The Saga of Tanya the Merciless

Chapter 38: Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Ghost in the Machine



Harrison stared at the map pinned to his command tent wall, fingers hovering over markers showing yet another lost position. His men had started calling these new German tactics "witch-work" - the way enemy forces appeared from supposedly impassable terrain, struck in patterns that defied conventional strategy, then melted away before artillery could bracket them.

"Sir." His aide placed another report on the desk. "Third Battalion lost contact an hour ago."

The paper crumpled in Harrison's fist. Weeks of hunting deserters had taught him to read German movements like a book. But this... this was like trying to read smoke. No proper formations. No predictable responses to engagement. Just chaos wrapped in a rifleman's precision.

"Get me Command." The words tasted like defeat. "Tell them we need-"

Static burst from the radio. Through the crackle came a sound that made both men freeze - a German patrol singing. Not the usual military cadences, but something raw and wild that made Harrison's skin crawl. His aide crossed himself.

"Jesus Christ," the younger man whispered. "What's happening to them?"

Harrison knew. He'd seen it in the tribal regions, years ago. When civilization's veneer cracked and something older emerged. Something that remembered how to hunt.

---

Gefreiter Klein adjusted the dosage in his syringe with mechanical precision. The chemicals would optimize his performance, strip away doubt, make him perfect. And yet...

He looked down at the letter he'd been writing. "Dearest Anna." That was as far as he'd gotten. His hand could shape the words, but they felt hollow as empty shell casings. He remembered his daughter's face, remembered loving her, but the emotion was academic now. Like studying battlefield reports of a war fought by someone else.

"Zeit." [Time.] Unterscharführer Weber's voice carried the same plastic certainty they all shared. Klein tucked the unfinished letter away. They had a mission - observe the new German tactics that were bloodying the British so effectively. Command wanted to understand why imperfection was suddenly proving so lethal.

The patrol moved like liquid mercury through the morning mist. Each step calculated, each movement refined beyond human limitation. Klein's enhanced senses catalogued everything with crystalline clarity - the weight of his rifle (4.1 kilograms), the wind speed (3.2 meters per second), the probability of enemy contact within the next hour (72.3%).

They found the aftermath of Tanya's latest raid - British equipment scattered like broken toys, boot prints in impossible places, shell casings that told stories of shots no sane soldier would attempt. Klein analyzed it all with chemical detachment while something else, something buried beneath layers of optimization, screamed.

"Analyse." Unterscharführer Weber knelt by a fallen British soldier. The man's wounds spoke of close combat, of desperate hand-to-hand fighting. Not the clean killing they'd been engineered for. The British soldier's eyes were wide with an emotion that Klein's enhanced mind categorized but couldn't truly grasp anymore - terror.

A sound drifted through the trees - German voices singing. Not military songs, but something older. Something that made Klein's optimized muscles twitch with forgotten instincts. For a fraction of a second, his hand trembled.

Unterscharführer Weber noticed. Of course he noticed. Nothing escaped their enhanced perception. "Stabilität?" [Stability?]

"Optimal." The lie came out smooth as silk. The chemicals made it impossible to feel guilt about deception. They made it impossible to feel anything except...

Except.

Except sometimes, in the spaces between heartbeats, in the moments between doses, something stirred. Something that remembered writing letters that meant something. Something that recognized the horror of being able to weep for your victims while feeling nothing at all.

Gefreiter Klein's hand brushed the photograph in his breast pocket. Anna's face smiled up at him with an emotion he could name but no longer touch. The picture was tactically irrelevant, scientifically meaningless, strategically useless. He should discard it.

He couldn't.

The patrol continued its mission, each man moving with inhuman grace. Perfect soldiers performing perfect reconnaissance. But somewhere, buried beneath chemical precision and calculated responses, ghosts stirred in the machinery of their optimization.

They were human, after all. That was the true horror.

The horror wasn't that they'd lost their humanity. The horror was that it was still there, screaming behind eyes that could weep but couldn't care, behind hands that could write letters full of words that meant nothing, behind minds that could remember love but couldn't feel it.

The horror was that they were still men.

Unterscharführer Weber signaled a halt. Another German song echoed through the forest, closer now. Wild. Unfettered. Free.

For just a moment, Gefreiter Klein's hand trembled again. Not from chemical imbalance or tactical uncertainty. From something else. Something that stirred in the hollow spaces where his soul used to live.

Something that remembered how to sing.

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