The cabin’s door creaked open on dry hinges. The whole room was a vacuum, Phillip’s and Rebeka’s and Simone’s breaths collectively held, their muscles taut as stretched springs as they waited for whoever was on the other side. From the corner of his eyes Phillip spotted Simone, her arms perfectly still as she kept her rifle ready.

A man reached into the room and flicked on the light switch.

“Don’t move,” Simone growled in German. “Or I feed bits of your fascist brain to the wolves.”

The complete bewilderment on the man’s face morphed as he took in the scene before him. The Algerian woman training a rifle on him. The Black boy clutching a tool kit. The Jewish girl huddled under wool blankets. His lip curled up, and his eyes bulged into something like parody.

“What in the hell are you mongrels doing in my home?” he bellowed in German.

Simone pulled back the cocking mechanism with a resounding click—

A woman with her wheat-colored hair in perfect plaits beneath a knit cap. “Sigi, what’s the matter?” she purred as she ushered two tiny, flawlessly adorned children into the cabin’s doorway. The youngest of them, the boy, stumbled forward, heedless of his father’s outstretched arm until he caught sight of Phillip and stared.

“Mama,” the little girl said. “Monsters.”

Simone’s grip on the rifle slipped. Dammit, Simone. Now wasn’t the time for her to discover some shred of sympathy for fellow humans. The kids weren’t a threat, not yet, but if the woman ran to summon the Gestapo, or—or—

“Yes, they are monsters, Fritzi.” The mother snatched her little boy by the straps of his lederhosen. Yes, Phillip realized with a groan, he was wearing honest-to-Kraut lederhosen over a ribbed sweater. “Go back to the car. Fetch Mama her—”

“No one’s going anywhere,” Simone said, and turned the rifle toward the little boy.

“Go, Fritz,” the man Sigi—Sigmund, maybe—urged. “Don’t listen to these people.”

“Papa—”

“Don’t you do it,” Simone said.

“Go!”

Fritzi took off running. Simone lined up her shot. Her finger pressed down on the trigger—

Then with a snarl of frustration, she stopped herself. “Khara,” she swore under her breath.

Sigmund laughed, the sound harsh as gravel. “You’re all the same. Vicious like animals, but weak-willed.” He took a step into the room, even as his wife shot out her arm to stop him.

“I don’t kill children. Unlike you,” Simone replied.

“But you’ve lost your bluff now. Do you even have bullets? Let’s see.”

He reached for the barrel of the rifle to snatch it away, but Simone yanked it back. Swung it around to crack the side of his head. As he reeled from the blow, she brought it up to aim again, the woman screaming, until—