by I'm Not Mister Mxypltk
Berlin, Germany:
The plane arrived at exactly 3:15 p.m. as announced. Danny Hearn made a commentary saying that maybe they had some of Chance's luck with them that helped the plane arrive on time. Then they had to wait an hour and a half in the airport because of some confusion with Mick Harrison's passport.
"If you don't mind," Marv Velo said to Danny, "I think I'll go to the hotel and wait for you there."
"Okay. I'll stay here with Mick and try to work this out," Danny said.
"Do I look like I escaped from a mental hospital and turned people into cows in Chicago a year ago?! Do I?!" Mick yelled to an airport employee.
"That is what it says here, sir," the employee replied with a German accent. "It says you are wanted by an American government agency."
"What agency? This is insane! I'm NEVER using this airline again!" Mick exclaimed as Velo walked out of the airport.
Once he was outside, Velo was about to take a cab when he saw Tobias Christopher talking to some American tourists.
"...and then you take a turn to the left. The museum should be right there," Velo heard T.C. say to the tourists as he approached him.
"I didn't know you knew Berlin well enough to give directions, Tobias," Velo said after the tourists left.
"I didn't," T.C. replied. "I was so bored waiting for you guys, I decided to look around the city... a couple dozen times. What took you so long? Where's Danny and Mick?"
"They had troubles with Mick's passport," Velo replied. "Apparently, Mick didn't remember the shenanigans he caused in Chicago before joining the team."
Tobias nodded his head. Mick and Danny were going to be held in for a while, so this gave Marv Velo and Tobias Christopher, two members of the team who had returned recently but hadn't participated much in the mission, a chance to talk.
"So..." T.C. said, "...do you think the team has changed?"
"It has. It's always been changing," Velo answered, "but you only notice it once you've been away for a while."
"There are many new faces..."
"More importantly, the old faces are not the same."
"I know. Euro... I mean, Raptor, is the one that has changed the most. I can hardly recognize the guy I met. Others have changed for good. Danny seems more adapted to this time. And Mick, he's gotten used to this, too. When we started out, he didn't want anything to do with us, and now he's..."
"I wouldn't say Mick has changed for good," Velo interrupted. "I was always concerned by the fact that he's too powerful, but he didn't seem dangerous before. Now there's something about him I don't like."
"Mick too powerful? You mean M'xy -- they're two different people."
"Ah, that's right. And here they come," Velo said, noticing that Mick and Danny were leaving the airport.
"How did you get them to let you go?" T.C. asked.
"Well," Mick said, "they connected to the network to update the file they had on me, and the file disappeared."
"How come?" Tobias asked again.
"I guess it must have been an MCCA file. Once they updated it, it disappeared like all the other MCCA files after the agency went down," Danny explained.
"That was lucky," Velo said.
"Now let's go to the hotel," Danny said. "I want to contact this doctor guy as soon as possible."
Danny, Velo, Mick, and Tobias weren't in the mood to be tourists during this trip. They wanted to go meet Grissom Montag's doctor friend, find the place Netzel was buried, see if the book was there, and get this over with.
They arrived at the Berlin University library and found Dr. Jurgen Seltsamliebe waiting for them. Dr. Seltsamliebe, a man around Dr. Henry Quantos' age, sat in front of a large table filled with open books and a computer.
"You must be Grissom and Henry's associates, I presume," he said with a German accent, standing up as he saw the four men coming.
"That's us," Danny replied, shaking the doctor's hand. "This is Marv Velo, Tobias Christopher, and Mick Harrison. I'm Daniel Hearn."
"Pleased to meet you," the doctor replied as he took his seat again. "You look younger than I imagined!"
"I'm sorry if we kept you waiting, Doctor. We had a problem at the airport," Velo said. He looked at Mick.
"Yeah, uh..." Mick said, embarassed. "Yeah."
"Actually, young men, you are in luck. While I was waiting for you, I decided to do some research. And I think I have located Netzel's resting place."
"Oh?" Danny said, smiling.
"Yes," the doctor continued. "I checked the records of the local cemeteries, just in case, and I found a crypt in one of them with nameless people resting in it. The number of people in the crypt is the same number of Nazi leaders that are supposed to be buried with Netzel. I'd say there's a big possibility that it's the real thing."
"Wow. That's lucky," Tobias said.
"This is where the crypt is located," the doctor said, writing a direction on a piece of paper and then handing it to Danny, "though I don't how you will get there. The security must be very big."
"We'll find a way, Doctor," Danny said with a smile. "Thank you."
The team took transportation to the cemetery immediately. It was already kind of late, and by the time they got there, it would be dark: perfect for gravedigging.
There were two men inside the cabin at the entrance of the cemetery. One of them was talking over the phone, and the other was looking at a German talk show on a small TV, eyeing the monitors of the security cameras from time to time.
"Ja, Honig, kaufe ich die Zwerge," the one talking over the phone said. "Ja. Ja."
Somebody started knocking at the door. "Halten sie auf einer sekunde," the man said to the person on the other end of the line as he left the earpiece on his desk and stood up to open the door.
The man opened the door and saw Tobias. Half a second later, he and the other guard were tied to their chairs, and their mouths closed with tape. Then Velo, Mick, and Danny walked into the cabin.
Velo started working on shutting down the cameras so they wouldn't be recorded. Danny started looking for some kind of map of the cemetery. Mick noticed the earpiece on the desk.
"Uh, yeah, talk to you later," he said to the person on the other end, before disconnecting the phone.
"Done," Velo said, and the monitors went black.
Danny found on the desk the map he was looking for. Written on the locations of all the tombs were the names of the people buried there, except for the people in one tomb.
"Okay, this is it," Danny said. "Let's go."
Danny led the way through the cemetary, and the others followed behind. Velo hurried his pace and caught up with Danny.
"You know, you could have made M'xy send the guards to France and magically find the crypt. Why didn't you do that?"
Danny looked at him. Velo wasn't really asking. He knew the answer. "So, you have your suspicions too," Danny stated.
"I've always had them. But now more than ever."
Behind, Mick overheard the conversation and wondered what the hell it was about.
"It's not anything certain, Velo," Danny said, "So far, nothing has happened to confirm my suspicions."
"How about the whole thing with the terrorists? You asked him to disarm them, and he didn't move a finger. How did he explain that, by the way?"
"Oh, he did disarm them. He took the bullets away."
"Danny," Velo said, changing his tone to a more alarming one. "Those were plastic guns."
"He couldn't have taken the bullets away..." Danny's eyes grew wide. He and Velo stopped walking.
Before he could say anything, Mick had the familiar feeling of something taking over him. He took his hands to his head and started yelling, as he fell to his knees.
"Mick!" Tobias said. "What's going on?!"
Mick stopped yelling.
"Mick... you okay, man?" Tobias asked.
Mick looked at him and smiled. His eyes were covered by something darker than the night above them.
"Hello, boys," K'tl said.
"Shit..." Danny replied.
Continued in Chapter 47: Zombies in a Small Pennsylvania Town