Dangerous Territory

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"Krista, ce n'est pas sûr là-bas." Krista, it's not safe down there.

She cried out desperately to Eren as he ran, "S'il vous plaît, sauvez-les." Please, save them.

Eren raced through the castle courtyard as more shots boomed. Seven shots. Eight, nine, ten. They were coming rapidly now, two different caliber guns. He nearly collided into Gunther Schultz as he burst through the front door of the castle and offered only a brief apology. Still, he could not run fast enough through the decadent hallways as the explosions grew louder. Bang. Bang. Bang! Bang! Louder and louder.

As he ran down the staircase, he already saw one dead body, a teen boy fallen right in front of the stairs with half his head blown off. Eren leaped over him and ran into the dungeon, skidding to a stop as he saw Kitz Woermann and Ian Dietrich reloading their guns.

"Herr Hauptmann!"

Kitz spun around at the shout. In a fluid motion he flipped closed the top break of his Webley, cocked back the hammer, and aimed. For three heart-stopping seconds, Eren honestly thought his commander was about to shoot him. However, the muzzle of the gun lowered.

"Jäger," he sneered. "I hope you weren't working with that whore."

"What? Whore?" Just then, he saw Sasha lying on the ground, multiple gunshots in her back, with blood oozing across the grimy stone floor toward the central drain. No! There were dead bodies all around, some outside of their cells, some still trapped inside. Eren smashed down his horror. "I've never seen her before. Who is she? What happened? I heard gunshots and feared it was the French Resistance."

"That's precisely who it was. We caught her trying to release the prisoners. She got five out. I shot them already," he said, pointing to the bodies on the ground. "Some gypsy barbarian ran past us. Oberleutnant Dietrich opened fire but missed her."

"She yelled, sir," Ian Dietrich said stoically as he continued to reload his gun. "That means I got her, she just isn't dead yet."

Eren felt his heart hammering frantically. How could these men talk about shooting women so casually? He thought they were honorable men, but what sort of man shoots a fleeing woman in the back? Still, he knew the words he had to say, and he tried his best to speak like a proud Nazi.

"It's quite fortunate you got here in time, Herr Hauptmann."

"Not in time. It seems a few rats already escaped."

"Some escaped? Do you know where they may have gone?" If the Germans already knew their location, he could run outside and warn Krista.

"Who knows? The females are gone. Those bitches will breed like crazy." The Webley clicked as it opened again to expose the loading chamber, and Kitz continued to reload bullets. "When exterminating rodents, you make sure the females die first. We should have killed every cunt at the start."

"But we don't know where they went?" Eren asked hesitantly. If the women escaped, that was one bit of good news.

Kitz only growled as he rammed another bullet into a chamber.

Ian turned his icy blue eyes over to the captain. "This is why I said you shouldn't have shot her. We could have forced her to tell us who was the mastermind behind this prison break."

"We don't have time to torture someone. I figured, if she knew about us leaving today, it must have been that damn postmaster who planned this. It couldn't be a woman, after all."

Eren held still, gazing again at Sasha's body. From what he learned from Krista, their group was all women, and Sasha was their leader. Kitz really was underestimating these brave ladies.