The world had narrowed to the inside of a covered truck, its canvas sides rattling with every pothole. For the twenty-three of us inside, our world was already lost—stripped away by months of interrogations, betrayals, and the slow, grinding certainty of death. We were not happy here, nor safe. Each bump in the road was a reminder that our journey had only one destination: Mont-Valérien, the place where condemned men met their end.
Outside, Paris was waking to another gray morning, indifferent to our the fate; they couldn't even see us, as we were hidden behind the truck's flapping curtains. The city's ordinary rhythms—the clatter of bicycles, the distant hum of trams—felt impossibly far away. Inside, the air was thick with fear and the bitter taste of resignation. Some of us clung to scraps of hope, others to memories of families already lost. For most, the only certainty we had was that the world we had known was gone, and nothing could bring it back.
But as the convoy rolled through the silent streets, something began to change. At first, it was just a whisper—a few of our guys, voices low and uncertain, began humming the opening bars of the Internationale. It began as a murmur. Georges joined. Then Thomas, just 18, a Hungarian student whose voice trembled. Maurice F., Polish, 19, followed, and Spartaco, the Italian with fire in his blood.
The guards barked: "Silence!" One slammed his rifle butt against the wooden side of the truck. But the singing didn't stop—it grew.
Jonas, Emeric, Léon. Szlama, Stanislas. Cesare. Missak, the Armenian poet-leader, 37, his voice hoarse but commanding. Arpen, older and slower at 44, sang beside him. Marcel, Roger R., Robert W., Antoine, Willy, Amedeo, Wolf—they all joined in.
Each voice added weight. Each note a refusal.
"Debout! les damnés de la terre..."
We weren't singing for comfort. We were singing for rebellion.
Our voices, ragged but unbroken, spilled out into the morning air, echoing off the stone walls and reaching the ears of those who waited in the shadows.
Unbeknownst to us, a different kind of silence gripped the outskirts of Mont-Valérien. Hidden among the trees and ruins, the Resistance and their strange American allies watched the convoy approach.
Benny adjusted the sights on her rifle, her breath fogging in the morning chill. "That's the truck," she whispered. "They're coming."
Beside her, Kyle O'Donnell, the American commander of the mission, a cowboy from Montana with eyes too young for his scars, tapped the side of his boot. "Two minutes out. Tell me we still have a shot."
"Yes," Benny said. "But we only get one."
The plan was desperate—a last gamble. They knew who was in that truck. It was us. The Group of the 23, the FTP-MOI. Multinational. Fighters, not soldiers. Propaganda targets. Already sentenced.
Kyle scanned the treeline. "You're sure you're ready?"
Benny shot him a look and her famous crooked smile. "Ain't I always?"
He exhaled. "Good. Because we only get one shot to make history blink."
Mont-Valérien
The trucks rolled up the hill.
The condemned men had fallen silent now, not from fear, but because defiance had already been said, already sung. We were past pleading. Past resisting. We had become something else: witnesses.
The truck doors creaked open. The guards barked their final orders. One by one, we stepped out into the cold gray light.
The air was sharp with dew and gun oil. Beyond the trees, the city was beginning to stir. But here, on this plateau, it was as if time had been suspended. As if death itself had been waiting for us.
At roll call, one of the men—Szlama, perhaps—turned to a German soldier and said calmly in German:
"Heute bin ich dran zu sterben, morgen bist du es."
"Today is my turn to die, tomorrow will be yours."
The German said nothing.
All but two of us refused communion. The priest looked away, ashamed or afraid.
We were led to the wooden posts, lined up along the execution wall. The earth beneath our boots was stained from other mornings like this one.
The gendarmes tied us down.
A few of us—Missak, Spartaco, Emeric—still had enough mobility to raise a clenched fist. The Communist salute. The red salute.
Olga, standing tall, cried out in a voice louder than it had ever been inside the prison:
"Vive le Parti communiste! Vive la Résistance!"
Others echoed her:
"Vive Lénine!"
"Gloire à Staline!"
"À bas Hitler! À bas Pétain!"
We shouted them like thunder before a storm.
A command barked in German. The firing squad raised their rifles. And then—just as the officer's hand went up—
crack.
A German collapsed.
Not one of us.
Another crack — from a bullet that didn't sound like theirs. It sounded higher pitched. Cleaner. A second soldier dropped, blood spurting from the side of his neck.
Chaos erupted.
The officer screamed orders. But before he could finish—
crack.
crack.
crack.
Three more went down.
The condemned froze. We were still tied up. We had no idea what was happening.
Georges whispered, "Is this it? Did they miss?"
"No…" whispered Wolf, his voice shaking. "They're not shooting at us."
Jonas twisted his head toward the tree line.
And there, among the ruins—someone moved.
Not Resistance.
Not French.
Not German.
He was cloaked in black, wearing no helmet, his face covered by a balaclava showing only his eyes. He was lying on his stomach, covered up to the chin in a meshed net, in some kind of camouflaged pattern. He peeked at the distance through some sort of binoculars, his face steady, the gun steady.
About half of a long, matte-black rifle came out of the mesh.
Celestino stared. "What the hell is that?"
The weapon was long and alien—a kind of rifle none of us had ever seen.
It fired again—crack—and the sniper at the tower dropped dead, stone tumbling beneath his body.
The remaining guards scattered—some trying to flee down the hill, others firing blindly.
But the shots were wasted. One by one, they fell, taken by the ghost in black.
And then—a second figure appeared, moving between the trees, fast, light. A large golden retriever dog, suddenly barreled out of the woods, straight at us. But instead of attacking us, he started jumping merrily, as if he had found lost friends after a long search.
We, the condemned, stood tied, dumbfounded, trembling.
Rino tried to yank free from the post. "Someone help us! Cut us loose!"
A voice rang out—not from any German or French accent. It spoke in English. American. Female. Calm.
"Hold still. We're here to get you out."
The black-clad figure emerged from the trees, his weapon lowered. A shoulder patch glinted in the light: olive green, with the faint outline of a stylized eagle and stars.
"It's ok, he won't hurt you. Down, Eddie!" she ordered the dog, that promptly sat, panting. The woman — no, the girl— turned to us: "is everyone OK?"
"Yes, we are. But…" said Arpen, the oldest of us and, most certainly, old enough to be her father. — "who are you?"
"The name's Benny, and this is Eddie." She said, pointing to the dog. "We're here to save you."
"Save us? Who sent you? And who is we?" Asks Celestino, in broken English.
Benny hesitated for a beat, then moved to cut Celestino's bindings.
"It's... complicated. Let's just say we're part of a rescue protocol that doesn't officially exist. You can call us—"
She paused, as if thinking of what would make sense "—observers. We intervene when… certain lines are crossed."
"You speak like a soldier," Rino said, rubbing his wrists.
"Yeah, well, I was one. Kind of." Benny glanced over her shoulder. The male sniper, still silent, scanned the horizon. "But this isn't exactly military. Not in your time, anyway."
Emeric frowned. "What do you mean 'your time'?"
Benny looked at him for a moment, then gave a tight smile. "I mean that where I come from, the year starts with a two, not a one."
A hush fell.
"She's mad," muttered Léon, Polish and just nineteen.
"Or a Resistance trick," said Stanislas, wary.
Joseph B.turned to Benny. "So. You're not from here. And not from now."
She grinned. "Bingo."
"What do you want from us?" Missak asked, voice steely.
Benny's expression softened. She crouched beside him as she cut the rope at his ankles. "We want nothing. We're not here to hurt you or spy on you. We're here because your deaths weren't supposed to happen. Not like this."
"So, you're rewriting history?" asked Roger R., squinting. "Like in the books?"
She looked up. "More like... stabilizing it. Let's just say your resistance meant more than you knew. And someone tried to erase that."
Rino muttered, "This is insane."
"I know," Benny said. She stood up and whistled. "Come on, Eddie. Let's get them clear before more Krauts show up."
Eddie trotted over, brushed past Marcel, and sniffed at Robert's boots before resuming position.
"You have ten minutes," said the male soldier, finally, voice deep and filtered through his helmet. "Extraction window won't hold forever."
"You guys love your drama," Benny muttered, half to herself.
"Extraction where?" Olga asked sharply. "We can't just disappear into thin air. You said you're here to save us—but where are we going?"
Benny met her eyes. "Not far. Just far enough."
She tapped something on her wrist. A quiet hum filled the air—strange, electric.
Behind her, a shimmering distortion appeared in the forest edge. Like heat haze, but in the shape of a doorway. And through it: a street, a city—but not any city we knew. Clean, unfamiliar architecture. Our mouths dropped open.
"My God…" whispered Emeric.
"Is this… the future?" asked Maurice, trembling.
"No," Benny said, smiling faintly. "It's a possibility."
###
The trucks waited where they had been so many decades ago, their wooden sides weathered but intact. Celestino, the Spanish man, glanced at them, then back at Benny and the others, still convinced they were simply following the Resistance's plan. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat. The forest around Mont-Valérien was silent—eerily silent—and the shadows of the trees stretched long under the late evening sun.
"Get in," Benny ordered. "Quickly, and stay low."
One by one, we climbed into the trucks. The air inside smelled of oil and wood polish, faintly metallic from the rifles we had abandoned on the ground. Celestino slid into the corner, clutching his knees, and stared at the fading light outside the canvas.
The air felt thick with a heavy, final silence. We were packed together, all of us, our hearts pounding with fear. The world around us has changed. It felt different, the sounds unfamiliar. The road was paved, the trees taller, and the scent on the breeze unrecognizable. At first, everything seemed normal, but then cars sped past—sleek, colorful, and unlike anything we'd ever seen.
As we stumbled toward the hum of the autoroute, a glowing sign overhead displayed the date: February 21st,2025. The shock was immediate—we were still in the outskirts of Mount Valérien, but eighty-one years had passed. We had not only crossed roads, but time itself.
"This isn't right…" Celestino whispered, panic creeping into his chest. He ran forward, shaking trees, slapping at shadows. "No—no, no, no!"
Panic and confusion gripped us, but we acted with desperate courage. Opening the cover of the truck, we tried to seek answers in a world that was both familiar and utterly foreign. The machines on the road, the rhythm of this future—everything was new to us.
Celestino slid back into his corner, clutching his knees, and stared at the fading light outside the canvas.
He could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. Something very wrong.
"I need… I need to check something," he muttered under his breath, mostly to himself. His eyes darted around the truck. The ropes had been cut, but he hesitated. He wanted, needed, to see his home again—to step out into the streets of Paris, and feel the world he remembered.
Without telling anyone, started moving towards the back of the truck and peeked outside. The forest was quiet, the shadows deeper now. He closed his eyes and tried to think of his apartment, the smell of bread from the corner shop, the faint warmth of the sun through his window.
Nothing happened.
He opened his eyes. The streets were gone. The forest remained. The memorial-museum loomed silently behind the tree line. It was already closed for the day, a faintly glowing plaque marking the history of Mont-Valérien. The year, he realized slowly, was painted in some cruel trick of light: 2025. That date again. It just made no sense. He refused to understand it.
"This isn't right…" he whispered, panic creeping into his chest. He ran forward, shaking trees, slapping at shadows. "No—no, no, no!"
The air around him hummed faintly, almost like static, and the feeling of being watched pressed on his skin. He turned to go back, but Benny's voice cut through the quiet.
"Celestino! Sit down. NOW."
Upon hearing the raucous, the drivers stopped the trucks. Celestino froze, looking up at her. She did not scold, but there was a steel in her eyes. He obeyed, slumping to the ground, heart racing.
"I… I just need to—" he started, voice cracking.
"You're not ready," Benny said softly. "Not yet. And even if you were, the bridge back doesn't work like that. Not yet."
Celestino's hands clenched the rough bark beneath him. Sweat ran down his face. The others inside the trucks were talking quietly, but he could only hear his own ragged breathing.
A tremor of fear ran through him. He wanted to shout, to resist, to rage against the impossibility—but instead he froze.
And then he realized something: even though he could not return to his home, even though the world around him was alien and wrong, he had a choice. To panic, or to act.
He rose slowly, brushing off the dirt.
"OK," he said to himself, voice low but firm. "If I can't go home… then I'll go forward."
He returned to his seat in the truck. The others turned to him. Missak's eyes were steady, understanding; Wolf's gaze soft but questioning. Celestino swallowed hard, the knot of fear in his stomach slowly unraveling into resolve.
For the first time since the forest rescue, he felt a measure of control—not over the impossible, but over himself.
The trucks started, ready to move into whatever came next. And Celestino, trembling but upright, realized that who he was under pressure mattered far more than where—or when—he was.
Celestino couldn't sit still. The forest around Mont-Valérien pressed in on him, alien and unyielding. He clenched his fists. I have to go back. I have to get home.
He leapt from the truck, ignoring Benny's shouted warning. Branches whipped his face; roots tried to trip him. Panic drove him forward, and the forest seemed to pulse with every heartbeat. He reached a clearing, the memorial-museum looming ahead, lights dim behind its glass doors.
He tried again, closing his eyes, summoning the smell of bread, the sound of Parisian trams, the warmth of his own room. He stretched his hands toward the world he remembered.
Nothing.
Frustration burned through him. "No! No!" he yelled, slamming a fist into the bark of a tree. The wood shivered, a branch snapped, and a sharp crack echoed.
From the shadows, Benny and the sniper emerged. Eddie growled low in his throat.
"Celestino!" Benny called, her voice calm but firm. "Stop. You're making it worse."
He whirled to her, eyes wild. "I have to go home! You don't understand! I can't stay here—this isn't my life!"
"Exactly," she said. "And that's the point. You can't just wish it into existence. You have to adapt. Or you'll end up trapped in frustration forever."