The singing died first. Then the screaming. Harrison's men held their breath in the pre-dawn darkness, waiting. No one moved. No one spoke. They'd learned that lesson three days ago when Stevens had coughed. Just once. They'd found pieces of him scattered across fifty meters of snow.
Through his field glasses, Harrison watched German bodies litter the valley floor. Not his unit's work - these men had died at German hands. Perfect neck breaks. Surgical bullet wounds. The Reich eating its own.
"Sir." Cooper's whisper barely carried. "Movement. Northeast ridge."
Harrison shifted his focus. There - something wrong in the tree line. Not movement exactly. More like... space where movement should be. His stomach clenched. Those bloody enhanced bastards, sliding through shadows like—
The first British position disappeared in a spray of red mist. No gunshot. No warning. Just four men reduced to cooling meat in the snow. Harrison's radioman fumbled for the handset, fingers clumsy with cold and fear. Too slow. Far too slow.
Six more positions vanished in under thirty seconds. The Germans - the thing that used to be Germans - flowed across the battlefield like liquid death. No wasted motion. No dramatic charges. Just cold execution.
"Fall back to—" Harrison's order died as a bullet cracked past his ear, so close he felt the wind of its passage. A kill shot that should have landed, would have landed if...
If they'd wanted him dead.
They were toying with him. Teaching him. Each perfect shot a lesson in helplessness.
"Sir!" Cooper again, voice cracking. "They're—"
The enhanced soldier appeared like smoke solidifying, rifle already aligned. Cooper's head snapped back, a red flower blooming between his eyes. The killer's face showed nothing. No satisfaction. No remorse. Just empty calculation as it adjusted aim toward Harrison's position.
Something howled in the forest. A wolf's cry, but wrong somehow. The enhanced soldier's head snapped toward the sound with mechanical precision. Then another howl, closer. Another, behind. The hunter becoming hunted.
Harrison recognized that tactical pattern. Had seen it three days ago when half his forward companies vanished into the night. Different Germans. The ones who fought like animals instead of machines.
The enhanced soldier fired three shots into the woods, each one perfectly placed, each one hitting nothing but shadow and snow. More howls now, surrounding. Drawing closer. The soldier's movements remained precise but faster, an algorithm approaching its limits.
The forest erupted. German soldiers - regular ones, human ones - burst from the shadows wielding everything from standard rifles to sharpened shovels. They moved like a wolf pack, no formation, no pattern, just savage coordinated violence. The enhanced soldier dropped four with mechanical efficiency before a bayonet found its throat. Even then, it kept firing. Kept killing. Kept calculating until a shovel blade separated its head from its shoulders.
The attack lasted perhaps fifteen seconds. When it ended, Harrison's men stared in horror at the carnage. Germans killing Germans with a savagery that made British artillery look humane. The enhanced soldier's blood steamed in the snow, already growing crystals in the pre-dawn cold.
A figure emerged from the tree line - a German officer, wearing a coat that had seen better days. She surveyed the scene with cold eyes, then barked orders in German. Her men melted back into the shadows, dragging their dead with them. Tomorrow they'd be hunting Harrison's forces again. Today they had other prey.
Harrison watched them vanish into the grey morning. Watched and wondered what could make soldiers turn on their own with such calculated fury. Wondered what horror lurked in the east that could drive men to become wolves.
The answer came three hours later, when his forward scouts reported in. An entire platoon of enhanced soldiers advancing in perfect formation, stepping over their own dead without breaking stride. Behind them, the horizon glowed with careful fire - each blaze placed with mathematical precision to herd British forces into killing grounds.
Harrison gathered his officers. Time to learn new ways to die.
---
Tanya's boots crunched through blood-stained snow as Mueller's men stripped the dead. Ammunition was ammunition, no matter where it came from. No time for sentiment when every bullet meant survival.
"Three enhanced," Mueller reported. "Two intact enough for study. The ammunition..."
"Take it all." Tanya checked her own magazine - four rounds left. "Strip the uniforms too. Anything we can use."
Her men worked with practiced efficiency, surviving on spite and Pervitin and whatever they could scavenge. The Reich had marked them traitors. The British saw only German uniforms. They fought two wars with quarter strength and dwindling supplies, staying alive on ruthlessness and stolen bullets.
A glimpse of metal caught her eye. Dog tags, half-buried in crimson snow. She brushed them clean, read the name, and felt ice form in her chest.
"Sergeant Weber."
She'd served with him, before. When she'd been a proper officer commanding proper soldiers. Before Christmas Eve. Before she'd learned that proper got you killed.
The enhanced soldier wearing Sergeant Weber's face hadn't recognized her. Hadn't shown any recognition as her men tore it apart. Just kept killing with mechanical precision until the very end.
She pocketed the tags. Added them to her collection. Added another name to the list of dead men walking.
"Movement," Steiner's voice crackled through her radio. "Large formation. Enhanced. Moving fast."
Tanya motioned her men into the shadows. Time to hunt. Time to remind the Reich why some weapons were better left unmade.
Time to teach perfect soldiers how wolves kill.
---
The enhanced patrol moved like a mathematical equation made flesh. Each step measured, each movement plotted along optimal vectors. They felt no fear as shadows shifted in the forest around them. Fear was inefficient. They felt no uncertainty as wolf howls echoed through the trees. Uncertainty was suboptimal.
They felt nothing at all as Tanya's hunters closed the noose.
The first attack came from below - men erupting from the snow like winter's own teeth. No proper military doctrine. No efficient tactical response. Just chaos and blood and the sound of machinery breaking.
The enhanced soldiers adjusted, compensated, recalculated. Dropped half their attackers with textbook headshots. But wolves don't die easy. Wolves don't stop when the equation says they should be dead.
The second wave hit from the flanks. The third from behind. Each assault more savage than the last. Each hunter willing to die if it meant dragging down their prey.
The enhanced soldiers' perfect formation shattered. Their optimal calculations met steel and teeth and the rage of men with nothing left to lose. They killed four of Tanya's hunters with surgical precision. Lost six of their own to improvised blades and point-blank shotgun blasts.
In the end, it wasn't elegant. Wasn't efficient. Just blood and bone and the sound of wolves feeding.
Tanya walked the battlefield afterward, counting ammunition, assessing losses. They'd dropped twelve enhanced soldiers. Lost five of their own. The math said it was a victory.
The math said they'd all be dead within a week.
"Strip everything," she ordered. "Weapons, ammunition, supplies. How many rounds left?"
Mueller's face was grimy with blood and snow. "Maybe two hundred. Three if we recycle brass."
"Medical supplies?"
"Low. Bandages gone. Morphine..." He shook his head.
Tanya touched the coat she still wore - her last gift from dead men. The Reich had tried to make perfect soldiers. Succeeded too well. But they'd forgotten something critical:
A perfect weapon only works if you can control it.
She looked east, toward the horizon where more enhanced soldiers waited. More dead men walking. More weapons that needed breaking.
Time to remind them why wolves still ruled when dragons died.
The sun rose red over the killing field. Another hour. Another battle. Another day of teaching machines how mortals wage war.
The hunt wouldn't end until they were all dead.
One way or another.