The B-29 Superfortress took to the skies just after midnight, a weary beast droning over the darkened outskirts of Berlin. The six-man crew was bone-tired but still sharp enough to know this flight was supposed to be routine — reconnaissance and nothing more. Yet, something was off.

The cockpit lights cast long shadows as Captain Reynolds gripped the controls, squinting through the frost that slowly crept across the windows.

Lieutenant Harper sat nearby, fiddling with the radio, frustration clear in his movements.

"All I’m getting is static... and maybe the ghost of a bad broadcast,"

he said dryly.

"You got a ghost problem, Captain?"

Reynolds shot him a look.

"Don’t invite trouble, Harper. This plane’s already creaking like it’s on its last legs."

Sergeant Mills snorted, tapping the compass.

"This compass is spazzing out worse than a rookie on his first flight. Spinning like it’s got worms," he grumbled.

"Worms? You been eating those rations again?" Daniels, the youngest crewmember, cracked a nervous smile.

Mills scowled.

"Kid, if those rations were poison, I wouldn’t still be here."

The frost thickened, veins of ice spiderwebbing across the glass, creeping closer as the heaters struggled against the cold.

"Anyone else feeling like we’re headed straight to the North Pole?"

Daniels asked, rubbing his arms.

"Shut it, Daniels. Cold’s better than whatever’s coming," Harper snapped, his eyes fixed on the flickering radio.

Suddenly, the radio hissed and spat static — then faint whispers, low murmurs that sent a chill deeper than the frost ever could.

"Did you hear that?" Daniels whispered.

"Yeah," Mills muttered, "sounds like my mother-in-law complaining about the war."

Reynolds gave a dry chuckle.

"Alright, funny guy. Focus up, we’re almost over the target zone."

The plane shuddered suddenly. Instruments flickered and dimmed.

"Now the compass thinks it’s a roulette wheel," Harper said, fiddling desperately with switches.

Engines sputtered.

"Number three’s coughing up a lung," he reported.

The plane lurched violently.

"Hold her steady!" Reynolds barked, wrestling with the controls.

From the dark hallway behind the cockpit, a faint sound of footsteps echoed — slow and deliberate, but with no one there.

"Who’s there?" Mills demanded, swinging a flashlight down the corridor.

Silence.

"Just your imagination," Reynolds said, though his voice was tight.

"Maybe," Daniels whispered, eyes wide.

Then, with a sickening groan, the cargo bay doors began sliding open.

"Cargo doors? In flight? What the hell?" Reynolds yelled.

"They won’t close," Harper shouted back, panic creeping in.

A blast of icy air swept through the plane, freezing everything it touched.

"Perfect. Just what we needed — a flying haunted house,"

Mills said dryly.

The radio erupted again, this time with distorted laughter and cries intertwined with static.

Reynolds slammed his fist on the console.

"Cut it off!"

Harper tried, but the controls were frozen.

The plane pitched downward, instruments dying one by one.

"Brace for impact!" Reynolds roared.

Trees rushed up in a blur.

The crash was violent.

Metal twisted, glass shattered.

Silence followed, thick and heavy.

The B-29 lay broken in a cold, silent forest miles from Berlin.

Inside, frost still clung to the wreckage.

The crew — vanished.

And somewhere, carried on the wind, faint laughter echoed.

Berlin was quiet in the wrong ways. No children laughing in courtyards, no trams clattering past shop windows. Just the wind sifting through ruins and the occasional knock of loose bricks falling like brittle bones from a time forgotten. The war had ended two years ago, but the silence felt worse now. Like the city was waiting for something.

Like it hadn’t exhaled since the last bomb dropped.

Detective Emil Weiss stepped over a collapsed balcony rail and into the shell of what used to be a tenement lobby. Half the floor was missing, the rest slick with rain and ash. His dog Sam was close by his side, and the man gave him a reassuring scratch behind the ear. The dog was tense and had been all week, but Emil trusted his instincts more than most men’s. This was the third time in the span of a week he had been in or around this city block, searching for clues on yet another murder in connection with three others that have been a real thorn in the side of law enforcement. The war wasn’t ugly enough without the senseless slaughter of innocence even during a time when things should be in recovery.

As the sun was nearly set, Emil scanned the growing shadows, when he heard the faintest of sounds. Somewhere between the slight gusts of wind whistling through buildings and the tick of his wristwatch. A woman’s voice? Distant. Echoing. Speaking his name.

Not yelling. Not begging. Just…saying it.

“Emil.”

He turned full circle. No one. No movement. The street was empty except for a flickering sign above an abandoned tailor’s shop across the street that hadn’t worked in ages. Sam’s ears went flat. Emil stayed still a moment longer. That stillness was a detective’s instinct, which essentially gave the moment a chance to unfold and perhaps reveal itself. He thought he saw something shift in the third-floor window of the tailor’s building. A curtain drawn back by unseen hands. But when he looked again, it was just broken glass and darkness.

He made no note of it in his book. Not yet. Besides, this wouldn't have been the first time since the end of the war when he was hearing or seeing things that may or may not have been there.

Instead, he clicked his tongue and he and Sam moved forward again. The dog didn’t bark, but rather kept glancing over his shoulder like something was following and keeping pace with the pair, and far enough not to be seen.

By the time they cleared the building and crossed the alley toward the next, the voice was gone, and the light rain had slowly turned to mist.

The plane crash almost a week ago still buzzed in his mind, and the chatter through various Allied news sources and street-level whispers were sparse and unusual to say the least. However, regardless of the strange occurrences, Emil continued to feel something in his bones: Berlin was waking up.

Or maybe it had never gone to sleep.

Dahlia has never been one for the dramatics. She kept to herself, kept quiet, tried not to rock the boat, and when she did that, everything seemed to be…calmer.
Or, perhaps calm is the wrong word. The word she may be looking for is ‘trepidation’
Yes…yes that seemed right. To know that something bad has happened…that is will happen again, and yet, there was nothing to be done to solve it. So, all that is left is to be calm.

Dahlia can’t entirely remember when she last arrived in Berlin. Was a year ago? A few months? Maybe only a few weeks. Time seemed to move so odd around here, everything and everyone moving in a monotonous manner, the bloodshed too much for the human spirit to push through.
The young woman had come from France, carrying what little she could, hoping for a better life, and now? Well, it is like she is trapped in another prison, a place that drains the life from a person.

Stepping out into the street, Dahlia sighs softly, the air dead, the area empty. She wondered if there was a day that Berlin had joy, had hope…although if there was, it was long ago, the memories of jubilation extinguished from the inhabitants.

Dahlia exhales softly, taking out a lighter, flicking it a few times before the metal finally lights a spark. Nighttime is nearly fallen, the breeze slow, as if in mourning. Dahlia watches the flame, the orange wisps dancing in the near darkness. She should go inside. Up the states, to her room, where safety is promised.
But even through fear of darkness, she couldn’t just leave the streets like this. What could she do though? Nothing.

Like most people who aren’t fighting, Dahlia listens to the radio, reads the news, hoping for any sign of change, but it seems as though the aspiration for better days is dwindling.

Dahlia closes her eyes, letting the breeze overtake her once more before she stands, closing her lighter, and with the last rays of the sun, she turns on her heel and walks into the building.

It was a small shop, and had definitely seen better days. It held all forms of contraptions and candies, and Dahlias favored item, coffee beans.
Although the wood was slowly fading from the earthy brown, and the gold and green accents on the shudders and walls seemed to stall, Dahlia adored this place.

When she first arrived to Berlin, the owner of ‘Schmuck und Süßigkeiten’ offered her a job. She didn’t know why, perhaps he took pity on her, or simply really needed the help. Dahlia didn’t care for the reason, she was just grateful. Above the shop, the previously mentioned owner, Carl, gave her a place to sleep. A small room in the attic, and Dahlia loves it.
It was hers. Her own space.

So, she worked as a floor girl, occasionally running errands for Carl, whose health had seen better days.

Dahlia walks up the stairs after locking up, making sure not to wake Carl as she changes into her night clothes, her eyes drifting to the town out her window. A candle illuminated the room, it was always on at night, for Dahlia refuses to be in the dark.

She glances to the newspaper on the ground, one from a good long while ago about a plane crash. It was so…melancholy, to think about. But life was melancholy, now more than ever.
Something was happening, something more than war, Dahlia could feel it…and she didn’t know what to think.

She closed the door behind her with a sigh, leaning against it momentarily. Another student of hers had unfortunately been killed. She could only imagine the shock and grief of her parents; their world shattering to pieces in a split second upon learning that their precious daughter was gone. Their only child, as a matter of fact. Being in her own head over the news pained her heart. Annelise wasn't even two months pregnant when she lost her baby. Unbeknownst to her and her husband, the baby would have been a boy. Either way, the news devastated them both. Then her husband was called to fight and Annelise was left to deal with the aftermath on her own. To add to an even already tragic loss, her husband was killed during the war and the news left her numb. So numb that she was nearly admitted to the psychiatric hospital against her will. The fact that she was alone most of the time in the house meant battling against her own dark thoughts every once in a while, those which seemingly liked to taunt and torture her.

"Anni..."

The young woman looked up, startled by the faint whisper that seemed to come from everywhere in the front room at once. There were multiple indecipherable voices behind the whisper, but she could have sworn she heard her husband's voice above it all. Her heart was beating as if it wanted to burst through her chest, the fear temporarily paralyzing her against the door.

Breathe, remember to breathe... Annelise talked herself down, her eyes scanning the room as if she was expecting to see something, something that wasn't supposed to be there.

It was a few moments later that she finally walked towards the kitchen. Annelise would make some tea for now to settle her nerves a little bit.

Caz could hear screams from all over as another bomb landed far too close to the building. It was some hospital that was only half standing, but it was the best they had. It had been almost sixty hours since he last slept, and it was only when the scream of the man in front of him jostled him back to reality that his body moved without his say so. He had trained it well, studied the textbooks. His hands moved deftly as he took the man's belt off and wrapped it around the missing leg squeezing it together as tightly as he could and clasping it shut.

Another tortured scream as the medic beside Caz began packing the wound and giving the injured man a shot of morphine. Caz frowned as he staggered backwardly slightly off balance. This was a haphazard fix at best, but the supplies were running far far too low. Since the last bomb collapsed a section of the hospital that held many of the supplies they were running on fumes both literally and physically. His tired hazel eyes moving towards the next patient. A very pregnant blonde-haired woman, but Caz's face was grim. She had a large hunk of metal sticking out of her chest. Most likely from a bomb that caused a building to explode.

The poor woman was already dead, but he knew he had just heard her screaming moments before. Grabbing a scalpel he attempted to perform an emergency C-section. Maybe the baby could still be saved?

Present day

The tears wouldn't stop falling. Caz was kneeling down in the makeshift graveyard behind the hospital. The medics and hospital staff had begun to bury the dead back here because the hospital was filling up with bodies far faster than they could deliver them safely to the local cemeteries. In front of him was a tiny grave. The headstone was little more than two wooden planks that had been nailed together to make a cross.

This place was a monument to his failures as far as Caz was concerned even if all those that had died weren't under his charge. The planks in front of him held a single simple name.

Clementine

The small baby he had pulled from the dead mother. The infant tried, but it had been too weak, too much trauma. He had lost people before it was war but something about this had broken him. Her mother had no forms of identification, and he had fought toe and nail for this infant to not be placed in a mass grave of the unnamed and unrecognizable. So, he took it upon himself to name the baby Clementine and buried her himself.

An exasperated sigh escaped his chapped lips as he rubbed the tears from his eyes. He could hear some men coming up behind him. He stood up as he turned around and faced them. The war was over, the city should have been in a process of rebuilding, but something was strange about Berlin. The attempts to rebuild, the attempts to fix the problems never seemed to gain much traction. Like something was slowing them down.

Caz and a few other medics were going out into the ruins of the city to try and retrieve bodies most little more than bones at this point to bury and give families closure. He held the strap to corps bag tightly as he lit a cigarette and hit a long drag as he tried to calm the shaking of his hands. As they left the graveyard what should have been Caz's shadow finally moved from where he had been kneeling and vanished into the city.

Friedrich strolled quickly through the broken streets, wreckage still scattered about from the war. Even now, rubble littered the city, evidence of once-magnificent buildings demolished to nothing. The man wore the only suit he owned, having just left the hospital. Not bothering to slow down, he lifted his arm, looking down at the trench watch clinging to his wrist. Besides the photo in his wallet, this watch was the only thing that Friedrich had left of his father. He sighed when he saw the time, realizing it was getting late. He hurried down the street. He held a leather folio in his other arm.

Even in the city, the streets were dark. A lot of the streetlamps had been destroyed during the war and never replaced. Friedrich hurried as fast as he felt comfortable in the dark, not wanting to trip on rubble or garbage. He continued on, weaving through the ruined streets. It seemed like ages before he finally reached his destination: St. Mary's Church, or rather, the remains of the church. One of the many air raids had claimed this holy building, like many around the city. Friedrich promptly stopped, the sight of the dilapidated building hitting him like a punch to the gut. Of course, this hadn't been the first time that he'd visited his childhood church since the war ended, since it was destroyed. But it always felt like the first time. The top of the spire was gone, debris still scattered on the ground around it. One could easily see inside most of the windows, most of the glass having shattered long ago. Friedrich took a deep breath to steady himself. Then, he tore his eyes away from the ruined church and looked around. The street was deserted as usual. He sped through the hole in the stone wall, disappearing into the dark of the entrance hall.

The darkness was thick, forcing Friedrich to stop while his eyes adjusted. The man clung to his folio, instantly being transported back to memories of walking through this very entrance hall with his parents. How many Sundays had they spent here in his childhood? Too many to count. Back then, the church was brightly lit; his favorite stained glass window, depicting Mary holding her precious baby, allowed so much sun into the hall. Unfortunately, that was decades ago now. During the day, sun still shone through the room, but no longer through a beautiful stained glass window. That window had shattered. Instead, light shone through the holes in the building. No more would Friedrich be able to look on the glory of a mother's love stained in glass. His heart ached at that thought, remembering the last words his mother had said to him: "May God watch over you and keep you safe, Friedrich. And remember, you are never alone; my love is always with you." He wished he hadn't gone off to fight in the war. It wasn't a choice, but how he wished he'd stayed home with his parents, or even run away with them. Now, he was alone.

His eyes quickly adjusted to the dark of the entrance hall. Looking over his shoulder to verify that no one had followed him inside, the man moved further into the debilitated building. He immediately made his way over to a mostly intact statue of the Virgin Mary. Friedrich knelt down beside it, reaching around through the space between the statue and the wall. He pulled out a chunk of stone, setting it down on the ground. Then, he reached back inside, pulling out a variety of items: a small bag of coffee beans, a couple tins of spam, and six cigarettes. He put these on the ground beside him before opening his folio. A small vial of morphine was put into the hidden spot behind the statue. Then, five of the cigarettes were carefully placed inside the folio.

As soon as the trade was done, Friedrich left the ruins of his childhood church. He used a match to light one of the cigarettes, taking a long drag before weaving through the streets once more. His shift at the hospital was done, so the only thing left to do now was head home. Where was home for this young German after the war? A cramped apartment with three other veterans, Heinrich, Klaus, and Otto. They'd be ecstatic about having some coffee for the morning. The young man smiled to himself as he proceeded.

"Friedrich!" A sharp, haunting whisper rent through the air. The shock of it almost forced him to drop his lit cigarette. The man swore, burning himself as he struggled to keep the smoke in his hand. Then, he swiftly glanced around. No sign of life, besides his own, lingered in the immediate area. Friedrich had sworn that he'd heard his name whispered, but it didn't seem as if anyone was around. He paused, holding his breath, listening. Nothing. Carefully, he wandered over to the street corner nearby, peering around it, wondering if someone was three. But to his simultaneous relief and disappointment, the road was empty. A forced, awkward chuckle escaped his throat before the man stepped out from around the corner. "You're losing it," he muttered to himself. Then, he took another drag from his cigarette and continued on.