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Albany, New York, March 2, 2019
Chapter 1
The first Brightside Pamphlet was published on November nineteenth, 1932, it was titled: No good man left unslain. Its author, Mr. Brightside, quickly became the most infamous resistance agent in history, and the target of the ire of Robert Braum, the second most powerful Nazi in all of Germany when he held power in the 1930s and 1940s.
Even decades later, Brightside’s writings were vital to the Resistance’s cause, his influence was undeniable. But, there was just one problem, after the German third Reich had won the Second World War in 1947, and set up political puppet parties in non conquered countries, they had begun to track down copies of the Brightside pamphlets to destroy them and their ideals once and for all. The American Nazi Party was no exception. Over the years since the war, they’d gained a prominent foothold in American politics, and held over half the seats in both houses of congress.
The ANP as they were most known had a special hatred of these pamphlets, the biggest obstacle that kept them from seizing full control of the United States government, the resistance, loved quoting Brightside’s pamphlets criticizing Robert Braum, and applying those criticisms to the leader of the ANP, Charles Pherson. Soon the resistance and the Nazis began to race each other to find the remaining copies of the pamphlets to either distribute or destroy them.
This was what Knight was reminding herself of as she examined the case containing the only remaining copy of the first pamphlet. The case wasn’t that big, only a one and a half foot cube, but it was made of bulletproof glass, with no visible seams. Knight’s glass cutters wouldn’t go through it, and she couldn’t carry a giant glass cube through Albany. It seemed that the best option was for her to wait until the auctioneer called lot thirteen, and steal it then. Only problem was that the entire auction house was teaming with ANP members who wanted to get their hands on the pamphlet just as much as Knight did.
“The auction will begin momentarily. Please make your way to your seats.” A voice called out through the auction houses’s loudspeaker system.
“Plan?” Knight’s partner Rowan asked her though the ear piece they were both wearing.
“I’ll cut the power when Franklin calls lot thirteen, bid until you win, but I’ll be able to grab it in the chaos.” Knight said, already making her way down from the third floor gallery where the pamphlet was, to the door leading to the staff areas she knew was located on the ground floor, just next to the auctioneer and crowd of rich collectors. As she walked, Knight turned her suit jacket inside out, so that she looked just like one of the auction’s numerous staff members. Instinctively, she checked her pockets to make sure her lockpicking set and wire cutters were still there. They were, along with a package of gum, a crumpled receipt from the local bar, and her spare pair of motorcycle gloves.
“What’s the bidding limit?” Rowan questioned, they already knew that Thomas would be furious if they overbid and actually had to buy the pamphlet if Franklin wasn’t able to go through with his part of the plan. Both they and Knight knew that since the auction house was neutral, with no leanings toward the ANP or resistance, it was anyone’s game to see who could get the pamphlet.
“Tech’s budget’s about a hundred thousand a year minus salaries, so uh, don’t go over too much.” Knight answered them as she made her way down the final flight of stairs. It only took her a second to plan out her next steps.
She was currently standing on the opposite side of the auction house from the access door she needed. On her left was another gallery displaying auction items. To her right was the bar when Rowan was finishing their drink. Directly between Knight and the access door was the seating for the auction and auctioneer podium, oh, and half of the ANP’s high command and several SS officers visiting from the Third German Reich. This was going to be a bit harder than she had originally thought.
Chapter 2
To almost everybody in the universe, McKenna Pherson’s life seemed to be perfect. Her father was the most influential person in America, besides maybe President Walter. She spent her days in Albany’s Governor’s mansion, which, fun fact, was the second largest private residence in America. Her nights were filled with parties and ANP meetings, and those were filled with quite a few cute boys.
However, McKenna was still looked down upon by members of the ANP. Nineteen years ago, the well respected president of the ANP, Charles Pherson, had run off and impregnated his wife’s black servant girl, the girl had been unable to care for the child herself, and called Mr. Pherson to court to try and get him to take custody of the child. She had won and forced the infant child on the couple. McKenna wasn’t as dark as her mother, some members had mused on more than one occasion, and her hair wasn’t as curly, she looked a bit like her fathers dead sister had years ago. But almost as soon as those thoughts began to form in their minds, they reminded themselves that the girl wasn’t even aryan, she was less than them, there was no reason to feel any compassion for her. No less than they felt for the jews.
But, McKenna wasn’t one to stand by and let them gossip about her, she was going to give them something to gossip about. In the minds of quite a few younger ANP members, and even more older members, she was a beauty who might be theirs with a few compliments and drinks. McKenna knew this, and was more than willing to use her charm to her advantage. Men who were comfortable and slightly drunk around her, tended to say things that they should, secrets that could be used against them by someone cunning enough. That someone just so happened to be the daughter of the ANP president.
In the three hours she had been at the auction, she had already added two more unfortunate souls to her blackmail list. Debra Hines, and Lewis Garder. Both respected members of the ANP, both with plenty to lose if anyone happened to learn that Debra had poisoned her first husband to gain his fortune, or that Lewis had slept with several young SS officers while still married to his current wife. The next day, they would both receive a black envelope in the mail, with a letter inside consisting of words cut from old newspapers and magazines.
McKenna was sitting at the bar, sipping a martini bought for her by one Captain James Heinz, when she saw the waiter enter. She didn’t usually pay attention to the waitstaff, but the waiter seemed different. They seemed much younger than their coworkers, and had five separate piercings in each ear, along with being the only waiter wearing gloves. The waiter had also grabbed a bracelet off Georgia Shanko that undoubtedly cost several thousand dollars. Intrigued, McKenna kept an eye on the odd waiter as she finished her martini and took her seat beside her parents, right before the auction began.
“Good evening all, seeing that everyone is seated, we will begin the auction.” The auctioneer declared, but, despite never meeting him before, he seemed off to McKenna. The suit he was wearing was clearly a size too big, and his voice was different from the one that made the announcements, despite the fact that she had clearly seen the auctioneer calling everyone to their seats only moments before.
However, she didn’t say anything, if this was a scheme by the resistance, McKenna wasn’t going to interfere, she viewed the resistance the same way that she viewed the ANP, as long as neither inhibited her ability to blackmail people, she wouldn’t interfere with their operations.
“Here is lot number one, a pearl, ruby, and silver necklace that belonged to the late Martha Washington, who was gifted it by the Marquis de Lafayette, we will begin bidding at eighty thousand dollars. Do I hear eighty thousand?” The auctioneer asked. The bidding on the treasure continued until it was sold to one Martian Shanko, the husband of the woman the strange waiter had stolen the bracelet from. Well if he was rich enough to buy a necklace that was gifted to the wife of America’s first president by french royalty, he wasn’t going to miss one diamond bracelet.
As lot numbers three and four were being auctioned off to the highest bidders, McKenna watched the waiter make their way from the side of the auction house where they had started to an access door located on the opposite side.
“Lot number five is a motorcycle used on the eastern front during the second world war, we will begin bidding at seven hundred dollars.” Announced the auctioneer. McKenna had been eyeing the motorcycle for a while now, she had always wanted one from the second world war.
“Do I hear six hundred?” The auctioneer’s question was answered with nothing but silence. None of the ANP members wanted it, so McKenna had a feeling that if she waited, she could buy the motorcycle for much less than what it was actually worth.
“Five Hundred?” The auctioneer asked again, answered with silence yet again.
This went on, until he finally called out: “Fifty dollars? Does anybody want this for fifty bucks?” That’s when McKenna raised her hand.
“Sold to the lady in the back!”
Chapter 3
After what felt like hours of hanging around the auction house, Knight finally reached the access door, and promptly realized that she needed a four digit code or a key card to enter. Fuck. Right before she was going to try and hack the keypad, an actual waiter walked past with a tray full of champagne, so Knight just swiped poor Anthony Henderson’s key card and let herself in.
The inner workings of the auction house were a stark contrast from the auction house floor. Where the walls had been covered in murals and flawless white paneling, were now replaced with industrial metal and chipping white paint. The floors morphed from marble into concrete, and the light became simple bulbs inlay in the ceiling versus elaborate chandeliers.
According to the blueprints Knight had seen a few hours earlier, the main electric panel was located one floor above her. She needed to cut the electricity right when Franklin, posing as the auctioneer, would sell the pamphlet to Rowan. Knight would grab the briefcase containing the pamphlet during the ensuing confusion, and she would go back to base, while Rowan and Franklin took alternative routes to throw off any ANP members following them.
The stairs were to her right at the end of the hallway. But, just as Knight had swiped the stolen key card, a burly security guard with a name tag telling the world that his name was Carl, exited, and immediately noticed that Knight was not Anthony Henderson.
“What are you doing here?” He demanded.
Knight answered him with an uppercut to the jaw, throwing the man against the cinderblock wall, and then pushed his shoulders down, so his head hit the concrete floor, knocking him unconscious. She then grabbed a roll of duct tape, off a utility cart that had been left in the hallway, and bound Carl’s hands and feet together, before tearing a final strip, and sticking it over his mouth. Knight dragged him into a storage room, and locked him inside. Carl’s coworkers would find him before he died of starvation…probably.
She quickly climbed the stairs up to the second floor of the auction house. The utility room with the electric panel was the fourth door on the right…or was it the left.
“Shit.” Knight hissed, looking around at the signs on the door, hoping that they might provide her answer.
The only thing on the signs were the door numbers, which wasn’t helpful. From where she was, Knight could hear the faint echo of Franklin introducing lot number ten. The Brightside pamphlet was lot thirteen, she had to hurry. With no better option, Knight decided to just try a door and hope for the best.
She decided to try the right door, hoping that it was in fact, the right door. Knight placed her hand on the metal handle of the door and turned it, to reveal a break room full of the actual waitstaff of the auction house enjoying coffee, however, near the back of the room, there was a closet with a sign telling nobody to enter because it housed the electric panel. Given that this was pretty on par for Knight’s luck, she decided to just go with it, instead of trying to find another way to access the panel.
The waiters in the break room looked quizzically at the person standing in the doorway, so Knight gave them the first excuse for her presence that popped into her mind.
“The basement is having electrical issues, so management told me to come up here and check the panel.” She declared, holding up her lockpicking set and wire cutters as proof. None of the waiters looked at the tools Knight was holding up too closely, and grunted their assent while making a path for Knight to get to the electrical panel.
When she got to the panel, Knight realized that it wasn’t very complex, she could easily shut off the entire auction house’s electricity with just a few wires cut. Only problem was that Franklin had just sold lot twelve, so she pretended to inspect the panel, until the magic words filtered through the flimsy walls from the auction.
“Lot number thirteen, the only remaining copy of the first Brightside pamphlet, No Good Man Left Unslain. It was published in Berlin in 1932. Bidding starts at ninety thousand, do I hear ninety thousand?” Franklin did in fact hear ninety thousand, and Knight began to snip wires as Rowan and Charles Pherson engaged in a bidding war for a pamphlet that they both had very different uses for. Eventually Knight cut the wire that controlled the power in the main auction area, and Franklin’s mic fell silent, and Knight knew that it was now or never.
As Franklin and Rowan grabbed the pamphlet from its case and shoved it into a briefcase, Knight ran out the access door on the second floor, and vaulted over the low wall that surrounded the viewing galleries and down onto the main auction floor.
She could hear the gasps of the various ANP members of “The Knight!”, but she gave them no heed. Once Knight dashed over to Franklin, shoving aside anyone in her way, he slipped the briefcase into her hand, and both he and Rowan ran for their motorcycles, leaving Knight alone in the middle of a chaotic auction house…and that’s when the lights flickered back on.
Knight was alone, in the middle of a group of people who wanted her dead, and holding a briefcase that contained one of the most important documents to the resistance cause. So she did the only logical thing, yelled the resistance motto “Sic semper tyrannis”, and ran out of the auction house as fast as physically possible, stopping only to flip off Charles Pherson, who sputtered a threat at Knight’s back, and yelled for guards to chase her.
Knight continued running over to the alley beside the auction house, and ducked behind a dumpster. Earlier that afternoon, she’d left the supplies she would need for her mission there, a backpack, her motorcycle, and motorcycle helmet. In one fluid motion, she opened the briefcase, grabbed the pamphlet, and shoved it into her backpack. After securing her helmet, Knight revered her motorcycle, and got ready for her favorite part of the mission, the high speed motorcycle chase.
Chapter 4
As the Knight made her dramatic exit from the auction house, McKenna slipped out of the crowd, and into the maze of hallways that the public was never meant to enter. She’d been to the auction house hundreds of times before, and had the foresight to know that the resistance would never pass up a chance to steal a Brightside pamphlet, so she had stashed some of her normal clothes in a rarely used staff bathroom. The ANP would be focusing all of their resources on finding the Knight, and nobody would miss her for a few hours.
A waiter approached McKenna as she mentally determined how far away she was from her bag full of clothes. Before he could say anything, she pressed a hundred dollar bill into his palm. The waiter nodded at her, and kept walking as though nothing had ever happened. That was the nice thing about being the daughter of one of the richest men in the country, money could make people forget things.
As she rounded the final turn, she could hear muffled cries coming from one of the storage rooms. Looking inside, McKenna discovered a large security guard with his hands and feet bound with duct tape. He tried to cry out to her, but the piece of duct tape covering his mouth stopped him. McKenna glanced at him, then turned her back on him and continued down the hallway, leaving the door to the storage room open. She wasn’t going to interfere with the resistance, as long as they left her alone, she’d leave them alone.
At the end of the hallway, the open loading bay door bathed the chipping walls and scuffed floor in light from Albany’s many streetlights. Right before the loading bay door, there was a staff bathroom that nobody ever used, and McKenna ducked in there. Her duffel was still there, it always was. She pulled out the clothes she’d stashed there for future use, and headed into a stall to get changed. Off came the snug red mermaid gown, the silk ruined from snagging on the passage’s rough wall, and on went an acid washed black hoodie, jeans, and sneakers.
When she emerged from the stall, McKenna caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, her make up was still in place, not smeared at all, but her hair was a mess. The elegant bun was falling apart, curls going everywhere. She sighed and pulled out the bobby pins that were still trying to secure it. Her curls didn’t hang too far past her shoulders, but they somehow made her seem more…approachable, and less dangerous. Like she always said, the best disguise was innocence. With a quick smile in the mirror, McKenna grabbed a backpack with her equipment and headed out to her motorcycle.
Chapter 5
Jen had been waiting at the bar for hours for her friend to show up. To be fair, she used the term “friend” very loosely. She and Knight only ever spoke because they were the only resistance heads the same ages, well roughly. Enoch was in his early thirties, and was married with a kid, so he was never up to a late night bar visit. Green was wound up too tight, she couldn’t have been older than twenty five, but she seemed determined to act like an old lady who was constantly shocked that the youth weren’t perfect little angels. And Lewin, well, nobody’d ever seen the man. Knight was convinced that he wasn’t real, and Thomas had invented him so he didn’t have to pay another head’s salary*.
The bar’s door swung open, and Knight entered. She’d changed out of her waiter disguise, and into her normal clothes: a band hoodie, black ripped jeans, and doc martens.
Knight joined Jen at her table and flagged down one of the few waitresses.
“What can I get you two?”
“Two beers, whatever you’ve got is fine, and a pack of cigarettes.”
“Alright, oh, Knight, you’re banned from using the jukebox without paying. One more time and you’ll be banned.”
“Fuck.”
Once the waitress walked away, Jen recognized her as Lydia Cuber, the bar’s owner. She and Knight didn’t really get on, especially when it came to Knight’s unauthorized use of the bar’s jukebox.
“Who’s paying, you or me?” was the first thing Jen said to Knight after Cuber left.
“Some poor bastards’s family jewels.” Knight produced a rose gold and pink diamond bracelet from her pocket and slid it across the well worn table to Jen, who looked quizzically at the single piece that had probably cost more money than she’d made in ten years.
“This is real?”
“Do Nazis wear fakes?”
“Take that as a yes.”
Soon a waitress showed up with their drinks and cigarettes, and the conversation turned towards tonight’s mission.
“So the lights turned back on?”
“For some reason, I have no clue why, I pretty much cut every wire on the electric panel I could find.” Knight shrugged.
“They might have had another one?”
“Doubt it, the blueprints only showed one panel, but it wasn’t in the place it was supposed to be.”
“Strange” Jen muttered, she had just confirmed with Green that those were in fact the correct blueprints. “What happened after the ANP got yet another lucky break?”
“I ran for my bike, like I would’ve done if everything had gone to plan. No way in hell I’m gonna be caught. SS chased after me like usual.” Knight took a draw on her cigarette then added, “They didn’t follow me into the desert, guess they finally realized that they never stand a chance in those streets”
“Anyone notice that you weren’t a waiter?”
“One did, she was about our age, darker than most of the Nazis, almost looked like the secret keeper from what I know of them. No clue why the secret keeper would be at an ANP function. I’ve never dealt with them directly, but from what I’ve heard, they know their way around this side of Albany.”
“I’ll make sure to take another look at their file, from what I remember from the last time an agent got blackmailed, the secret keeper only started a couple of years ago- about the same time you did now that I think about it, Knight- and they’ve never been caught.”
Chapter 6
As she neared the Crow’s nest bar, McKenna cut the engine on her motorcycle, and flipped up the hood of her sweatshirt. She was here strictly for business, the Crow’s nest wasn’t one of her usual places, but all of the others were under surveillance, so it would have to do.
The Crow’s nest bar was located in the old Grocery Store on Garden Street, and was easily one of the worst places in Albany. Everything about the burned out neon light sign advertising the place, the broken blinds pulled down over the windows, and multitude of cigarette buts resting on the chipped concrete steps, screamed that this was a bad place for anyone, much less the daughter of the most important man in Albany. But McKenna didn’t care. She’d get a beer or two, scope out the patrons, and eavesdrop on their conversation to figure out who the next person to get a letter would be.
She expertly parked her motorcycle in one of the tight parking stops by the bar, and checked one last time to make sure her hood was up, before entering the bar. As soon as she opened the bar’s door, a wave of cigarette smoke, and hearty laughter hit her. Tentatively stepping in, McKenna approached the woman standing behind the bar.
“What can I get for ya, hon?” The bartender asked her in heavily accented German. She was maybe forty, her gray hair certainly seemed to suggest it, with the weathered look of someone who’d seen more than their fair share of bar fights*.
“Just a beer.”
“Coming- I’m going to kill that kid!” From the back of the bar, the first notes of Personal Jesus, were very clearly coming out of a well worn jukebox. The bartender turned her attention from her customer and stormed over to the two women sitting in a scuffed booth, right next to the jukebox.
A conversion ensued in a language McKenna didn’t understand. The bartender and the two women probably spoke one of the dead tongues, languages that were usually eastern European that had almost entirely disappeared after the german empire conquered the region.
Eventually the bartender sighed and let them stay. One of the women muttered in English, “I told ya so.” There was something familiar about that voice to McKenna…she was the person who’d stolen the Brightside pamphlet from the auction house!
This was an opportunity she sure as hell wasn’t going to waste. After grabbing her beer from the bartender, McKenna leaserally made her way over to where the two women were sitting. And took a seat in the booth directly behind them.
She grabbed her recording device, but didn’t hit start just yet.
Some of her frequent bars had started noticing her recordings, and she didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot at the crow’s nest. So it looked like she was going to do this the old fashioned way. McKenna rummaged through her backpack and quickly produced a pad of paper and a pen. When most people saw her writing on the pad of paper, they assumed that she was writing a paper for school or a book. She’d graduated high school a year ago with honors and had no ambitions of writing a book, but if some well meaning bar patron came over to strike up a conversation, McKenna had no problem with following along with whatever their assumption might be.
She sighed and blew at her bangs to make them puff up. The women she was trying to spy on were still talking in the dead tongue.
“Why the fuck are we doing this in Czech? Cuber speaks better Czech than german.” One of the women asked the other, interrupting her. Now, McKenna realized, she was going to be able to begin gathering blackmail worthy material.
“Well then, tell me Knight, how are you going to fucking explain to Thomas why half the ANP now knows roughly what your face looks like?” The woman who was interrupted asked her friend. In her notes, McKenna marked her as the woman, and whoever she was talking to, she marked as the Knight. McKenna was no stranger to hearing rumors of the Knight’s actions against the ANP, whoever the Knight was, was widely considered to be the most famous resistance agent after Mr. Brightside, and frequently terrorized Albany’s ANP members.
“They already kinda know what I look like, besides, what are they going to do? America’s still pretending to be a free country, and murdering a large group of Jews just to get rid of one sure as hell isn’t gonna make the ANP look good. Thank fucking god that some people still actually realize that we fought the nazis in the fourties, just didn’t do a very good job of getting rid of them since congress was and still is full of those bastards!”
“For some goddamn reason Thomas still believes that we can purge the government of Nazis, he’s insane.” The woman said, shaking her head.
“Some things are so rotten and full of evil, that they need to be burned down and built again, from the ground up.” Added the Knight.
They were resistance agents, and from the way they were talking, pretty high up too. The woman and the Knight kept up their conversation for a few more minutes before finishing their drinks, all while McKenna took careful notes on their conversation. Eventually the two got up to leave, and passed directly by McKenna’s booth, she had to quickly flip over a page of her notes and start scribbling nonsense. By the time she looked up from her notepad, the woman and the Knight were gone, and there was a black business card resting on her table.
Curious, McKenna picked up the card and inspected it. On one side there was a phone number printed in silvery ink, on the other side someone had scrawled a message in silver sharpie. The message read: Nice job with those notes “secret keeper”, if you ever need a job call me.
McKenna stashed the card in her pocket and left a twenty on the bar to pay for her beer. Most people wouldn’t have kept the card, but for some reason she was intrigued. Besides, she crossed paths with the resistance all the time, it wouldn’t be a good idea to get on their bad side.
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