Chapter 19 — The Iron Curtain Claw
The world above the cave-in was pure dust. It whirled in the shattered air, thick and gray as ash. Every step sounded like it came from a mile off, every voice carried the echo of a crypt. At the edge of the collapse, Dr. Viktor Metallgeist stood with his arms folded behind his back, eyes burning holes through the darkness below.
Der Leiter, mask as blank as a death mask, hovered a half-step behind, hands folded and posture at parade rest. The Eisen Verfolger were ranged behind them, a checkerboard of black coats, boots, and twin-eye gas masks. They waited, silent and patient, as if their purpose began only when ordered and not a second before.
The stones at the rim shifted, scattering gravel into the pit. From the ruin, a battered hand clawed up, then another. James Smith hauled himself onto the broken edge, three links of Dottie’s chain still locked around one wrist. He looked less like a man and more like laundry chewed by a snowplow—shirt ripped, face smeared with blood and stone dust, hair matted in greasy swirls across his brow.
He coughed, spat red onto the floor, and glared at Metallgeist with a glare that could have stripped paint. “They’re dead,” he rasped, voice hoarse. “All of them. Saw it myself. The floor went and they dropped into the next world.”
Metallgeist didn’t move for a full breath, just let the words sit in the cold. Then he stepped forward, boots cutting through the rubble.
“You are certain,” Metallgeist said. His voice was brittle, precise, and accented with the long vowels of old Prussia. “You saw the bodies.”
Smith coughed again, knuckles white on his own thigh. “Saw ‘em hit, saw the dust swallow ‘em up. If you want a souvenir, send your goons to dig for teeth.”
Der Leiter turned and exchanged a glance with his subordinate—the kind that required a full decade of silent drills to interpret. The Eisen Verfolger tightened formation by half a foot, as if absorbing a ripple of fate.
Metallgeist stooped, scooped a pebble, and let it tumble into the hole. It rattled against the stone below. “So the Americans die in a hole,” he said, soft, almost poetic. “Just as history predicted.”
Smith bared his teeth in a laugh that ended in a wet cough. “Spare me the eulogy. I did my part. Now, I want my cut.”
Metallgeist didn’t smile, but the lips thinned, barely enough to expose the shadow of his teeth. “Of course. The arrangement was clear.” He straightened and clasped his hands behind his back, the gesture slicing a centimeter off his height. “But tell me—what did you see? Did they try to escape?”
Smith shook his head. “They dropped like bricks, didn’t even scream. One or two might’ve had a prayer, but not after the fall. If they’re breathing, it’s through their assholes.”
A wet silence. Dust continued to drift down, making slow motion snow of the moment.
Der Leiter moved to Metallgeist’s side, voice barely above a whisper. “The artifact?”
Metallgeist nodded once. “If they fell into the lower tunnels, there is a chance. The labyrinth below the fortress connects to the chamber. It was why I set charges there, after all.”
Smith waved a hand, dismissive. “So what? You already said it’s a myth. You want to keep wasting time, do it without me.”
The nearest Eisen Verfolger shifted his stance, one gloved hand hovering close to his sidearm. The air went cold.
Metallgeist’s face was a sculpture of patience, every line perfectly placed for menace. He walked to Smith and regarded the man the way an embalmer might regard a corpse that refused to stay still.
“You did well, Corporal Smith,” Metallgeist said. “Your treachery was… useful.”
Smith rolled his eyes. “Can the compliments, Nazi. Pay me, or shoot me. I don’t care which.”
Metallgeist smiled, thin and sharp. “Of course.”
He reached into his coat, pulled out a battered envelope—German army paymaster, black wax on the flap. He tossed it at Smith’s feet.
Smith bent to pick it up, not noticing the tiny hand-signal Metallgeist gave to Der Leiter.
“Pleasure doing business,” Smith said, tearing the envelope open.
Der Leiter stepped forward, blocking Smith’s retreat. The Verfolger inched forward, an unspoken wall of threat.
Metallgeist leaned in, voice dropping to the register of confession. “One last thing, Corporal. The work is not finished. I need you to show me the passage you believe they used.”
Smith looked up, eyes wet and mean. “Yeah? And if I say no?”
The doctor’s hands were soft, almost friendly, as he rested them on Smith’s shoulders. “Then you are of no further use.”
Smith grinned, all broken teeth. “You wouldn’t dare. You need me.”
“I don’t,” Metallgeist said, in perfect, unaccented English.
He nodded once to Der Leiter.
The tension in the room twisted a half-turn tighter, the kind that says the next word will be punctuated by violence.
Smith didn’t blink.
Metallgeist’s hands tightened, the thin-lipped smile now a blade.
The Verfolger waited, weapons almost but not quite drawn, as if savoring the decision before it was made.
And at the edge of the hole, the silence deepened, as if the ground itself was holding its breath.
Metallgeist struck before Smith’s brain caught up.
One moment, Smith had the envelope in his hand, thumb pressing on the paper’s grit; the next, Metallgeist’s hands clamped his head like a vise. Cold, precise, the bony fingers dug into Smith’s skull—one set of knuckles pressing deep into the temples, the other sliding behind the ears and locking under the jaw.
Smith grunted, then screamed. It was high and unheroic, the kind of sound a man makes when he knows exactly what’s coming. Metallgeist hoisted him off the ground. The boots scrabbled, then kicked, lacing marks into the doctor’s shins. Blood from Smith’s nose and gums spattered onto the black uniform. Metallgeist didn’t blink.
“Do you know what this is called, Corporal?” Metallgeist asked, almost sweet. “The Iron Curtain Claw. Developed by the great Yusupov in the camps. A classic.”
Smith tried to punch, but his hands were already numb. He clawed at Metallgeist’s wrists, shredding flesh, drawing lines of blood. The Nazi’s grip never wavered. In the mask line behind them, the Eisen Verfolger watched, unmoving, the twin black lenses of their masks giving nothing away.
“Fuck you!” Smith spat. “You need me!”
Metallgeist leaned in, voice tight and hard. “I need you to die well, Corporal.”
He squeezed. Smith’s eyes bulged, the whites flooding with red. Veins in his forehead pulsed and swelled. The envelope dropped from his hand and split open, sending Reichsmarks fanning across the stone like pale confetti. His face purpled, tongue protruding, wet with blood and spit. Smith managed one last kick, but it had the force of a bad daydream.
The only noise in the tunnel was the grinding, rhythmic click of Smith’s boots against the stone, slowing with every pulse.
Metallgeist let go. Smith crumpled like a sack of used towels, a blood halo already forming around his head. For a long moment, Metallgeist just looked at the corpse, then dabbed his hands clean on the dead man’s jacket.
He turned to Der Leiter, who had not moved a muscle the entire time.
“Find another way into those tunnels,” Metallgeist said. “If the Americans survived, they will reach the belt before us. That is unacceptable.”
Der Leiter nodded, a fraction of an inch, and gestured to two Eisen Verfolger. They peeled off and began searching the rim of the collapse for a new route, methodical as surveyors.
Metallgeist walked to the edge and looked down into the abyss. Dust still drifted, catching the sickly sunlight that leaked from the blown-out ceiling. Far below, a maze of blackness, the suggestion of tunnels running everywhere. For a second, he almost smiled.
Behind him, the rest of the Verfolger formed up, ready to receive orders.
“Time is short,” Metallgeist said. “We must be precise. No theatrics, no errors.”
He shot a final, dismissive look at the dead Smith.
“Let the world remember this as the day the Reich outlasted every American delusion.”
He straightened his coat, turned, and vanished into the dust, Der Leiter and the silent ranks on his heels.
The body was left where it fell.
There was nothing left to betray.
The work of the dead is never done.
Two of the Eisen Verfolger dragged Smith’s body away from the edge, boots leaving a ragged, red trail across the floor. Blood puddled beneath him, bright and arterial, but instead of spreading, it vanished—sucked downward into a hairline fracture between the flagstones.
Metallgeist watched it go, eyes narrowed. He knelt, pressed two fingers to the stone, and lifted them to his lips. They came away wet.
Der Leiter was already barking orders in clipped, efficient German, sending Verfolger squads up both wings of the corridor. They moved fast, but not frantic. Each man had a sector, a task, a measure of ground to search. In seconds, the hall above the collapse was mapped and occupied.
Metallgeist shifted his focus to the stone itself. He traced the cracks, the way they spidered outward from the impact. He leaned low, face almost touching the ground, and listened.
A long, slow moment. The only sound was the distant boots of the searchers, then—faint, barely audible—the gurgle of water. Under the floor, a river. Old, slow, but alive.
Metallgeist let out a short, barking laugh. He gestured for two Verfolger to bring their satchels. “Here,” he said, voice sharp. “We go through the floor. There is a void below, perhaps an aqueduct. It will bring us to the Americans.”
The Verfolger knelt and began unpacking shaped charges—sticks of dark wax and heavy iron, fuses wound tight as tendons. They worked with the delicate care of surgeons, laying the charges in a ring around the place where the blood had vanished.
Der Leiter returned, boots clicking against the tile. “No surface access,” he reported. “The tunnels below are the only way.”
Metallgeist nodded, as if he’d never doubted. He opened a battered leather notebook from inside his coat—a little volume, black as tar, every page thick with Norse runes and marginalia. He ran his finger down a line, lips moving in a dry mutter.
“The Midgard serpent,” Metallgeist whispered. “The world is held together by tunnels. The Americans are rats, but they have teeth.” He smiled, all yellow. “Let them think they have won. We will be waiting.”
Der Leiter watched the fusing, the powder, the measured pace of the demolition. “Should we be cautious of collapse?”
Metallgeist shook his head. “If the Americans survive, they do us a favor and thin the herd. If they perish, we can always dig out the artifact. This is not about preservation. This is about winning.”
He closed the notebook, snapped his fingers. The Verfolger finished the last charge and stood, ready.
“Proceed,” Metallgeist said.
A Verfolger knelt, pressed a spark to the fuse. The hiss and pop was quick. In seconds, the charges roared—a low, compressed explosion, not brute force but precise as a surgical cut. The flagstones vanished, the floor dropped away, and a wave of cold, fetid air shot up from the new hole.
For a second, nothing. Then the dust cleared, revealing a shaft into blackness, the glint of running water far below.
Metallgeist grinned, exposing the gums above his teeth. “Prepare rope,” he said. “We go in after.”
Der Leiter nodded, signaled the rappel team.
Metallgeist lingered by the edge, one hand gripping the rune book. He stared down at the darkness, eyes shining. “Soon,” he whispered. “Soon, the power of Thor will belong to the Führer.”
In the silence below, the river waited.
And somewhere in that darkness, the Turnbuckle Brigade waited too.
Chapter 20 — The Grotto
The world returned all at once: a fist in the face, the taste of blood, the bone-deep ache that follows a six-foot drop onto unyielding stone. Zill came to with his cheek pressed against wet rock, one arm twisted behind his back at an angle that made his teeth sweat. He spat a mouthful of grit, groaned, and rolled over, only to see Dottie’s boot a half-inch from his nose.
She wasn’t standing—she never landed that gracefully. Instead, she’d gone down in a tangle, the steel cap of her prosthetic now dented and half off. Zill winced in sympathy and shifted, putting his good arm under himself and trying to pop upright.
“Stay still, dumbass,” Dottie said, already dragging herself upright. “You pop that shoulder out again, I’m leaving it backwards.”
He grunted, testing the joint. The pain was white and sharp, but the arm moved, more or less. He cradled it, then rotated slowly until the head of the humerus found its home with a wet, cartoonish pop. Zill almost blacked out again, but pride kept him vertical.
Bradley was next, dusting off his ruined tights and yelping at every new tear. “Great. Just great,” he hissed, holding out a strip of velvet as if it were a dead pet. “You know what these cost? And this isn’t even the worst venue I’ve played in, which says something.” He looked up at the ceiling—no, the darkness where the ceiling used to be. “Where the hell are we?”
Wildman Fowler, already on his feet, didn’t answer. He was pressed up against the wall, his fingers trailing over a pattern of shallow cuts and carvings. “Norse,” he said. “Runes. Old, but not as old as the foundation. Someone’s been down here since the war started.”
Jose Rivera moved like a man underwater, slower than usual, but still in one piece. His mask had a fresh gouge running from the temple to the jaw, revealing the brown skin and the fine silver stitches beneath. He took a step and went down hard, clutching his ankle.
Dottie was on him in an instant, knocking his hands away to prod at the swelling joint. “Sprain,” she announced. “Maybe a tear. Give me your belt.”
Rivera didn’t argue. He unwound the tattered sash from his waist and held it out.
She propped herself against the wall and with a practiced gesture, reached down to the knee of her bad leg. With a couple of brutal tugs, the joint disengaged, and she slid the prosthesis off like a greasy work boot. She balanced on her remaining limb and set to work, using the metal rod as a brace against Rivera’s shin. She wrapped the belt around, cinched it tight, and tied off the end.
She grinned at his shocked face. “Lost the real one in a tractor accident. The glass eye too. You’ll live.”
Bradley shuddered, then immediately went back to picking at his tights.
Zill tried not to stare. “That’s a nice move,” he said, voice flat. “You want to do my arm next?”
Dottie shook her head. “You’re fine, Zill. You never bruise where it matters.”
Wildman traced another set of runes, head cocked. “This isn’t a tunnel,” he said. “It’s a processional. Leads somewhere. And it’s been used—see the blackening near the floor? Old torch marks.”
Zill wiped sweat from his brow, eyes finally adjusting to the black. There was just enough glow from Bradley’s gold-plated belt and the glass in Dottie’s fake eye to make out shapes. The corridor curved, like a spiral. Water seeped down the walls, pooled at the base, and made every step a guess. In the silence, you could hear the drip, drip, drip of centuries.
“Which way?” Zill asked.
“Down is always the answer,” said Wildman, already taking point.
Bradley, for once, didn’t argue. He fell in behind, fussing at his hair and muttering about lawsuits.
Dottie looped Rivera’s arm over her good shoulder. She moved with the brawler’s confidence of someone who’d limped through worse.
Zill brought up the rear, trying not to think about how every footstep sent a current of pain through his ruined joint.
They walked for a long time, in single file, conversation dying off as the air thickened and the walls pressed closer. The tunnel forked once—left into more darkness, right into a wider, squat space with a waist-high stone ledge. Wildman ducked right, motioned for silence, and flattened against the wall.
Zill stopped next to him, ignoring the splash that soaked his socks. He looked around the corner, then turned to Dottie. “You ever seen a mausoleum with no dead in it?”
Dottie squinted, glass eye gleaming. “Only on the farm. When the pigs get loose, they’ll clean out anything, bones and all.”
“That’s not comforting,” Bradley said.
Wildman crept forward, inspecting the ledge. It was covered in more runes, deeper than before. He traced the lines, then barked out a laugh.
“What?” asked Zill.
“It’s a roster,” Wildman said. “Like a locker room wall. Names, records, matches fought. They were keeping score.”
Rivera whistled, long and low, and swept a hand along the wall of names — these people really loved their blood sports.
Dottie found a heavy iron ring bolted to the wall and gave it a tug. The stone behind it shifted, grinding open on some ancient hinge.
Wildman grinned. “Guess that’s our cue.”
Inside was a vault. The ceiling arched overhead, black with soot and dotted with the remnants of hundreds of candles. There was no casket, no treasure, just a long, narrow table lined with thin, squat jars and a heap of what looked like animal bones.
Bradley peered inside, holding his belt like a shield. “You think these are human?”
Dottie plucked a bone from the pile, gave it a quick inspection, and snapped it in half. “Sheep,” she said. “Maybe goat. Old, though. Ritual.”
Wildman moved down the length of the table, reading the jars. “Each one marked with a name and a rune for power—might, wisdom, endurance. These are tokens. For the afterlife, maybe. Or for the next round.”
Zill crossed his arms, cold now. “You think this is all just a joke? A setup for another fight?”
Wildman turned, eyes dead serious. “It’s a reminder. Every time you think the match is over, someone else is watching. Waiting for the bell.”
Bradley let out a sigh. “Okay, spooky. Now let’s get the hell out of here before the walls start talking.”
Dottie grinned. “Or before the sheep come back for revenge.”
They moved on. The corridor narrowed, then opened into a round chamber, perfectly symmetrical, with five pillars and a domed roof. In the center was a shallow pit, just big enough to fight in, or bury a man alive.
Wildman sat on the rim, then let his feet dangle over. “You ever wonder why the world keeps making monsters?” he said. “Maybe it’s because we keep giving them what they want.”
Zill bristled. “You got something to say, say it.”
Wildman looked up, all teeth. “You really want to know? I meant at least half of it when I put that gun in your face back there, because you never once looked at us like a team. You’ve been on your own crusade since the boat, and we were just extra bodies to get you there. So yeah—I wanted to see if you could handle being the last one standing.”
Zill clenched his fists. “You think I asked for this? I spent my whole life getting booked as the second banana, Wildman. You think I don’t know what it’s like to be a prop in somebody else’s show?”
Dottie raised her hand, whacked Zill’s knee with her prosthetic. “Can we not do this now? There’s a whole Nazi convention upstairs waiting for us.”
Bradley, surprisingly, broke in. “You two want to settle up, do it in a bar. When we get home.” He pointed at the far wall. “Look.”
There was a light, flickering, orange and wrong. Not electrical, but flame.
They all saw it at once.
Wildman got up, dusted off his pants. “Guess we follow the crowd.”
Dottie, for once, offered Zill a hand. He took it.
They walked in silence, every one of them thinking about the next match.
And the next audience waiting for the show.
The flame danced, even though there was no wind and no fuel to feed it.
They stood at the edge of the new corridor, all five of them, staring down the length of what looked more like a ribcage than a hallway—arches curving overhead, walls banded with black and gold. At the far end, a sconce jutted from the wall, and atop it burned a torch so bright it made everything else look grayscale.
“Somebody—or something—is down here,” Bradley said. He held his belt across his chest like a shield, the shine from the sconce refracting in the cheap rhinestones.
Dottie nodded, her glass eye catching the fire in a way that made her look half-possessed. “Question is, do we want to meet it?”
Wildman started forward. “Not a choice,” he grunted. “If Metallgeist’s behind us, I’d rather take my chances with the devil we don’t know.”
Zill grinned, despite the pain in his shoulder. “I always wondered if hell would have better booking than what we had back in Indiana.”
Rivera limped along behind Dottie, his makeshift splint clicking softly with each step. He crossed himself, then flashed a pair of devil horns at the dark — if there were demons down here, he hoped they were fans.
The corridor stretched on, and the light got weirder. Sometimes it looked blue, sometimes orange, sometimes both at once. Zill watched the flame flicker, hypnotic, and found himself thinking of the days when his only real worry was whether he’d get stuck in the semi-main event slot again.
Bradley reached the sconce first. He circled it, then poked the flame with a finger. It didn’t burn him. “Feels like plasma,” he muttered, “or maybe just a bad dream.”
Dottie sniffed the air. “No smoke.”
Wildman pressed a palm to the wall under the sconce, reading the runes by touch. “Says ‘only the chosen pass.’”
Rivera snickered soundlessly and took a small, modest bow.
The flame guttered once, then a low vibration started under their boots—a hum that built from a whisper to a rumble. At the edge of hearing, water, and lots of it.
They exchanged looks, then kept moving.
The next section of tunnel was colder, the air thick with mist. Frost climbed the walls, painting the runes with a crust of white. The floor angled downward, not enough to be slippery but just enough to make every step feel like a commitment.
Zill spoke up, voice soft. “You ever feel like we’re the last people alive?”
Wildman didn’t slow. “I’d settle for being the last ones dead.”
Dottie laughed, and the sound echoed, then got swallowed by the walls.
The water noise grew until it was a roar. The corridor ended abruptly in an open arch, and beyond it was nothing Zill had ever seen outside a nightmare or the cover of a ten-cent pulp.
A cavern, bigger than a football field, domed in slick black rock that looked more grown than carved. The ceiling dripped with stalactites, and at the far end, a waterfall crashed down a thirty-foot face into a pool so clear it looked painted on. The mist turned the air into a lens, magnifying everything and making it feel like the world was doubling in on itself.
Dottie whistled, low. “Mother of God.”
But it wasn’t the water or the cave that froze them in place.
The walls were alive—no, covered—in murals, etched straight into the stone. Giant women in furs and armor, spears as tall as trees, arrows dark as thunder. They rode stags, or wrestled wolves bigger than cattle. They killed monsters—serpents, bears, something with too many arms—and their faces wore the kind of satisfaction that never needed an audience.
Bradley stared at the ceiling, mouth hanging open. “This is… kinda beautiful?”
Rivera, wobbly on his one good leg, pointed at the mural of a woman tearing the jaw off a horned demon, then at himself, then at each of them in turn. He was right—on closer look, the monsters being killed all had details that matched: Wildman’s tattoos, Dottie’s crooked teeth, Rivera’s mask. In one corner, a blonde with a wrestler’s build suplexed a snake into a lake.
Zill blinked, unsure if it was the pain or the majesty that got him.
Wildman said, “We keep moving,” and nobody argued.
The only way across was through the pool. There was a thin, rocky spit running from shore to a small island at the center. Atop it, just visible in the waterfall’s mist, was a chest—a big one, four feet long, covered in moss and gems and what looked like a million years of grime.
Dottie pointed with her prosthetic. “I see a treasure and a trap.”
Bradley shook his head. “That’s never stopped us before.”
They waded in. The water was cold, but not as bad as the snow above. It reached Zill’s knees, then his thighs, numbing everything below the waist. Rivera kept his boots on, lips moving in silent prayer, and Dottie just stomped through like the lake had insulted her mother.
The island was slippery, sharp with broken shells and old bones. The chest itself was a monster—ironbound, crusted with rune-stones, and fitted with a lock as big as a man’s head.
Wildman examined it. “It’s a puzzle,” he said, tracing the runes. “Not a key. You move the stones to spell the right word.”
Zill asked, “Can you do it?”
Wildman shrugged. “I can try.”
He worked the runes, hands moving with speed that betrayed his nerves. Every click of the stone echoed in the cave. Zill found himself staring at the murals, feeling the weirdest sense of calm—like if he just stood here long enough, he’d get the answer to a question he’d never asked.
There was a click. The lock fell open. The chest shuddered, then the lid slid back a few inches on its own.
Dottie stepped up, planted her foot on the chest, and lifted. The lid came up, resisting at first, then popping open with a hiss of dust and frozen air.
Inside, the belt.
Not just a belt—a marvel. Solid gold, etched with Norse script, set with stones the size of eggs. It pulsed with a light all its own, throwing a pale shimmer on the faces of everyone who looked at it.
Bradley whispered, “That’s the prettiest damn thing I’ve ever seen.”
Rivera knelt, hands together, like he was in church.
Dottie grinned, wild and unhinged. “Let’s take it and run.”
But Wildman held up a hand. “Wait,” he said. “Look.”
The water around the island was swirling now, currents moving counter to the falls, all converging on the rock. A ripple, then another. The water started to bulge, lifting, forming a shape. A head. Shoulders.
And in that moment — with every eye in the Brigade fixed on the impossible shapes rising from the pool — Benjamin Bradley did the quietest thing he would ever do. He lifted the golden Megingjörð out of the chest and strapped it beneath his fatigues, cold as a debt against his skin. Then he unbuckled the All-Star World Wide Wrestling Championship from his own waist, ten years of his life in gold plate and leather, and laid it in the chest where a god’s belt had slept for a thousand years. He looked at it for one long second. Then he eased the lid down to a crack and gave the chest a small, respectful bow — one champion to another.
Only the water saw him do it.
Then, all at once, women stepped out of the water, bows already nocked and drawn, every arrow aimed dead center at the Brigade.
Zill raised both hands, very slowly. “Uh. Parley?”
Dozens of voices, all at once: “You have proven yourselves worthy. But the test is not finished.”
Dottie snorted. “That’s always the way, isn’t it?”
Wildman nodded, never taking his eyes off the nearest bow.
Bradley tried to smile. “So… you guys do autographs?”
The Valkyries didn’t laugh. They just closed in, a perfect circle of muscle and ice and stone.
Zill looked at Wildman, then at Dottie, then at the chest, its lid settled to a crack.
He wondered which would be heavier—the gold, or what came next.
The answer arrived with the ring of a dozen bowstrings pulling taut.