New Berlin: The Children Of Icarus E-Book

Karsten Krepinsky

• Herausgeber: via tolino media
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

"Dystopian." "Captivating." "Stunning." Sometime in the remote future. The acrid smell of burning fires has settled over the City of New Berlin. Billowing smoke obscures the sun. The city itself has been under siege for twenty years by now, everything but its very center being under enemy control. A military regime uses rigid oppression to make its citizens toe the line. Dissenters and collaborators are weeded out by an army of headhunters. Max Hofstetter is one of them. When his immediate boss, Charlotte Fleming, orders him to bring down the killer of a high-ranking government official, his search leads him into the Forbidden Zone, as the area that surrounds Berlin’s TV tower now is called. When the discovery of the leadership’s most closely guarded secret rocks his world, the hunter is turned into prey… A Science-Fiction Thriller

Leseprobe

KARSTEN KREPINSKY

New Berlin: The Children of Icarus

Translated from the German by

KARIN DUFNER

Karsten Krepinsky

New Berlin: The Children of Icarus

Copyright (c) 2022/2023 by Dr. Karsten Krepinsky, Berlin

Original German edition, January 2023

English translation in March 2023 by Karin Dufner

www.karindufner.de

All rights reserved

Reprints and reproductions (also in parts) with the author’s written permission only

Cover design by Ingo Krepinsky, Die TYPONAUTEN

www.typonauten.de/eng

Copy-editing: Ursula and Ingo Krepinsky

Published by Karsten Krepinsky

Berlin, April 2024

ISBN 9783757932756

www.karstenkrepinsky.de

About the Book

Sometime in the remote future. The acrid smell of burning fires has settled over the City of New Berlin. Billowing smoke obscures the sun. The city itself has been under siege for twenty years by now, everything but its very center being under enemy control. A military regime uses rigid oppression to make its citizens toe the line. Dissenters and collaborators are weeded out by an army of headhunters. Max Hofstetter is one of them. When his immediate boss, Charlotte Fleming, orders him to bring down the killer of a high-ranking government official, his search leads him into the Forbidden Zone, as the area that surrounds Berlin’s TV tower now is called. When the discovery of the leadership’s most closely guarded secret rocks his world, the hunter is turned into prey…

A Science-Fiction Thriller

About the Author

Dr. Karsten Krepinsky lives in Berlin where he works for a startup as a biologist in the field of neuroscience. His second passion is publishing novels as a free-lance writer. The many facets and diversities of Berlin, Germany’s capital, never cease to serve as inspirations for his thrillers, which include elements of sci-fi, mystery, and horror.

For my mother

Brick’s Map of the New Berlin Cauldron

Prologue

I need to wait for the right moment to strike. The man first, then the woman. If I don’t make a mistake, they both don’t stand a chance. Four thrusts with my bayonet will be enough to do the job. What I can’t get my head around is the question why the two of them are in such high spirits. They sit at the bank of the canal, clinking glasses, as if they hadn’t a care in the world. Why this festive mood? I can hardly wait to crash their little party. All I need to do is bid my time.

1

New Berlin, Oberbaumbrücke

The facades of New Berlin look as if someone had covered them with a layer of wax. Windows and doors have long vanished under a viscous mass of oil, gunk, and some indefinable fungous lichen. A cloud of dense smoke darkens the sky day and night. The presence of the sun can only be assumed. I’m standing on Oberbaumbrücke, gazing down into the dry river bed underneath the bridge. The Spree, once a wide river, meandering slowly through the City of Berlin, has meanwhile turned into a dusty trench. The silhouettes of the skyscrapers at Alexanderplatz form a stark contrast to a raging ocean of fire. The eternal flame at the Olympic Stadium has long died, but is now wreaking havoc on Museumsinsel. The enemy has set fire to one of the five subterranean fuel depots we have installed there before the siege.

When you divide the area inside New Berlin’s ring road into four sections, the north-eastern wedge belongs to us. We control the boroughs of Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg, and the eastern part of Mitte with an iron fist. In Kreuzberg, however, we just manage to maintain a toehold, as the enemy has progressed all the way to Schlesisches Tor. Thudding detonations are a constant reminder of the war raging in the sub-level, where we have engaged the enemy in a merciless battle.

We have to keep up resistance until reinforcements arrive. I’m aware of this. I’m a patriot and I love my country. But I still want to tell the truth. That’s what I’ve sworn to myself, when I came across this old-fashioned dictating machine. I will neither conceal nor gloss over anything. Lies and malice are already rampant in this city, which has been a war-zone for two decades now. When I found the dictating machine, my first impulse was to destroy it, because the law says so. Keeping records is not allowed, lest they fall into the enemy’s hands, revealing our weak spots and the doubts that plague us, which will then be used against us. I’m a patriot. They are not supposed to get hold of anything that might help them. However, I’m skeptical when I think of our mission. What kind of future will we have, when we annihilate our own past?

As hardly anyone comes out here, I can finally be just myself. In the sub-level, the motto is strictly we and us. No exceptions. But as much as I like to seek safety in numbers, I just love these quiet moments up here. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, though, and the price is high to spend time in this hostile cityscape just to stare at a dusty river bed. My urge to cough is growing stronger by the moment. It’s not recommended to stay outside for more than thirty minutes at a time. The houses are all sealed. An intricate network of hatches brings you down to the sub-level, the next entrance being less than fifteen feet away. Just a couple of soldiers are patrolling the streets. There is no one else around.

2

Riding the Subway, Line U257

REMEMBER, the legend on the doors of the subway car says. The inscription is everywhere. And everyone knows what it means: Remember who we are. Keep in mind who our enemy is. And never forget what we’re fighting for. I hide the dictating machine in my pocket, away from prying eyes. Everything happens for a reason, I’m absolutely certain. The cars of the magnetic train gather speed when we get to a straight stretch in the tracks. The city of New Berlin is veined with subway lines like the tissue of a muscle; those trains being the only way to get from A to B. A man with a scar on his cheek is staring at me. He proudly wears a badge on his beret: the golden cross for bravery with the red heart of the disabled veteran. The man clutches the grab pole with his prosthetic arm. There’s hardly anyone aboard the train who doesn’t have some kind of war injury. I’m one of the few who appear unharmed. From the outside, that is. Just looking at me, you would never guess. It’s my brain that has been affected.

Sometimes I see myself sitting at the bank of River Spree. It’s a picnic, I think. When did it take place? No idea. The dense fog that shrouds my memory never lifts. Suddenly, the subway cars come to a halt. I’ve arrived at my destination. The guy in the wheelchair who gets out before me reminds me of the picnics on the banks of River Spree that will never happen anymore. Not today. Not tomorrow.

The U-Atrium at Helmholtzplatz is the nicest one we have. The builders of these public meeting places have done an excellent job, recreating urban life underground. From the spouting fountain in the center, small waterways spread in a radial to the stores that make up the shopping mall. The gurgling of the water has a soothing effect on people. Water is precious. Once a year, during the rainy season, we collect the rainwater we’ll need during the long months of drought.

I need to shield my eyes when I raise them to the U-Atrium’s dome. The glare of the floodlights and ceiling lamps is blinding. Nothing happens without a reason. Doesn’t finding the dictating machine mean that it’s my job to record my thoughts? Dust has settled on the buildings of New Berlin, covering up the past. Like a living organism, the city is subject to constant changes. The setting has been altered, while the people in it have remained the same. REMEMBER. Remember who we are. What we are fighting for. And who our enemies are. We need to remember. I need to remember.

3

Café “Spreeblick” on the Shopping-Mall’s Gallery, U-Atrium Helmholtzplatz, Sub-Level 1

“Have you been outside again?” Charlotte joins me at my table. The dirt on my coat doesn’t escape her. “What are you looking for up there?” she wants to know, sitting down beside me. The soldiers at the next table are loud and boisterous. The fresh bandages on their arms and legs tell me that they’ve just come from the front. “The polluted air... how do you stand it?” Charlotte frowns. “The human body isn’t made for this.” Her pancake-makeup can’t hide the heavy wrinkles. Charlotte Fleming has been a beautiful woman once, but the decades of war have prematurely aged her. She’s wearing a support corset, which she adjusts whenever she thinks I’m not looking. Now, she’s shaking her head disapprovingly. “The war doesn’t seem to bother you in the least, Brick.” Her statement sounds like an accusation. Brick is the nickname I’ve acquired since my accident. Even though it wasn’t a brick that hit me on the head.

Charlotte is the chief of the Secret Police, and I’m her most senior headhunter. At least that’s what she always claims, insisting that I’m the best bloodhound she’s ever had. I don’t know if it’s true. Maybe Charlotte just wants to flatter me.

“What can I get you?” The waitress is looking down on us. She smoothes her hair off her perfectly symmetrical face with one hand. Her name-tag says “Felicitas”—the happy one. The name tells it all. She’s kept her body in good shape. Her cheeks redden, when she looks at me.

Charlotte is eyeing her skeptically. “Today’s special,” she tersely says.

“And what would you like to have?” Felicitas gives me an expectant smile, while twirling a blonde tress between her fingers.

I don’t need to think. “Yellow, if you please.”

“We’re having blue weeks, variation green,” Felicitas replies.

“Oh, how stupid of me... I forgot.” Our choices consist of blue, red, and yellow jellies. Mixed in different ratios. “In this case get me blue please, blue like the ocean.”

“Green for me,” Charlotte says.

The waitress smiles at me before taking off.

My eyes follow her for a moment. “You have anything for me?”

Charlotte clears her throat. “Do you know the antique shop ‘Before Our Times’ in the U-Atrium at Frankfurter Tor?”

“Of course I do. I live nearby.”

“There was a murder in the place.”

“A murder?” I’m getting curious.

“Do you know the owner?”

“Just in passing.”

The waitress arrives with our order. Charlotte can’t make up her mind whether to direct her disdain against the beautiful Felicitas or the green Jell-O-like substance, wobbling on her plate. Just shoot the messenger. Even if the message comes in the guise of lousy food. And even if the server is called Felicitas.

Charlotte is picking at her jelly, obviously not wanting it. “What’s your business in an antique shop?”

“Looking for antiques.”

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“My past.”

“You’re not that old.”

“Forty-one. Just like you.”

Charlotte puts down her fork and leans back in her chair. “You’re still having memory problems?”

“The doctor tells me to get myself a hobby. Sooner or later the memories will return.”

“What about Paul Bull?”

“What about him?”

“You need something to occupy you, and I’m giving you a name. Paul Bull, the owner of ‘Before Our Times’.”

“I know who Paul Bull is. Why do you mention his name?”

“Take a guess.”

“Is Bull the victim?”

“Looks like it.” Charlotte averts her eyes. She has been watching me the entire time. “We need to know who liquidated him.”

This is a case I’d rather stay clear of. I don’t like the idea to turn the antique shop upside down. “You’re sure it was murder?”

“You don’t get bullet holes from falling on your face,” Charlotte scoffs. “Go to the store and have a look around. If you still don’t like the case when you’re through, I’ll pull you off.”

“Do your people still hang out there?”

“Don’t you worry about my boys.”

“I’m a headhunter, not an investigator.”

“My men simply lack your talent, Brick. Yes, they’re well trained, but you have the... knack for it. You need to solve this case for me.”

“That’ll be 50,000 Credits.”

“You must be joking.”

“That’s the amount I need.”

“What for?”

“You know, what for.”

Charlotte’s laugh is full of contempt. “For your therapy?”

“I want my memories back.” I massage my temples with circular movements. “The answers to my questions are in there, somewhere inside my head.”

Wolfing down the jelly is a matter of seconds for Charlotte. Food is just a necessity for her to keep the vital functions going. “Find us the killer, then I’ll see what I can do for you.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“What is it you’re looking for in your past? I just don’t get it.” Charlotte is gazing at me. “Maybe you won’t like what you find.”

The soldiers at the next table are leaving the café in a hurry. Loud voices resound in the atrium. Charlotte and I follow the soldiers to the mall’s gallery. Before we take off, Charlotte has her eyes scanned by the intercom. These consoles are linked to the central computer and are installed in all public and private areas. “My treat.” Two credits are deducted from Charlotte’s bank account. She can afford it.

“Bastards!” somebody is hollering. In front of the café an angry crowd has gathered. “These fucking bastards!” One soldier raises his fist in a threatening gesture. Now, I see the reason behind the turmoil. Someone has sprayed the red letter “C” on the front of the café. Not a smart idea. Every nook and cranny of the mall is covered by cameras. Identifying the culprit shouldn’t be too much of a problem for the Observators in the Control Center. “U! U! U!” people aggressively chant. One soldier aims a glob of saliva at the graffiti. “Universals!” he screams. “We’re Universals!” He beats his chest with his fists. Charlotte takes my hand. It feels like an electric shock. Then, she smiles for the first time this day. More and more people reach out for each other’s hands, and it takes only seconds to form a human chain. “U! U! U!” I join in. It doesn’t make a difference that I can’t remember. Because I’m shoulder to shoulder with everyone else, fighting for my comrades. “Unity! Unity! Unity!” The red “C” stands for the others. It’s us and them. And it’s them, who started the war. “U! U! U!” we’re chanting as one. The Colonials won’t be able to break our unity. It’s a mixture of hatred and bliss that fills my entire being. “U! U! U!”

4

Antique Shop ‘Before Our Times’, U-Atrium Frankfurter Tor, Sub-Level 1

There’s only a viscous mass on the carpet, where I expected to find Bull’s body. Putrefaction must have been well advanced. Three bullets are embedded in the wall. This means the murder weapon was a firearm, an important detail, as pistols and rifles are hard to come by. For spies and assassins, knives, hammers, and axes are the usual weapons of choice. It makes me wonder why the killer hasn’t opted for the quiet way. Is the MO supposed to convey a message? I eye the iron grill, separating the store proper from the area behind the counter. The angle in which the shot was fired across the entire store tells me that the perpetrator must have been inside the place. And to enter the store, you have to be admitted by Bull. If I draw the right conclusions from the track marks on the carpet, Bull didn’t die at once, but dragged himself across the floor for a number of feet, before life left him.

“What do you want, Brick?” The vice-chief of the Secret Police jams his hands into his coat pockets. As I have feared, Jeremiah Glass and his team are still at the scene. The backs of their black trench coats are emblazoned with the acronym P.I.D.: Police of Inner Defense. Glass is a living legend. A face prosthesis shimmers through the long hair of his wig. Half of his face has been torn off by an explosive device, disfiguring him on the day of the grand spring offensive, when West City was lost to the Colonials. They say Glass stopped the enemy’s attack inside the U-Atrium at Schlesisches Tor by fending off the aggressors all by himself until enforcements arrived. The legend has it that he butchered thirty enemy soldiers in hand-to-hand combat. This was five years ago. Now and then, Glass’s customized prosthesis gets dislodged, emitting a noise that almost sounds like a toaster popping slices of bread. Therefore, his nickname is Toaster.

Toaster cultivates the image of being a creep. The idea behind it is not so much scaring suspects during interrogations, but to make his subordinates quake in their boots. When I look at the men who have come with him to the scene today, it’s quite obvious that they keep their distance to the boss, whom they all seem to be in awe of. Toaster has survived a number of attempts on his life. The doctors so far have always managed to patch him up again.

I wipe my parched lips. “Where is Bull’s corpse?”

“Let’s put it this way, we’ve scraped up what was left of him with shovels and shipped it off to the morgue in a body bag.”

“With shovels? Care to share any details?”

When Toaster smiles a grim smile, only the right corner of his mouth goes up. This is all I get for an answer. I go down on my knees to take a closer look at the stains on the carpet. The outline corresponds with that of an overweight, tall man. Which again matches Bull’s built. “The body must have been here for days,” I say. I hear a click that resembles a toaster popping bread. The smell of coffee is in the air. When have I had my last slice of toast? In another lifetime, it seems. A sweet deception. Scent is the most powerful sense of memory we have.

Toaster clicks his facial prosthesis back into place. The crack between the two halves of his face disappears. He seems to bask in the attention this little ritual affords him. “The murder happened less than five hours ago.”

“Impossible!” I point my finger at the body liquids that have seeped all the way into the pile of the cotton rug.

“Careful with the premature conclusions.” Toaster’s smile again lifts the right corner of his mouth only, giving his face a disturbingly asymmetrical appearance. “He was a Speedy.”

“Speedy...,” I repeat, incredulously shaking my head. That some bodies seem to dissolve to goo in almost no time, decaying more or less on fast-forward, is a persistent urban myth. I’m not a believer. I rather go for facts. I eye Toaster’s gun holster. The members of the Secret Police carry arms.

Toaster covers his belt buckle with his trench coat to hide the gun. Knowing that there is a spy among the ranks of the P.I.D. must be a nightmare for Toaster. “Bull used his intercom six hours ago,” Toaster now says.

“Are you sure that it was Bull himself?” I walk over to the intercom and activate the console above the iris scanner. The communications platform opens at once. The intercom seems to work just fine. “Maybe someone started using Bull’s eye? Just his eye, I mean.”

“Don’t you know that the scanner can tell dead eyes apart from live ones?”

“Yeah, I know, artery control. But it’s possible to override it.” I’ve heard of iris scanners activated with eyes that had been separated from their bodies before. “What about the surveillance cam in the store?” I inquire.

“The killer was a pro.” Toaster points at the camera above the counter.

I notice the paint someone has sprayed on the lens. It’s red. The same color as the graffitied “C” on the façade of Café Spreeblick in the U-Atrium at Helmholtzplatz.

“We’d better leave Brick alone. Maybe he’ll find something we didn’t.” Toaster gives a disdainful laugh. “Let’s split!” The P.I.D. men obey wordlessly. I know that Toaster will analyze the recordings of the cameras in the vicinity of the store to see who has walked in. Which could turn out to create problems for me.

The dictating machine I use to record my thoughts was bought in this very antique shop. I step into the next room, which is separated from the shop floor with a curtain. Here, Bull used to store his most valuable pieces. Sooner or later Toaster will find out that I was a regular here. I might be on his list of suspects already. Charlotte’s questioning looks during our meeting at the café have not escaped me. I don’t have much time to flush out the killer, before I end up on the hit list myself.

I take a dirty rag off a chest that sits in a corner of the storage room. “Icarus” says the writing on its lid. According to Bull he bought the chest from one of the so called Diggers, who work for him. Diggers are treasure hunters and operate free-lance, like headhunters do. They are the only ones who dare venture down into the crumbling sub-levels deep in the underbelly of the city, where the most valuable artifacts can be found. Only a few of those Diggers ever return from their forays into this netherworld.

A thudding sound attracts my attention. When I take a peep into the store proper, I realize what’s going on. Someone is hiding in the shaft of the air conditioning system. When I yank off the grid, I’m met by a stare from blue eyes. My reflexes are too slow.

When I come to, my chest hurts. I run my fingers across my coat und finally pull a syringe from my chest. The drug I was injected with must have paralyzed me in a matter of seconds. I try to reconstruct what has happened. The person who tricked me was a woman. She must have overheard my conversation with Toaster. Who knows how long she’d been lurking in the air conditioning shaft. I’m still not steady on my feet, when I stumble over to the storage room. Why did the woman let me live? The chest in the store room has been opened, the artifact kept inside it is gone. The woman must have stolen it. Is she also Bull’s killer? When I look over to the intercom, my vision blurs and I’m having problems to focus. I massage my eyelids in an attempt to see clearer. I feel sick like from a hangover. According to the clock on the intercom I’ve been out for twenty minutes. I check my flashlight. The battery is charged. I shine the lamp into the shaft. Iron rungs lead down into the abyss. I can make out fresh footprints in the layer of rust that covers them. The woman was blonde and had blue eyes and high cheekbones. She also had a scar on her chin. There’s no time to lose. I have to get her.

5

U-Atrium RAW, Sub-Level 1

In the clubs and brothels of U-Atrium RAW shady characters abound. River Spree is nearby; its opposite bank is under enemy control. We are very close to the front, where an odd mixture of hedonism and apocalypse rules. The result is a chaotic mingling of human bodies, which would make it easy for the woman to get lost in the crowd. Judging by the traces I found she must have left the shaft somewhere inside Club Cassiopeia.

The rooms in the upper floors of Cassiopeia are bathed in a murky light. I pass sofas where men and women vegetate, blearily staring into space with eyes half open. In a side room, a rotating illumination sphere casts thousands of points of light onto the ceiling. Everyone here is on some intoxicating substance or the other. Some are sniffing cheap glue, while others still have enough Credits to inject themselves with Illusion. Lost souls, all of them. Most of the time we don’t bother these Outsiders, as their turn to pay their dues will come up soon enough. In case of an offensive, Outsiders are used as cannon fodder and sent into the first rows to trigger booby traps.

“Hey, Brick, what have you been doing with yourself? You’re all sweaty and dirty.” Cassiopeia’s manager comes up to greet me. Claus Schwarzkopf, called Cassio by everyone, wears inked “U”s on his neck and forehead. And who knows, what other body parts he had tattooed. It’s not my thing to show my loyalties this way. Patriotism is a matter of the heart. “You need to clean out your ventilation shaft,” I joke.

“Ventilation shaft?” Cassio frowns at me. “Do you mean that you...? What’s wrong with the door?”

“After the little encounter I had last time, I’d rather not bump into your doormen again.”

Cassio laughs. The next moment his face darkens. “What do you want, Brick?”

“I’m looking for a blonde.”

“Almost all my ladies are blondes.”

“And what about a scar?”

“Scar?”

“I’m looking for a blonde with a scar on her chin. It’s about two and a half inches long.”

Cassio eyes me suspiciously. “If I happen to bump into a woman with a scar, I’ll let you know.”

I’m thrown out of the club without having seen the woman, all the while wondering, why she has run to RAW of all places. It’s a dead end here. Almost all subway tunnels are blocked. The only one still in use leads to our last outpost in the borough of Kreuzberg.

Two companies of marines are waiting on the platform. They’ll relieve the troops at the front line. In the corner of my eye I see a figure scuttling across the platform, the hood of her parka drawn deep into her face. Warning signals announce the arrival of a train. Is she the woman with the scar? I need to make up my mind. The doors are already closing when I hop aboard the train.

The marines are standing shoulder to shoulder. The woman must be about five doors down the car.

---ENDE DER LESEPROBE---