The catacombs breathed like a living beast.
Cold air whispered through tunnels carved by centuries of death, rattling old bones and stirring candlelight. Raed Khaled al-Masri crouched beside the crude wooden table that served as the Resistance's command post.
Maps lay scattered across it, drawn by hand, marked with red pencil: Versailles, Le Chesnay, the rail yards south of the palace.
Claire leaned over the map, tracing a trembling finger along a thin black line.
"The train leaves here, at 23:40," she said. "It passes through a maintenance tunnel before joining the main line east. If we plant explosives there, we can derail it."
Raed nodded, studying every contour. "What's on it?"
The leader of the group, a scar-faced man named Jean Morel, looked up.
"They call it Götterfeuer—the Fire of the Gods. Some kind of super-weapon. We don't know what exactly, but the Germans are guarding it like it's the Ark of Heaven itself."
Raed's jaw tightened. "Then it's worth dying for."
Jean's eyes flicked toward him. "Preferably not tonight."
The Plan
By midnight, six of them moved through the underbelly of Paris toward the outskirts.
Raed carried a satchel packed with Soviet-made charges; Claire had the detonators strapped under her coat.
Every step echoed like a heartbeat in a tomb.
Above ground, the city slept under curfew. German searchlights swept across the sky; the distant drone of bombers rolled like thunder from the Atlantic front.
Raed whispered, "They're hitting London again."
Jean grunted. "Let them burn each other. We have our own fire to start."
They reached the abandoned metro tunnel that connected to the Versailles freight line.
Rust hung in the air. A single lantern flickered over the rails, throwing long shadows on damp stone.
"Two sentries at the main junction," Claire murmured, peering through a crack in the wall.
Raed adjusted his pistol. "I'll handle them. You set the charges."
Jean frowned. "You go alone, you die alone."
Raed smirked faintly. "Then make sure my death's worth it."
Before anyone could argue, he slipped into the dark.
The Kill
The German sentries stood smoking near the track switch, rifles slung loosely over their shoulders.
Raed crept closer, the silenced pistol steady in his hand.
Two soft coughs of sound.
Two bodies crumpled into shadow.
He dragged them behind a steel beam and returned to the tunnel.
"Clear," he whispered.
Claire and Jean hurried forward, placing the charges along the curved section of track. Each device hummed faintly as the timer engaged.
"How long?" Raed asked.
"Ten minutes after detonation signal," Claire said, wiping dust from her face. "Enough time to vanish."
A distant rumble vibrated through the stone.
Jean froze. "That's it. The train's early."
The Beast Arrives
The air filled with the roar of engines.
The Götterfeuer train thundered out of the darkness—twelve armored cars, each stamped with the black swastika. Spotlights flared along its sides, illuminating the tunnel in blinding white.
Raed saw soldiers in gas masks riding the platform, and at the center, a sealed car marked only with the sigil of the SS—two lightning bolts entwined around a flame.
"What in God's name—" Claire began.
"Not God's," Raed muttered. "Theirs."
They triggered the detonator.
A heartbeat of silence.
Then the world tore open.
The explosion ripped through the tunnel like a dragon's breath.
Steel screamed, rock split, and the train lurched sideways, grinding metal against stone.
Flames burst from the fuel cars, painting the darkness in infernal orange.
Raed was thrown backward, ears ringing. Dust and fire filled his lungs.
He staggered to his feet, dragging Claire from the rubble.
"Move!" Jean shouted, limping. "The whole tunnel's collapsing!"
They ran through choking smoke, past twisted steel and broken bodies.
Behind them, something inside the sealed car began to hum—a low, terrible resonance that made their bones ache.
Claire turned. "Raed—what is that sound?"
He looked back, eyes wide. Through the flames, he saw the car's doors buckle outward, molten at the edges, as if something inside was trying to escape.
"Run!" he screamed.
They barely cleared the tunnel before the second explosion erupted—a blinding sphere of blue-white fire that swallowed everything.
The shockwave flung them into the mud outside, ears bleeding, sky aflame.
Aftermath
Hours later, dawn crept over Versailles like a ghost.
The palace gardens were scorched black; the rail yard nothing but twisted ash.
German troops swarmed the area, searching, shouting, killing whoever moved.
Raed and Claire hid in a drainage ditch, soaked, trembling, alive.
Jean lay nearby, unmoving. A shard of metal had pierced his chest. He had died with his eyes open.
Claire bit her lip until it bled. "We killed him."
Raed shook his head. "He knew the cost."
"But that light—what was it?"
Raed stared at the smoke rising toward the horizon. "Not fire. Not bomb. Something else."
He remembered the name on the file: Götterfeuer.
The Fire of the Gods.
Maybe it hadn't been a weapon yet.
Maybe they had just unleashed its birth.
The Broadcast
Two days later, in a safehouse south of Paris, Raed repaired the radio and sent a coded message.
"The weapon destroyed. Unstable. Possible new physics. Area annihilated."
The reply came minutes later, cold and clipped.
"Confirm. Moscow requests recovery of debris. Agents en route. Stay hidden."
He lowered the transmitter. His hands shook—not from fear, but from the knowledge that even the Soviets wanted what the Nazis had built.
"Same devils," he whispered.
Claire looked up from bandaging her arm. "What will you do now?"
Raed exhaled. "Find out what was on that train. And who survived it."
The Visitor
That night, someone knocked on the safehouse door.
Raed raised his pistol. "Who is it?"
A calm voice answered—in perfect Arabic.
"A friend from the east."
Raed's blood ran cold. Only the NKVD knew that phrase.
He opened the door.
A man stepped in, tall, wearing a Soviet officer's trench coat, eyes hidden behind round spectacles.
"My name is Colonel Viktor Doroshenko," he said. "I speak for Comrade Stalin."
Raed's pulse quickened. "How did you find me?"
"We find everyone, eventually." Doroshenko smiled thinly. "Moscow thanks you for destroying the train. But we need what's left of it."
Raed frowned. "There's nothing left."
"On the contrary," the colonel said, pulling a small metal cylinder from his pocket. "Our scouts recovered this fragment near the blast site. It emits radiation unknown to our scientists. The Führer calls it 'The Dawn Element.' You will help us obtain more."
Raed stared at the object—glowing faintly blue in the dim light.
He suddenly understood. Götterfeuer wasn't just a bomb.
It was the beginning of a race neither side could afford to lose.
The Choice
When the colonel left, Claire turned to him. "You're going to work for them again?"
Raed rubbed his temples. "If I don't, someone else will. And they'll build hell faster."
She stepped closer. "You can walk away, Raed. Leave this war."
He looked at her, torn between duty and the small piece of his soul she'd managed to keep alive.
"I tried walking away once," he said softly. "The world followed me."
She touched his face gently. "Then maybe this time, let me walk with you."
He smiled, weary but sincere. "That might be the first honest offer I've heard in years."
Outside, the night was silent except for the distant hum of engines—planes crossing the stars, carrying death to men who had forgotten why they fought.
Raed looked out the window, the glow of the strange fragment still pulsing faintly on the table behind him.
Two empires.
Two ideologies.
And now, a fire powerful enough to consume them both.
He whispered to himself, half in prayer, half in prophecy:
"Between the hammer and the swastika… humanity is the anvil."