CHAPTER 32: THE NAZI PROBLEM
Berlin's research district housed horrors wrapped in scientific language—I had read about this; seeing it was different.
The facility squatted on the outskirts of the city, all concrete and barbed wire and guard towers that swept the perimeter with searchlights. The Nazi aesthetic at its most functional: efficiency without aesthetics, purpose without humanity. Signs in German warned of restricted access, classified research, consequences for unauthorized entry.
I've been in a place like this before, I thought. The 1944 mission surfaced in memory—the camp Ray had forced me to acknowledge, the coldness he'd called out. This was different. Research facility, not extermination camp. But the same ideology built both, and the distance between them was measured in degrees, not kind.
The combined teams had split for infiltration. Primary force—Sara, Hourman, Stargirl, Commander Steel—would breach the main laboratory and destroy the time loop generator. Secondary force—Ray, Mick, two JSA operatives, and myself—would secure the perimeter and handle extraction.
My tactical analysis fed to Sara through the comm: "Guard rotation every fifteen minutes. Shift change at 0200. Northwest approach has a twenty-meter blind spot between towers three and four."
"Copy. Primary force moving."
I watched through Ray's suit sensors as the assault began. The Nazi guards were disciplined—better trained than the mercenaries I'd faced in Norway, more coordinated than the goons in most timeline incursions. But they weren't prepared for a combined assault by superhumans and time travelers.
Hourman moved like lightning, his sixty-minute window burning bright. Stargirl's cosmic staff carved through fortifications like they were paper. Commander Steel—not yet metal, but already formidable—led the tactical advance with textbook precision.
Beautiful, some part of me acknowledged. This is what heroes look like when they're not weighed down by decades of failure and compromise.
"Secondary team, we're at the generator room," Sara reported. "Encountering heavier resistance than expected."
"Define heavier."
"Armored suits. Looks like early powered exoskeletons—they weren't in the intel."
My enhanced processing flagged the discrepancy. The Nazi super-weapon was supposed to be a biological agent—a modified version of the Miraclo formula, if my meta-knowledge was accurate. Powered exoskeletons were... wrong. Different.
Butterfly effects, I realized. Something changed. Something I did, or something cascading from changes I made.
"Adjust approach," I transmitted. "Exoskeleton weak points are typically joint articulation and power coupling. Focus fire on knees and spine."
"That's very specific knowledge for a physicist," Sara replied, but she was already implementing the tactics.
The assault continued. I monitored from the perimeter position, tracking guard responses, flagging potential reinforcement routes, maintaining situational awareness for the extraction phase.
And I kept waiting for the biological weapon.
It didn't come.
The generator room fell after thirty minutes of intense fighting. Sara's team destroyed the time loop mechanism—a bizarre fusion of temporal physics and occult engineering that made my system interface flicker with recognition.
[TEMPORAL ANOMALY NEUTRALIZED]
[ABSORPTION AVAILABLE: TIME LOOP GENERATOR DEBRIS]
[ESTIMATED YIELD: +65 ⧖, +22 ✧]
Good yields. I'd need them for the annexation.
But the weapon—the reason the facility existed, the threat that had drawn both teams—wasn't biological. The inner laboratory held something else entirely.
"Bennett, get in here." Sara's voice carried an edge I didn't recognize. "You need to see this."
I transited from the perimeter to the laboratory complex, passing through the carnage of the assault. Nazi guards unconscious or dead, security systems sparking from damage, the smell of ozone and blood mixing in the recycled air.
The inner lab was a nightmare rendered in clinical white.
Test subjects lined the walls—soldiers, prisoners, what might have been volunteers—all connected to machines that pulsed with an energy my system recognized immediately. Temporal energy. Raw, unstabilized, being forced into human bodies.
"They were trying to create time-touched soldiers," Ray said, his voice hollow. "Using the time loop to accelerate their experiments. Each cycle gave them another iteration."
"How many iterations?"
"Hundreds. Maybe thousands." He gestured at the machinery. "This isn't super-soldier research. It's temporal augmentation. They were trying to make human beings who could manipulate time itself."
That wasn't in the show, I thought. That's not what happens in this era.
My meta-knowledge had failed. Not completely—the broad strokes were correct, the facility existed, the threat was real. But the specifics had shifted, altered by butterfly effects I couldn't trace, and the weapon I'd expected to find wasn't the weapon that existed.
"Can we destroy it?"
"Already in progress." Sara's team was systematically dismantling the equipment, ensuring nothing salvageable remained. "But the research exists in other forms. Documents, prototypes, scientists who'll remember what they learned."
"The JSA will handle the cleanup," Commander Steel said. "This isn't the first Nazi research facility we've dismantled. It won't be the last."
The mission wrapped with clinical efficiency. Test subjects were evacuated to medical facilities—those who could be saved. Documents were seized or destroyed. Equipment was reduced to scrap.
I found moments to absorb what I could: the generator debris, temporal residue from the dismantled machinery, traces of energy that clung to the facility's walls.
[ABSORPTION COMPLETE]
[— GENERATOR DEBRIS: +65 ⧖, +22 ✧]
[— RESIDUAL TEMPORAL ENERGY: +28 ⧖, +8 ✧]
[CURRENT RESOURCES: 258 ⧖, 128 ✧]
[ANNEXATION THRESHOLD: MET]
Enough. Finally enough.
But my hands trembled during the extraction—not from fear, not from exhaustion, but from the realization that my safety net had holes.
I'd assumed my meta-knowledge was reliable. A cheat code that would let me navigate the timeline with confidence, always knowing what came next, always prepared for what the Legends would face.
But small details are changing. The biological weapon became temporal augmentation. The exoskeletons weren't supposed to exist. What else is different?
The mission succeeded. The anomaly resolved. The teams extracted without casualties.
Shane's certainty didn't survive intact.
If I can't trust the details, I need to verify before I act, I thought. Don't assume perfect knowledge. Treat meta-knowledge as intelligence to be confirmed, not scripture to be followed.
The debrief happened on the Waverider, joint teams coordinating cleanup and timeline restoration. I participated where expected, provided analysis where requested, and kept my uncertainty locked behind professional composure.
Sara caught my eye once—the same evaluating look she'd given me in Salem, in the cargo bay, in every moment where she suspected I was hiding something.
I smiled. Nodded. Looked away.
The 1942 anomaly had resolved completely.
The annexation window was open.
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