Free Blood Red City by Justin Richards Page A

and catalogue the site. In rapid edits that belied the time and care actually taken, they marked off the site into metre-squares and painstakingly excavated each one. Flashbulbs flared on the stone walls as everything was photographed and removed.
    But still Hoffman had not found what he was looking for.
    He knew, because of what he now was, that the Vril that survived the crash would have burrowed into the ground. They liked the darkness and the shadows, the weight of the earth above them, surrounding and protecting them. But the surprise on the celluloid faces of the soldiers and archaeologists as the creatures burst from the ground was total.
    The camera was on a tripod, left to get footage of the archaeology. It captured a confused mêlée – the ground erupting; dark shapes emerging; flashes of gunfire; people running … Then the image skewed suddenly sideways. Something dark spattered across the lens. The picture cut to blackness.
    The final reel from the crash site showed the aftermath. The dead bodies being taken away. Humans dumped into a heap, and then burned, the Vril by contrast carefully photographed in situ then delicately removed.
    He returned the reels of film to the Vault, passing Kruger on the way.
    â€˜Did you find any sign of whatever she is drawing?’ the scientist asked.
    Hoffman shook his head. ‘Not so far.’
    â€˜You could review the Ubermensch footage,’ Kruger said. ‘But I doubt there is anything much in it that’s relevant.’
    Hoffman had also seen that footage before, and he was inclined to agree. There were photographs of the Ubermensch after it was brought back from Tibet, and more taken after it woke. But what they showed was not the same as the moving pictures captured on the films. The images in the still photographs were … different. What they showed bore no resemblance to a human being. Hoffman did not know why that was. No one knew.
    This film had sound with it – documenting the creature’s progress as it learned to talk. Or rather, as it learned to talk their modern language. Its own was ancient and forgotten, it had slept – had been dead – for so long. It assimilated knowledge at a rapid pace. Occasionally, there were flashes, moments where the Ubermensch’s form blurred and became like the still photographs. Then it shuddered back to the emaciated form that Hoffman himself had seen when he met the Ubermensch.
    In the recordings of the interviews, the Ubermensch, educated and invigorated, looked more as Hoffman recalled – more like an emaciated human than a desiccated corpse. This was when the Ubermensch made its proposal. Hoffman had been there for that of course. He had been as surprised as anyone that Himmler accepted the Ubermensch’s suggestion that it should lead a raiding party to England.
    Of course, it promised them knowledge, power, more Ubermenschen in return. ‘And what would you gain from this?’ Hoffman had asked.
    He never got used to its rasping, tortured voice. ‘I hear, although that is not the word for it, I sense information coming from England. If I go there, it may become clear. If I go there, I can recover another like me. I shall have comradeship. You will have two of us to study and to learn from.’
    Except that the Ubermensch did not survive the mission to Shingle Bay. The British – Davenport, Pentecross and their comrades – had destroyed the second Ubermensch too, though no one here knew that except Hoffman. Was the ‘information’ the creature sensed actually from a group of Vril in Britain, or was it some sort of interference – either deliberate or unintentional?
    â€˜You’re right,’ he told Kruger. ‘I don’t think the Ubermensch footage will help. And there is nothing in the Vault.’
    â€˜Not everything is still in the Vault,’ Kruger pointed out. ‘But everything they found was photographed, before