The bar occupied a bad part of Dresden the same way a wart occupies a toad’s ass. Inside, a thick pall of tobacco and marijuana smoke obscured the ceiling except where a lonely fan slowly whirred in a futile attempt to clear the fugue from the air. The floor could barely be seen underneath a thick carpet of cigarette butts and peanut shells glued together with spilled beer. At least the walls were visible but marred with graffiti and battle scars created by everything from thrown chairs to gunfire. It was the kind of place that could give one a communicable disease just by looking too hard at it.

  And I had to walk inside.

  The establishment’s clientele definitely belonged there. Losers, boozers, druggies, muggers, skinheads, crackheads and every other manner of lowlife that could possibly infest a city along with a few more unique individuals that could only be a fixture of modern Dresden. In one corner an ancient man sported a sagging death’s head tattoo on his right bicep, courtesy of the Einsatzgruppen, in another corner a large man kitted out like a techno Viking quaffed beer out of a watermelon sized tankard and at the bar a person of indeterminate gender with bright pink hair took a shot of schnapps.

  A perfect place for a clandestine meeting.

  Amongst the squabble of riffraff was an oddity. The man looked like a professor even though he had tried so hard to disguise himself as anything but. He wore what he obviously thought to be the sweater and hat of a common working man though they both looked far too new (and clean) to be anything but a half-baked disguise. I could practically see a bow tie lurking underneath his Adam’s apple and leather patches adorning his elbows. Well… at least he tried.

  “Herr Docktor Bauer,” I whispered as I slipped into the table opposite the man who had pushed the boundaries of research into quantum mechanics for years. “The cock crows most softly at noon.” He relaxed a little bit once I gave him the code phrase, his unease at the surroundings draining out of his posture.

  “You are Agent Frostbite?” he asked tentatively, and I tried not to groan at the ridiculous call sign.

  “Yes, I am. Since you are here, I presume that you’re ready to take us up on our offer?”

  “Of course,” he muttered fervently, “everyone who is sane wants to get out of this hellhole.” Bauer’s eyes darted around fervently as if he expected the walls to spout ears, and in this day and age that could be literally true. “But why me? It cannot be easy to get anyone out of Europe.”

  I shrugged, “It’s not, but we’re trying to get as much of Europe’s intellectual capital into the States as we can. Your current masters obviously don’t appreciate it. Here is what we will do…” I needed to keep this meeting short before one of the lowlifes here wondered why Bauer was here. “You, and your entire family, will be at the corner of Herzstrasse and Zamenhofstrasse at 8:35 tomorrow morning, be late and we’ll have to leave you. Make sure you bring only what you can carry and no pets, Fluffy has to stay behind. Make sure you are not followed. If we think you are compromised we will…”

  I trailed off when I noticed Bauer no longer paying attention to me and instead stared at something with a terrified fixation over my right shoulder at the bar’s front door. A similar petrified silence spread across the bar, I knew what I would see even without turning around. I refrained from cursing, even under my breath, and tried to look as innocuous as possible even as my heart rate climbed towards the ceiling.

  “It has come to our attention,” announced an imperious voice in oddly accented German, “that an Apostate, one who denies the divinity of the Gods, is here and trying to steal away our master’s subjects. We are here to apprehend this reprobate and any who interfere will be killed and their families sacrificed to Wotan’s glory.” With that declaration I could practically feel every eyeball in that bar move onto me.

  If I were alone, I could have escaped notice. I’m a pretty average looking guy… for Germany, blond haired and fair skinned. My clothing blended in with the rest of the poverty and drug ridden clientele of that dump. Professor Bauer, though, he was freaking out; a full-blown panic attack complete with the heavy breathing and mewling whines of fright. That and his panicked looks towards in my direction made me as obvious as if I had ripped off all my clothes and declared myself to be Zeus. I was made, and I had no choice but to play it cool.

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  “Hey there, Spock,” I said genially as I turned in my seat towards the humanoid that wanted to kill me, “how’s it hanging?” The elf standing in the doorway looked at me as if I had just pooped in his swimming pool.

  Elves manage to be both human looking yet utterly inhuman at the same time. The general features were all there; four limbs, one head, two eyes and a nose, but the details were all wrong. The elf’s face was too long and sharp, his eyes too large and luminous, his nose too delicate, his lips too thin and of course his ears too pointy.

  “You have been caught, Apostate, and there can be no escape. Yield and I will give you a painless death, after you confess your crimes against my lord Wotan.” The elf’s inhuman features twisted into an ugly sneer.

  Despite the uncanny-valley aspect of their faces what really separated elves from humanity was power and contempt that radiates off each one like heat from a hot stove. Many elves were tall and this specimen stood over seven feet, his high forehead nearly disappearing into the smoky haze by the ceiling. Though he was slender, I could not deny the strength and speed that lurked within those long limbs. In hand-to-hand combat, elven kind were living nightmares… and they did not like to be mocked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, “and don’t you have some toys to make somewhere?”

  The elf stepped fully into the bar. “Then I shall cut you down like a worm.” Each hand rested easily on the hilt of a curved sword demonstrating the literalness of his threat. His gear may have been as archaic as his speech (this guy must have been a cosplayer before he turned) but I knew that a servant of Wotan would have his armor and blades heavily enchanted.

  “So, when you say worm… do mean worm or wyrm? Cause those two things are entirely different…”

  “Silence, you know of what I speak,” he strode forward casually even though I could hear the frustration building in his voice.

  “Do I?” I replied cheekily. “Then why would I ask?”

  “My meaning was implied in the context.”

  “Well, you know enough by now to have guessed that German is not my first language, and the way you talk is like trying to follow a Shakespeare play, if Shakespeare was German anyway.”

  “Then,” said the elf in English, “I will speak your mongrel, native tongue, Agent Frostbite.”

  Shit, he knew my call sign. Not good. At least my smartass strategy had paid off a little bit.

  “You are well informed, Legolas,” by now he had approached close enough to where sat that he loomed over me. I had to crane my neck to look into the haughty features of his face. “Before I surrender, will you at least tell me how you found me out?”

  “No, I am clearly not as stupid as you are.” The elf had allowed a small yet undeniably superior smile to crawl across his face.

  “Pity,” I replied as I raised my hands, open and empty, towards him, “It would have been nice to get some more intel before I killed your dumb ass.”

  The devices strapped to the underside of my forearms and hidden under my coat could only have come into existence in the last eight years since the Resurgence. They were cut down shotguns fixed to heavy springs to dampen the recoil, relatively simple tech, they didn’t even have triggers. What made them special were the magical of glyphs carved on the short barrels, all products of the latest magical research at MIT and Caltech. Some of those glyphs increased the guns’ power and accuracy and further dampened the recoil. The most important ones let me fire them with a single word (preferably one I didn’t use often.)

  “Abracadabra,” I said with a light tone usually reserved for remarking on the weather. Both barrels discharged simultaneously in tongues of flame that scorched the skin on the undersides of my wrists. Elves were fast and tough, but they died like anyone else when they took two twelve-gauge slugs to the face at point blank range. The elf’s aristocratic features disappeared in an explosion of blood and bone fragments and his helm flew up and bounced off the smoke shrouded ceiling before clattering to the filthy floor.

  The whole bar gaped at me in shock. I just killed one of the feared stormtroopers of the Old God, Wotan. The ruler of what had been eastern Germany had awoken from his slumber with eight years ago was not known for his mercy. None of the Old Gods were. Most of the world lived in abject fear of them, I came from the small part of the world that simply refused to do so.

  “Sorry about the mess.” I cockily flipped a silver coin to the bartender and strode confidently out the door, appearances had to be maintained. Behind me, Doctor Bauer bolted for the rear exit.

  My name is Thomas Winter, and my cover had just been blown.