Naturally, I also guarantee personal oversight so that no other 'Aryan' subjects you to unjust treatment."
It was, admittedly, not a bad offer.
If survival alone were the goal, and if I had nothing I particularly wanted to do.
But I knew better.
NPCs with ambitions like his always had deception or betrayal waiting in the wings.
And the reason he could still smile and present an offer hard to refuse—despite a first meeting that had been nothing short of horrific—was simple.
I had built that entire facility alone, and I had even been making bullets.
"Well?"
He had almost certainly chosen this path because extracting ammunition from a strictly controlled armory was next to impossible.
But if he supplied me with materials that did not look like ordinary casings and projectiles, and I turned them into rounds, the weapons needed for a coup could be stockpiled without raising suspicion.
Still.
There was something I could infer from everything said so far.
Normally, when someone captured a companion, they would dangle the others' fates as leverage.
Yet he had shown no such tendency at all.
He could at least have taken Sarah, if nothing else.
With her in hand, forcing the other two to surrender would have been easy—yet he had not mentioned them once.
That left two possibilities.
One: he had killed them all and was deliberately avoiding any mention of the three.
Two: he had failed to secure the three—or even some of them.
"Is that everything you can offer?"
"Of course not. Feel free to add whatever you like, within the range of what I can provide."
I probed once more, but again nothing.
The pistol he held looked as though it had been taken from me and then returned to his hand—yet perhaps it was simply a resupply.
"In that case, I left something in my workshop that I will need."
"Something?"
"It is in the left-hand corner. What is the English word for it again… Anyway, I need it for the work."
A lie.
I had set the workbench in the left-hand corner of the workshop, so it was not "something."
One could call it "things," but it would have to be plural.
More importantly, Hans could not have approached the workshop himself, so the ways he might know its interior were limited.
He had killed everyone.
Or captured everyone.
Or driven everyone out and completely occupied the base.
He had said a full day had passed since I lost consciousness. In any of those scenarios—killed, captured, or occupied—he would have had time to inventory the workshop.
Especially since the base contained a running generator, a boiler, even a water purifier; it was more than worth looting.
And every material needed for the ammunition production he was asking of me had been right there in my workshop.
So if they had taken the sector, he should have known.
Whether that "something" was truly essential to me or not.
Whether I was testing him right now or not.
"…My soldiers are still collecting the items, so without an exact name it will be difficult to deliver. If we list what we have found, would you look through and identify it?"
He drew the pistol again and slowly wiped it with the cloth.
Handling it as though it were something he had reclaimed.
Good.
The odds that the three were still alive were very high.
Only one question remained.
Would they come for me?