Erik watched as Shiller opened the basement door and threw the corpse he was carrying inside. Despite having just traversed a veritable mountain of corpses and sea of blood, he had managed not to stain his clothing with even a speck of blood. Considering that he had just carried seven bodies in such a manner, Erik felt that he should reassess Shiller's past, which had only been alluded to in fragments of conversation.
It was precisely because he had once been part of a squad that Erik knew how difficult it was to carry corpses. Even executions in gas chambers were bloodless; many would lose control of their bowels or bladder before dying, potentially vomit explosively, or even suffer from eye burst due to high cranial pressure. Learning how to transport bodies without getting any of these contaminants on oneself required a lot of practice.
Erik possessed such skill because he had been forced to do these things; had he always stained his clothes, he would certainly have been expelled from the squad, assigned other dirtier and more taxing tasks instead. Even the children in the squad could work in groups of two or three to handle the bodies while maintaining their own hygiene.
When two or three people together carried a body, it wasn't very difficult to remain unsoiled. But, for an adult to carry another adult, especially one who had almost vomited out all their internal organs, to transport seven corpses and still remain clean seemed more like a superpower.
"What are you going to do?" Erik asked from the doorway leading to the basement passage, to which Shiller seemed slightly puzzled as he glanced at him and said, "Of course, dispose of the bodies."
"They are sure to come here; are we just going to wait for them?"
"No, they won't." Shiller replied. "Hydra is the one who wants to find me, so this operation must certainly be secret."
Erik seemed to understand, saying, "They hide within the ranks of the secret police, using their manpower to achieve their own secret objectives, yet at the same time, they do not want to be discovered by the higher-ups. You are one of their secret objectives, so this operation must be confidential."
"It might even be random." Shiller picked up a tool from the toolbox and said, "They might just lead a bunch of Gestapo here on patrol, then claim they just found suspicious traces on the house, which is why they would go around to the roof and enter through the balcony."
"That sounds more dangerous than I thought."
"Of course," Shiller replied as he cut off an arm from one of the bodies on the ground and said, "They are far more dangerous than those crazy, boastful cops, always lurking in the shadows, cutting off one head, growing two more."
"Is this the meticulous work you were talking about?" Erik stepped in, took up a tool, and began to assist Shiller, but inside, he didn't really think this was very difficult. The people were already dead, and no matter how horrifying the state of their bodies, there was nothing commendable about it.
"Of course not, this is a very tedious job, just something to do carelessly." Shiller walked to the sink and turned on the water tap as he said, "I'm referring to what comes next."
"What are you going to do?"
"I need your help with something," Shiller tapped the ground with the saw and said, "You'll find out soon enough."
"Can I go down and have a look?" Charles was once again standing at the entrance to the basement passage, looking curiously inside, but because of a turn in the staircase, he couldn't see the specifics of the basement.
"I suggest you don't," Erik replied.
Charles seemed to realize something, and after stepping back two paces from the passage leading to the basement, he looked at Erik and asked, "How did you deal with those seven bodies?"
"Don't ask questions you already know the answer to."
Charles swallowed hard and moved away from the passage to the basement, but wisely, he asked nothing more, understanding that sometimes, even without the Mind Reading Technique, his sense of danger was as keen as that of a beast.
Charles continued to look at the newspapers on the wall, but many of them were very old, and Erik's memory of the reports was not clear, so their appearances in the Psychic_Battlefield were very vague and unreadable.
Charles then moved to the side of the dining room, where he saw a newspaper placed beside some tableware. He could imagine Erik reading the paper while eating, and for a long time, this was the only habit of life he had seen in Erik that could really be called a routine.
Charles walked over, and the moment he saw the newspaper, his heart raced—the large photo on the front-page headline showed Shiller's face.
"The Church killer finally arrested, Andel Shiller—a surgeon with heinous sins, will pay a heavy price for his crimes."
In the photo, Shiller was being escorted forward with his head down, and the camera angle from above completely obscured his eyes with his thick eyelashes. Charles had never imagined Shiller's brow to look so sharp, since his eyes and eyebrows were usually very gentle.
Charles swallowed hard and looked up at Erik, realizing that Erik had indeed had interactions with Shiller in the past.
Wait, a surgeon? Wasn't Shiller a psychiatrist?
Of course, he could be a surgeon, Charles thought. For such long-lived beings, there was no technique that could not be mastered. Some surgical skills are not complex, and an average person could master them with some practice.
Then Charles suddenly remembered that there had once been a doctor in this house. So Shiller was the doctor who delivered Magda's baby?
But why was he arrested?
Erik put down the newspaper he had been reading and stood up, making warm water with the boiled water to fill into the baby bottle, then went upstairs to feed Anya, who had just been brought back. After putting her to sleep, Erik donned his raincoat and stepped into the misty rainy night.
In a small building by the riverbank, lights were on all night. Shiller sat in his chair while uniformed individuals paced back and forth, their shoe heels clicking crisply on the floorboards, a sound that seemed exceptionally cold.
"I've told you, you can't kill me," Shiller said with a relaxed demeanor. "Now that you've sensed that mysterious resistance, how does it feel?"
"Whatever trick you are pulling, you will surely pay for your actions," the man opposite him said, lowering the brim of his hat. "You are alive now, certainly because you are of some use to someone, but once you're no longer valuable, I guarantee you will die a miserable death."
"When do you plan to wait until?" asked Shiller in German, as if he was genuinely curious. The language itself sounded harsh, yet Shiller always managed to speak it with a kind of tenderness.
He smiled, eyes lowered, and said, "I guess next you'll say that you can help them get what they want from my mouth, and when that time comes, you'll show me how fearsome you can be. They will definitely come to see you, you have the right to negotiate because you caught me."
Shiller seemed to be guessing at the man's thoughts, but in reality, he was simply saying that the man was dreaming. He had never been challenged like this before, and so he walked over, reaching out to grab Shiller's collar.
Just then, there was a knock on the door. His subordinate stood outside, hesitating, so he reluctantly withdrew his hand, whispered a few words after walking over, and then turned back to look at Shiller, saying, "Your good days are almost over, Church killer."
"As you wish," Shiller replied, still not showing a hint of urgency.
The man left, and Shiller sat for a while. Handcuffs meant little as a restrictive measure to him. He flexed his arms and with a yank, the handcuffs snapped in the middle. Shiller stood up from the chair but did not immediately leave the room; instead, he listened to the noises outside.
With a bang, the door was forced open, and a man with a pistol rushed in, followed by others who streamed in, charging at Shiller as if intending to take him away.
Suddenly, they all saw the broken handcuffs, and in a moment of hesitation, the first two felt the world spin as their heads slammed hard against the wall, blood blurring their vision.
With another bang, the shot fired missed Shiller. In an instant, the four in the front had fallen, and the very first man to rush in but the last to fall was slammed against the wall by a tremendous force. He felt his wrist twist and break, and as the pain at the back of his head where it hit the wall surfaced, a warm liquid flowed down his neck to his back.
"Uh..." He let out a cry of pain and then heard the person who had knocked him down ask, "Who are you with, Red Skull or Zemo?"
It was all so sudden that everyone was still reeling from the shock and pain, unable to reply.
"No matter whose man you are, go back and tell your boss that I need to talk to him. I will be waiting for him in the confessional of the Bebali Church."
Having said that, Shiller left. When he passed the front guard room, he saw the body of the soldier from earlier. It seemed these men were likely Baron Zemo's underlings. Hitler wasn't dead yet, and Red Skull, with too many reservations, wouldn't act rashly.
When Nick arrived, he only found a scene of bodies strewn about. It was clear they had been killed by two different groups of people. Those in the guard room had been shot, while those in the interrogation room... it looked like a giant beast had been set loose in the room.
Nick didn't mean to use such a comical analogy, but all the bodies in this room appeared to have been smashed, as if someone had hurled them against the walls with immense force, the impact exceeding the human body's limits, causing broken necks or ruptured spleens.
Apart from having previously housed a giant beast, there was no other explanation.
"Dammit, they were too hasty," Nick cursed. Jones followed him and entered, shocked at the state of the bodies, evidently taken aback by how they had died.
"Hydra," Nick remarked. "Shiller had just been captured, and they couldn't wait to rush in here, either to take him away or, more precisely, to silence him."
"How did he do it?"
"I've always said he's not simple. Startling the snake out of the grass like this will only make him leave Berlin at the fastest speed, and then our plans will be hopeless."
"Maybe the Eisenhardt couple..."
"I'm talking about the plan of operating on Felix. What did you think I meant?" Nick said. "By now, even if Germany had the Atomic Bomb, it wouldn't change anything. Even if they obliterated Moscow with a nuclear strike, those Soviets outside would still come pouring in. The only difference would be how gracefully Little Mustache meets his end."
Jones seemed to breathe a sigh of relief but still said, "Glad you're so lucid. I thought you took completing orders as your duty."
"Then I'd have to be a mere agent all my life," Nick said as he pocketed his gun. "If they've scared Shiller off, we might have to consider moving Felix out of Berlin before it's liberated... Never mind, let's head back for now."
Nick and Jones returned to base, where they heard noises from the second floor. Worried that Felix was feeling unwell, they went up, only to encounter an unexpected person—Shiller, laughing and chatting with Felix.