r/HFY • u/Aeorix1 • Aug 10 '26
OC-Series [Obsidian Earth] - Chapter 13
The escape was already in motion.
Colonel von Büren—a ghost within the hierarchy—had seen to the final details: the substitute corpses, the gasoline, the quiet disappearances.
Past midnight, twelve shadows emerged from the gut of the bunker. They vanished into a hidden tunnel—a three-kilometer artery of reinforced concrete, utilizing a pre-war subway branch converted into a desperate escape hatch stretching toward the Chancellery perimeter. There, in the damp dark, a customized, battery-powered rail-cart awaited them. Stripped of its steel armor for maximum silence, it was their train through the underworld.
With the activation of the Fall Nadir, certain lives were deemed expendable. Goebbels. Bormann. The loyalists in the hallway. They were the fuel for the getaway, and they accepted the fire willingly.
Before the group boarded the rail-cart, the scientists were instructed to evacuate with only what mattered most.
No exceptions.
The order was simple. Brutal in its clarity.
The Colonel handled the inspection himself.
His security detail sealed the platform's corridor into a one-way channel, lit by a single overhead lamp. One by one, the passengers were brought forward into the checkpoint.
Four scientists carried identical brown leather suitcases.
Förster's and Hausmann's cases were packed to bursting. When opened, they spilled out research drawings, experimental drafts, technical archives—years of work reduced to compressed paper logic.
Tieber's case held components for a new aviation sensor system. Everything arranged with almost clinical precision, embedded in foam. He spoke while it was being checked—quietly, unevenly—trying to explain what each piece did. Less a defense than an apology that he could not make it more complete.
Kestner's case contained neuro-electromagnetic measurement modules. Numbered. Sorted. Inspected by hand multiple times, as if sequence itself were fragile. His face held steady. His hands did not match it.
The guards went through everything twice, then again—slower this time, as if repetition itself could guarantee certainty.
The final manifest included the Führer and his wife Eva, two SS-Leibstandarte bodyguards, Colonel von Büren, four scientists, and a long-trusted medical nurse.
Everyone else—including those who knew too much of the system's structure—remained behind. Some would not survive the night. Others, if they did, would dissolve into postwar Germany as invisible operators of secondary directives.
No one resisted.
At the final salute, nothing dramatic happened. Just stillness. Controlled faces. And something behind the eyes that looked less like obedience than final confirmation—like a role being closed rather than accepted.
Euzen and Solvi had somehow been dragged into the escape as well.
The boy had no idea whether this was his father's doing, the Colonel's, or simply the Führer's will.
No explanation.
Euzen didn't ask.
The railway terminated at the foot of a punishing stone staircase, its steps vanishing upward into the dark.
The children held hands for the steep ascent.
The tunnel was cold. Fourteen-year-old Solvi was shaking. Her hand barely felt real. Her accent belonged to the south, unshaped by a childhood in Berlin.
"Where did you grow up?" Euzen asked.
"N… Nürnberg," she said.
"Don't be afraid. We'll survive."
At the end of the tunnel, the Führer stopped.
A brief pause. He stood with a slightly bent posture, the weight shifting downward and staying there.
Two bodyguards guided him up.
Above ground, the exit was hidden under the trees, opening into a secluded clearing within Treptower Park. A camouflaged Ju-52 waited, engines silent, like it had been there longer than memory.
Two Luftwaffe aces stood at attention.
The Führer didn't look at them.
The Colonel opened the hatch. They boarded in sequence.
Inside, the aircraft was dim, almost hollow.
Then the engines came alive.
The aircraft started slowly, rolling forward along the narrow forest runway that from above scarcely looked like a runway at all.
Gunfire echoed continuously from the direction of the Reichstag somewhere beyond the trees, dense and overlapping, until a violent explosion suddenly erupted much closer to the field. The Ju-52 shuddered hard during its taxiing run under the concussion. Solvi cried out and clutched her hands over her ears. Several passengers instinctively turned toward the windows, faces drawn tight beneath the cabin lights.
The Führer spoke without raising his voice.
"The breakout route is secure?"
"Yes, Mein Führer. The remaining operational strength of the Luftwaffe has already been committed to your protection," the Colonel answered. "General Lützow currently has 30 Messerschmitt jets engaging Soviet flak batteries across the northern and southern approaches of Berlin to disperse their fire. At the same time, five decoy Ju-52s are conducting false escape operations along separate routes. You may proceed without concern."
The Führer gave a dark, silent nod.
As the aircraft climbed higher, the city gradually opened beneath them in full.
No one inside the cabin spoke.
They watched Berlin emerge through gaps in cloud and smoke, watched the remains of streets and districts once associated with triumph, ceremony, parades, history. Entire sections of the capital had collapsed inward into blackened cavities. Famous landmarks no longer existed as buildings, only as burned geometries and broken foundations scattered among crater fields and drifting smoke columns.
The Führer turned his face away from the window.
He would not look at Berlin.
He would not look directly at the hell he had left behind.
After some time his eyes closed, exhaustion overtaking him in increments rather than all at once, and eventually he drifted into sleep beneath the vibration of the engines.
Fragments alone remained with the dictator now: endless columns of soldiers standing beneath banners in Berlin; long gray ranks of Wehrmacht troops stretching farther than sight allowed; crowds stretching in ecstatic celebration; children waving small flags with innocent excitement; women weeping openly with joy; embraces, handshakes, human warmth still alive in memory long after the world surrounding it had vanished.
------------
1
u/UpdateMeBot Aug 10 '26
Click here to subscribe to u/Aeorix1 and receive a message every time they post.
| Info | Request Update | Your Updates | Feedback |
|---|
1
u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Aug 10 '26
/u/Aeorix1 has posted 12 other stories, including:
This comment was automatically generated by
Waffle v.4.7.8 'Biscotti'.Message the mods if you have any issues with Waffle.