When the guard was done kicking, he looked up. Met her strange gaze. His eyes were flat gray—like a winter horizon. He almost looked as if he was the one who died. Not the pile of fabric and skin, so still at his feet.
The guard trudged over to the barrack door, his hand gripping his rifle strap. “Why aren’t you with the others?” he barked.
Yael’s mouth was too dry to tell him that Dr. Geyer ordered her not to work in the sorting hall, in case the extra stress interfered with whatever chemical reaction he was trying to coax out of her body.
She could not speak, but her instincts did. They shouted inside her—iron-loud and clanging—the way they always did when danger drew close.—X MARKS THE SURVIVOR SHOW HIM SHOW HIM—
Yael offered her arm.
“‘121358ΔX’?” He read the numbers out loud. “Geyer’s pet. Should’ve known from the look of you.”
The guard spit into the leftover snow.
—DON’T MOVE HE MIGHT STRIKE—
Yael’s back was to the door, braced for whatever came next. She felt every one of the wood’s splinters digging into her rib cage, her spine. Over the shambly, slanting roofs she watched the smoke spewing, blotting out the sun.
But the guard did not slap or kick. He did not catch her by the scruff and drag her to those brick buildings no one returned from. Instead his hand slipped away from his rifle strap. “The doctor will see you now. Follow me.”
Yael trailed him with quick steps. Away from what-was-once-the-Babushka, away from the hungry black smoke.
But there were some things that would not be left behind. Her friend’s magic, miracle words haunted her ears. Rolled inside the knot of her chest. Burned in her veins.
You are special.
You are going to change things.
When she came back, with Dr. Geyer’s wicked concoction roiling beneath her skin, the Babushka’s body was gone. But the doll was still there, safely nestled in the straw of her mattress. When all the others were finally asleep, Yael took it out and pressed it to her chest. For the whole night.
And every dark night to come.
CHAPTER 6
NOW
MARCH 10, 1956
OLYMPIASTADION GERMANIA, THIRD REICH KILOMETER 0
The stadium was full and roaring. Yells, one hundred thousand strong, wove together to drown out the once-morning-sleet, now-afternoon-rain. Yael stood at the center of it all, her heart dancing hard to the tempo of the crowd’s excitement. Drops rolled down her suit of treated leather, gathering into her armband. The crimson fabric swelled like a bandage heavy with blood. It started a long, slow slip down Yael’s sleeve.
She didn’t bother fixing it.
The crowd was wet, too, but its cheers were on fire, pouring over Yael and the other racers. They stood in a straight line. Twenty faces—German and Japanese, ages thirteen to seventeen, mostly male—turned up into the storm, toward the Führer’s box.
The man who made this world was barely visible. A silhouette etched behind tempest-glazed glass. Yael stared hard at the figure. Toes popping, black rising, hate eating her veins like battery acid.
Half a field of grass, track, and seats. A centimeter of glass. These were the only things that separated the Führer from Yael (and the blade slipped inside her boot—weapons were forbidden on the Axis Tour, yet everyone carried them because everyone else carried them). But there was no getting up there. If there was a way, Reiniger would’ve found it. He’d spent hours hunched over roster lists and blueprints, trying to find cracks in the armor of the Führer’s SS security detail. She’d spent almost as many hours helping him, elbows pinning down the curls of thin paper, her neck sweating as she leaned under the hot lamp.
“Why can’t I just dress up as a maid and infiltrate the Chancellery?” she’d asked after a particularly frustrating training session on the Zündapp. Her leg wept from road rash, and her heart quivered at the thought of 20,780 more kilometers on the contraption. “Wouldn’t that be simpler?”
Reiniger didn’t even glance up at her. He flipped to the next blueprint. “It has to be in public. In front of the cameras. With lots of witnesses.”
“Why?”
“This isn’t an assassination.” Reiniger’s beard stubble glistened silver in the harsh carve of lamplight. “It’s an execution. If Hitler dies behind the walls of the Chancellery, it will be covered up. Made to look like a sudden illness or a bad fall down the stairs. Another will just take his place. Nothing will change. The National Socialists will keep grinding the bones of innocents through labor camps to feed their future war machine. People need to be watching when the Führer dies. They need to know the resistance is out there. They need to know they’re not alone.”
Not alone. It was a cruel irony that this was the message she had been chosen to deliver. She, the loneliest of all. The girl without a people. Without a face. The girl who was no one. Who could be everyone.
But she knew Reiniger was right. There would be no dressing up as a maid. No cyanide slipped into his crystal glass of mineral water. The Führer’s death was to be a loud, screaming thing. A broadcast of blood over the Reichssender.
“But what about during Chancellery Chat?” she pressed. (The road rash really hurt.) “There are cameras then.”
“Prerecorded. They’d never air it.” He waved his hand. “It needs to be live. His death is the signal all the resistance cells will be watching for. The moment you strike is the moment we mobilize.”
This—winning the Axis Tour, attending the Victor’s Ball in Tokyo—was the only way.
Rain smeared Yael’s vision as she watched the box. The Führer’s outline melted, indistinguishable from the glass. All she could see were the colors of the Axis banners, draped over the balcony. Emperor Hirohito’s rising sun, red and white. Hitler’s swastika watched back through the storm, an unblinking eye.
“Welcome!” a male voice belted through the stadium. The crowd’s cheers fell to a chatter, then a hush. Air sizzled with the power of the speakers. The soothe of rain.
“Our honored Führer and the Emperor Hirohito welcome you to the tenth Axis Tour. Ten of the Fatherland’s finest youths have been selected from our most rigorous training programs. They will race alongside Japan’s ten strongest. These racers will endure the desert sands of Africa, the jagged peaks of the Indian subcontinent, the tangled jungles of Asia, the waves of the Pacific. Only the hardiest and purest will survive. Only the strongest will win.”
More cheers. More rain. The medal of Adele’s past victory hung heavy around Yael’s neck. She stood straight, didn’t take her eyes off the Reich banner’s twisted cross.
“Racing in the name of the Fatherland, we have Victor Adele Wolfe.”
Yael stepped forward. She smiled with her cheekbones, the way Adele always did in the newsreels, her right arm hinging up in an automatic “Heil Hitler!” Her fingertips pointed toward the box.
The voice went on, crackling above the roar of the crowd. “Victor Luka Löwe.”
A tall, powerful frame joined Yael’s left side, his own arm snapping into a plank-straight “Heil Hitler!” He’d stood apart from the other racers even before he stepped out. His jacket was brown, where all others were black, and battered, where all others were new. It was the same jacket he’d worn in the last two Axis Tours. His signature look.
Luka Löwe. The boy in the brown jacket. The most threatening of her competition. Yael had spent more than a few weeks mulling over his file. Copies of school records, his birth certificate, his Hitler Youth performance booklet, a complete history of racing times, family genealogy, transcripts of his many Reichssender interviews. Luka Löwe’s life inked onto paper and into her memory.
Name: Luka Wotan Löwe
Age: 17
Height: 185 cm
Weight: 92 kg
Bio: Born in Hamburg, Germany, to Kurt and Nina Löwe. His father served in the Reich’s elite motorcycle troop, the Kradschützen. Luka joined the Hitler Youth at age ten and dedica
ted his passions to learning all he could about motorcycles. He has competed in the Axis Tour for the past four years, with one win at the age of fourteen. He is the youngest victor in the history of the race.
The boy’s shoulder was mere centimeters away. Though they weren’t touching, Yael could feel the tense of Luka’s muscles. His breath sounded the same: stretched, ready to snap.
“Victor Löwe,” she muttered through the edge of her lips.
Luka did not turn, but she felt his eyes peel over her anyway. “Fräulein.”
Fräulein. That word—the weight behind it—whet Yael’s own blade-breath. Her armband kept slipping down her forearm, sliding over the covered ink wolves. Coming to rest around her wrist. A fabric manacle.
More, victor-less German names were called. As they stepped forward, their files flashed through Yael’s memory. Pages and pages of perfect childhoods. Boys born in the Fatherland. All of them Aryan, most of them fatherless (the cost of victory is always high). Loyal members of the Hitler Youth.
Even their names blended together: Kurt and Karl. Lars and Hans. Rolf and Ralf and Dolf. Only one stood out: Hans Muller: 15. Placed fifth in last year’s Axis Tour. His times have drastically improved in the qualifying races. Possibly dangerous underdog. By the time the final Reich name was called, Yael was only half listening.
“Felix—”
Yael started. That name wasn’t in the racers’ files. Except for…
“—Wolfe, who has recently joined our roster due to Dirk Hermann’s unfortunate accident.”
This time she actually turned her head and looked—down the line of rain-jeweled noses and chins. Felix was staring back. He was the same person from the photographs: square jaw, prism-pale hair, an extra bump on the bridge of his nose. But in those pictures—the ones Adele framed in silver and displayed in her flat—Felix was always happy. Always smiling.
Now his mouth was pinched, the same way his sister’s had been during their standoff the night before. His eyes—the same death-cold Wolfe blue—cut through the rain. Into Yael.
Not without you.
This was why he’d left so easily the night before.…
Yael tore her gaze from his. Back to the wet, wet banners.
The announcer moved on. “Racing for the glory of Imperial Japan, we have Victor Tsuda Katsuo.”
Name: Tsuda Katsuo
Age: 17
Height: 173 cm
Weight: 66 kg
Bio: Sent by his parents to a training camp outside Tokyo once they realized his talent for motorcycle racing. His abilities attracted the attention of his peers and instructors alike. He is rarely seen without a group of followers. Won his first Axis Tour at age fifteen. He is now facing immense pressure in the homeland to win the Double Cross.
Katsuo stepped forward and gave a stiff bow; flecks of rain burst fast from his jet-black hair. His own Iron Cross swung out, landing with an audible thud to his chest when he straightened again.
Katsuo. The third and final victor in this score line. In his final year of racing, vying for the Double Cross and whatever favors Emperor Hirohito dangled before him like a carrot on a stick. He was another racer Yael would have to watch closely.
More names. More highlights from Henryka’s files on files.
Ono Ryoko: 16. The only other girl in the race. Emerged on Japan’s racing circuit after Adele’s victory.
Watabe Takeo: 16. Placed third in last year’s Axis Tour. Attended the same training camp as Katsuo and seems to defer to the victor. Hides a Higonokami blade on his person and has a reputation for slashing contestants’ tires.
Oguri Iwao: 16. Second year in the Axis Tour. Has a fondness for drugging food and drink. Guard your provisions with care. Also attended Katsuo’s training camp and seems devoted to him.
Yamato. Taro. Hiraku. Isamu. Masaru. Norio.
Most of them were younger. First-years. No threat.
“Racers, proceed to your vehicles.”
The Zündapps sat half a field away. Custom-fitted bikes straight from the factory (to ensure quality and prevent any illegal modifications): shiny chrome, slick slate-colored paint, panniers packed with camping supplies for the nights between checkpoints. Yael’s motorcycle was parked ahead of the others, followed closely by Luka’s and Katsuo’s bikes. A head start for the victors. (Nothing more than a formality. A few meters hardly made a difference when one had thousands of kilometers to endure.)
It took Luka only half a stride to catch up to Yael as she crossed the grass. She could hear his Iron Cross beating against his chest as he drew close. Thud, thud, thud, thud. Constant as a heartbeat. Deep as drums of war.
“Making this a family affair, Fräulein?”
Yael—uncertain how to answer—pinched her lips and kept walking. Her boots left scars of mud in the sopping field.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten,” Luka went on, “what you did.”
Yael had no idea what Luka was talking about. But she was supposed to. She read that much on the boy’s face.
Adele Wolfe and Luka Löwe shared a history. One the newsreels never managed to catch. One that never made it into the wide-spaced type of Henryka’s transcriptions. And from the sound of Luka’s voice—the stab in his stare—it wasn’t a pretty one.
Yael pressed her lips harder, walked faster. As if she could escape it. As if she weren’t about to ride neck and neck with it across entire continents.
Slosh, slosh, slosh, slosh. Another racer was beside her, wallowing through mud of his own. Not Luka. He’d fallen behind, taken her silence for what it was.
“Ad…” Felix’s voice was as crooked as his twice-broken nose as he caught her by the elbow. “Please—for the love of God—forget this, come home.”
“Why are you here?” Yael hissed under her breath. Luka, Katsuo, the others—she was prepared to deal with them. But Felix—Felix was a footnote. A few estranged paragraphs in the novel of Adele’s past. She hadn’t planned for him to show up again.
“You know why.” His fingers grew tight, just under her armband. Her skin-wolves cried under pinching leather.
“Then how are you here?” she asked. “You weren’t even in the qualifying races.”
“You have nothing left to prove. Everything to lose,” said Felix the footnote. Felix: who knew Adele’s past better than libraries of pages could fill. Felix: now the most dangerous face in this race.
Yael wrenched her elbow away. She was walking on asphalt now, trailing mud in the shape of her boot soles. She grabbed her helmet from the seat, cinched its strap under her chin, fitted her goggles, and mounted the bike. This Zündapp felt almost like the KS 601 she’d used for training. Just sharper, fresher, stronger.
The motorcycle’s engine purred as she kicked it to life. During training, this sound had always centered her, brought her mission, the road ahead, into focus. But today even the hum of her bike’s gears didn’t put Yael at ease. Every eye in the stadium was on her. Girl: glossy with rain and black leather riding gear. Her boots heavy on the gears. Eager. Ready.
Every eye was on her, but she felt only two pairs. The ones that were digging, digging, digging at her back. Mining a past she didn’t hold inside her memories. Creating holes she couldn’t fill.
Don’t think I’ve forgotten what you did.
You have nothing left to prove. Everything to lose.
She might look like Adele. But she could never be Adele. Yael was a cobweb version, composed of gaps and strings and fragile nothings.
A different voice slid through the speakers now—his voice. The one that raised armies, toppled kingdoms. The one that sent the entire stadium into a hush. Even the raindrops hung back in the sky; the air cleared into a spitting drizzle.
There was only him. The voice she had to silence.
She hadn’t just been born to do it. She’d been created to. By his needles. His men.
“Take your marks.”
The Führer didn’t know it yet, but he was about to sign his own death wa
rrant. (And cheer while doing it.) Yael gripped the handlebars so tight her gloves felt about to split.
“Get set.”
Behind her the nineteen motorcycles revved and roared.
“Go!”
Yael went.
The wind tore ice across her cheeks. Her face was so numb, so cold, but the wolves burned under her skin. Howling secrets. Hidden things anyone could pick up if they listened closely enough.
Felix and Luka… they had sharp ears.
Yael would not let them hear.
CHAPTER 7
NOW
MARCH 10, 1956
THE OUTSKIRTS OF GERMANIA KILOMETER 19
The rain kept falling in hard, relentless sheets, hounding the racers all the way through Germania, past lines of drenched spectators and limp Axis flags, down the autobahn. Yael’s fist gripped the throttle. Tighter. Faster than she probably should have been going on such slick roads.
But the others behind her were going just as fast. A glance over her shoulder showed them looming. Luka and Katsuo fanned out like unwanted wings. Their leather and chrome shredding through her rear tire spray. And beyond them—seventeen hungry faces.
All of them out for blood, like Felix said, and hers was the first throat.
Causing deliberate harm to racers was forbidden in the Axis Tour’s rules (to keep it from turning into a bloodbath), but this never really seemed to stop harm from happening. Every year, racers dropped out with stab wounds, mysterious cases of food poisoning, road rash via bike sabotage. The officials usually turned a blind eye, writing accident on the incident reports. After all, this was a race of tooth and claw. Only the strongest survived. Only the vicious could win.
But there was a line. Five years ago a boy was disqualified from the tour because he’d been foolish enough to stab another racer in front of a Reichssender camera. (Film evidence wasn’t something the race officials could brush under the rug.) Any attacks witnessed by officials or Reichssender cameras demanded retribution. In extreme cases—such as the stabbing—the attacker was disqualified. Most of the time, however, offending racers were penalized an extra hour. This never stopped the backbiting, just pushed it under the surface, where it lurked, hidden until just the right moment.