(This is only the second draft of the book Worthless. Expect typos, plot holes, odd subplots and the occassionally wrongly named character, especially minor characters. It is made public only to give people a rough idea of how the final story will look)

Chapter 36

The platform was starting to hum. The tiny bits that moments ago had made up the five fingers around it were now all swarming around it, forming the bubble that held in and focused the energies that went through the time machine. The hum was still low, not yet the ear-splitting roar that preceded the actual jump through time. It was, for lack of a better word, charging up.
“So, you're all up on the plan, right?” asked Kris, shouting over the increasing noise of the machine. “Marie, are you listening? You still have the stone, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, I have the stone in my hand!”
It was getting harder to communicate, even with the hum relatively low, but it was still possible. It wouldn't be for very long, though.
“You might not want to hold it in your hand, Marie. It gets pretty hot, and it might not move in the exact same direction as, well, your hand. Or you. In fact, just try to stay out of its way, okay?”
The stone was a small piece of stone, to be a little more exact. There were options for bringing along information, like pressing the pages of a notebook so hard together that fire couldn't breathe even if it started between the pages. Sandwiching a sheet of paper between sheets of thick glass was another idea someone developed. But cutting it into stone was a favorite for any time traveler with the tools for the job.
“First stop is 1869, right?”
Kris shouted something, but his voice was starting to drown in the noise. He apparently realized this, and nodded instead. The stone had 1869 written into it. 1869 Prussia. That was the best bet, a small branch office of The Embassy. It was always harder to find good relay points in the past than in the future. Building a functional time machine was no easy feat, and the tools of the past were rarely up to it, so everything had to be made from scratch. Hell, the tools of the present and near future were hard to do it with, but electricity did make everything a bit easier.
As the noise climbed to painful levels, everything seemed to begin to shake. Nothing really shook, of course, but the pulses of energy pulled at every atom inside the sphere that the tiny fragments of the fingers formed, making it seem like the entire world was shaking itself to pieces. Perhaps as Kris had predicted, the stone started to feel like it was beating against every finger at once, and as the sensation became too painful, it ended up getting stuffed into a side pocket by the thigh. The hum rose to a howl, and the world began to break apart. Then, right as the sound seemed to begin to merge together into one constant roar, it was like feeling every atom beat itself up, all at once. The loud pop, like a suckerpunch to the entire body both inside and out, signalled the jump to 1869. And then, everything felt on fire.
The room that replaced the one at The Embassy was extremely cluttered. it took some adjustment of the eyes, but as things became clearer, it was hard not to notice the mass of thin wooden planks. They were fastened in a pattern that looked more like the web of a drugged up spider than anything else, but they were expertly mounted, not a nail out of place. Or a piece of rope, more precisely. This was a safety net, the heavy duty kind, and nails had no place in that. Behind the thin planks, piles of cloth were visible, and there were strange reflections that hinted at water behind even that. Luckily, none of it was needed, not this time.
“Marie of Nakskov?” came a voice out of seemingly nowhere. The light was a bit dim, mostly coming from mirrors that reflected torches in some other part of the place, for fear that actual torched too close to the arrival spot might become a fire hazard. Reinventing electrical lighting for the place had come up in old meetings, but it was too small a facility. True, it had its own time machine and the advanced generators required to power it, but even if power was sifted from that, getting replacement lightbulbs, in quantity, in the middle of the 1800s was an expense that was best to avoid.
“Yeah, that's me. Marie of Nakskov, that's... me...”
Everything hurt. Daniel had complained about the whole stunt with Benny, walking into the bunker, claiming that it basically voided the entire trip to relax and heal at the farm. Convincing Kris, however, that everything was okay was not that hard. Or perhaps it was more a case of not wanting to pick a fight because of that little disagreement. Pain was a part of time travel. No amount of rest and relaxation would make a trip even remotely painless.
“Dieter Hohmann, at your service,” smiled the young man with the immaculate posture, now stepping ontot the carefully carved and polished marble platform.
“At ease, Dieter. We're not army.”
The young man looked puzzled for a moment, then simply seemed to take everything at face value and tried to relax. Ironically, it seemed that relaxing his stance took more effort than the rigid way he naturally moved.
“I need... I need to sit down. And water, I need water.”
“Of course,” the young man said, right before he gave a few commands in quick German. The Prussians had a culture of military idolation, and Dieter was apparently a sound example of it. The fact that he was not a soldier meant essentially nothing. It was a way of life, a way of thinking and behaving. And the people rushing in almost immediately with glass bottles of cooled water showed a similar attitude.
“This way. We have a private room ready for you,” said a woman, a few years older than Dieter but clearly taking his orders. “We always keep at least one bed ready for arrivals,” she added, sounding like someone trying to promote the place.
The torches along the walls illuminated the place nicely, but the stone walls and complete lack of natural sunlight from any kind of window made the whole place very reminiscent of the Nazi bunker back at Benny's. Perhaps reflecting the military culture of the Prussians, it felt very spartan, very solid and functional.
“How many do we even send your way?”
“Not many,” she replied, not skipping a beat in either her tone or her step. “We just prefer to be prepared.”
Down the hallway, the rooms that were open to look inside were an assortment of densly packed storage and almost as densely packed bunks, many with people sleeping inside, often mixed genders in a single room, a progrhessive move even for Prussians of the era. The bunk that the woman finally showed was, however, completely private. In many ways, in spite of the complete lack of decoration and furniture limited to a wooden bed and a small table, it had an air of comparative luxury.
“Do you have any additional specifications for the next trip?” she asked, sounding more and more like a personal servant at a fancy hotel. She wore a man's shirt, simple and tight to the point that it showed off her curves a little more than what seemed appropriate for the time, hair tied in a bun behind her head. She could have run a hotel from the sound of her, but more likely a women's prison from the looks.
“No, 1701, Jutland west coast.”
Although she already knew the details, from whatever message Daniel had managed to send ahead, she looked at the stone when it was handed to her. Her eyes seemed to shift, though, as she read down the small, rectangular piece of stone, no doubt the idea of millenia to cross through time machine after time machine being a hard concept for her to deal with. It was for nearly anyone. Even those who did it.
“1701,” she said in a slightly exhausted voice, handing back the small stone. “The start of The Great Nordic War.”
“Yeah, Peter Thundershield and the end of Sweden as a great power, I know...”
The stone bounced as it landed on the bed. The sheets were laid with the kind of perfection that the entire place had an aura of. “That's why we're sticking to the west coast. Not a lot of action on that side of the country, all things considered.”
It was hard to tell why, but that last comment seemed to make her crack a small smile, or perhaps just relax her face a bit. She then turned and left, closing the door gently behind her. The bolt was a bit hard to shut, effectively locking the the door. Like so much else in the room, it was functional, not a finely crafted thing.

The first sounds were muffled. They just managed to break through the mists of some dream about flying serpents eating age after age whole in pursuit of their prey. The waking world seemed unreal for a moment, but the ceiling of wooden beams that carried stone was real enough.
The second sounds were less muffled, they came through like a grinding tremor, faint vibrations felt in the wooden frame of the bed. Something shook the ground, either slightly or far away. From the sound of rapid footsteps outside the bolted door, it was not far enough away!
Outside, the rush had already died down, those who needed to pass by the door to the private room having likely already passed by. But down the hallways, around the corners, sounds of a managed frenzy could still be heard. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what went on and where, the sounds echoing through the stone corridors with a strange distortion, becoming ominous background voices and intangible rumbles in the distance. But they did come through.
Somehow, the hallways and corridors were more chaotic and random now, as if they had changed while not being watched. Without a guide, the simple, straightforward layout of the place became an incomprehensible mess, every corridor looking like the other. But following the sounds seemed to work, the yells of quick, old German words echoing throughout the stone walls louder and louder with each step. But this was not the way back to the arrival platform, nor was it towards the time machine that had been built there through years of hard work and making deals with other time traveling factions for parts. No, this was the way up. This went towards the surface. And as torches began to become more sparse and tiny streaks of light shone through slits in the stone, that surface became very real.
“What's going on?!”
The man running by never even acknowledged the question. The young woman, the guide to the private room, had been so forthcoming it seemed only logical to assume everyone would react the same way. That logic fell apart quickly.
“What's...”
The next one, a somewhat older man, perhaps in his late fourties, did at least react to the question being called out to him. But he never stopped. He never had time to stop. The thunderous noises were getting closer.
And then, sunlight flooded the hallway around the next corner. Long rows of slit af slit, broad enough to look through but narrow enough to hide inside, let in daylight from outside, not a torch lit on the walls. The light was sharp and crisp, the kind that came at early afternoon. But it had a color to it, a wrong color, tinted orange and grey. Fire. Fire and smoke.
“Fire!” sounded a voice farther up the hallway, and a volley of rifle fire sounded out. Ten to twenty rifles, firing with rigid Prussian timing, almost all at once. A bitter smell and acrid smoke filled the corridor, making eyes water and throats burn. The window slits carried the gunsmoke away quick enough, leaving the place clear for the row of young men and women in uniforms of suspiciously futuristic design to aim their next shot.
“Fire!” sounded the commanding voice again, and the sounds and smoke repeated themselves.
“Is there supposed to be a battle here?”
The voice that broke through the ringing aftersound of the rifle volley belonged to the young man that had been at the arrival platform. Dieter. He stood, holding a rifle by the barrel like a walking stick, perhaps awaiting orders for his firing position. He didn't look frightened, but he did look unhappy with the situation. Whatever that situation might be.
“No. No, there isn't supposed to be any major fighting for half a century here!”
The answer clearly confused him, but even more than that he seemed very annoyed with it.
“Dieter, what the hell is going on?”
“Men,” he answered, quickly realizing how generic that answer was. “Men attacking, fighting in a very unusul way. They have all but razed the town already, and there are only perhaps half a dozen of them!”
Finding a spot at the window slits to look out was a challenge, every bit of them occupied by rifles made ready to fire. At the end of the row, a corner too small for anyone to position another rifle next to the ones already there was free. It was all that was needed.
There was a town outside. An actual town! Houses, buildings of two and even three stories, many of them made of stone like that which lined the corridor. Smoke filled the streets, now, with fires at the wooden buildings gaining strength slowly, the flames licking up and down the wooden planks and trying their best to make new flames ignite. There were bodies in the street.
“Half a dozen?!”
Dieter had taken up position at a slit a bit farther away, but while raising his rifle to fit it into the window slit, he still heard the question, and he nodded.
“Men of horror,” another young man by the slits grumbled, his voice sounding half bitter, half terrified. “They start fires with their hands, and bullets barely touch them.”
“Demons,” a woman could be heard farther down, sounding like she was as much cursing the men in question as describing them.
Through the slit and through the smoke of another volley fired loudly, it was hard to see anything moving outside. The orders given to fire seemed more timed than purposed, perhaps a desperate reaction to these men of horror. But in the brief space between the clearing smoke and the next volley, they appeared. Two men, built large and with grim expressions on their faces, walked between the buildings. They wore no uniforms, no visible armor, and were not holding anything in their hands, every finger being visible even from afar. But as one of them raised his hand to touch a wooden beam on a house that still did not burn, his sleeve slipped back to his elbow. Strands of blue and gold metal threads glistened in the shine of the surrounding fires, and as a dull, reddish glow emitted along them, the wood blackened and burst into fire under the hand.
“That is not a demon... That is not a demon...”
Although whispers, the words made the riflemen nearby turn their heads, forgetting to fire when the order was given. Clumsily, they followed up, breaking the disciplined timing but getting their shots off nonetheless. Out on the sunlight and smoke, slight flashes flew around the two men. Something hit them. Or, rather, something hit something that surrounded them.
“Marie, what do you know about them?!” demanded Dieter. At the mention of that name, a few of the others looked at each other and then looked back again, clearly not sure if it was the name they had heard, considering who they saw before them.
“They're not demons. They have special powers, but they are not demons. They have metals made with secret sciences on them to focus small but unnatural abilities, and they are wearing a transparent armor.”
“How do we kill them?” the woman from before asked, sounding frustrated, and with good reason!
“I don't think you can.”
Little over half the group fired as the order rang out. The rest were silent and stunned.
“Look, that's both future and secret knowledge they're using. There's very little y...”
“You're from the future,” Dieter interrupted, and everyone was suddenly looking in a disturbingly intense way.
“Marie, we are here on orders from you and The Embassy. This is your battle as much as...”
“I know!”
Even the officer giving the orders to fire had now shifted his attention to the tense debate. Rifles were no longer firing.
“Charge up the time machine.”
They looked on, not one of them reacting physically.
“Charge the time machine. I can finish my mission, and I will be back in an instant, at least from your perspective.”
They still just looked. One looked out the window slits and, without any orders, aimed quickly and fired. Looking out the slit showed one of the men looking very angry, shaking his head as if having been suckerpunched in the jaw.
“For me, it's a mission, but for anyone here, you'll just see a flash and then I am back. Then I can simply snap back to my time and send you someone who can help yuo take down these men of horror.”
Looking around showed nothing but over a dozen faces trying to wrap their heads around the basic mechanics of time travel. Young people, raised in a world of carriages drawn by horses and cannons on wooden wheels.
“Get me to the time machine, and I will go get reinforcements.”
Dieter wasted no time, the simplified order clear enough for him to both understand and carry out with no other explanation. He darted down the corridor, back to the other rooms, and there was nothing to do but follow.