MI6s new look enhanced team are currently on a mission deep in the heart of Germany, and things aren’t quite going to plan. The team consists of Mademoiselle Mimi Dubois, La Résistance fighter and mistress of skills; Miss Madeline Forsyth, SOE operative and a living shadow; Sven Hyse, Norwegian Resistance soldier and shapeshifter; and Franklin Fort, hard bitten soldier and teleporter.

Paderborn Lippstadt Airfield, Germany, November 1942

Private Franklin Fort looks around himself and is pleased to find that the airfield remains dark and quiet. He notices a large water butt resting against the outside wall of one of the dark, massive hangers. He looks down at the dead body of the German driver at his feet, stoops and hoists it up onto his shoulder and heads for the water butt.

Inside the airfields mess the rest of the team awaiting the return of the Luftwaffe Leutnant who has left us to arrange transport for us. To those around us we appear to be weary travelers enjoying a brief rest and a good cup of coffee, but really we are all starting to get concerned about the length of time that it is taking for Frank to join us. I say out loud that I am going to head out for a cigarette and some fresh air and leave Madeline and Sven inside.

Once I am outside I light my cigarette and look nervously towards where our plane landed. After what seems like hours but was only a matter of minutes, the silhouette of Frank carrying his kitbag looms out of the darkness towards me. I ask the obvious question with my eyes and he responds quietly in English;

Problem! Had to deal with the driver!

I know exactly what he means by ‘deal with’, and the fact that his jacket looks like he has hastily washed something off it I guess that the German driver did not live to tell of the encounter. I give Frank a cigarette and head back inside to inform the others. A minute after I have broken the news the Luftwaffe Leutnant returns and lets us know that the car is ready for us, Madeline makes a point of asking him to inform our pilot that he may leave immediately.

We make to leave quickly, with Frank taking his place in the driver's seat and Madeline next to him. Myself and Sven settle into the back seat of the car, as we are leaving I make sure to thank the Luftwaffe Leutnant and he hands me the airfield’s telephone number and asks that we return the car at our earliest convenience. I flutter my eyelashes and tell him that I will see him soon.

I tell Frank to drive us across the airfield and head for the gate leading towards Lippstadt, the route takes us past our plane as it is taxiing towards the runway and we get an almost imperceptible acknowledgement from the pilot as we pass. We clear the gate without issue and as we are driving away from the airfield we spot our aeroplane climbing up into the dark night sky. Frank drives while I navigate using our map, it is a painful reminder of how useful Doctor Jackal and his magnificent memory were. As soon as we are able we double back away from Lippstadt and head towards the village of Oberntudorf and the woodland beyond where we plan to ditch the car.

I remember that we were driving heedlessly along a small country lane towards the village of Oberntudorf with no idea of what was up ahead when it hit me. I asked Frank to pull the car off of the road and kill the lights. We had been successful so far in our missions because we were cautious and used our significant abilities to our advantage, but here we were heading into the unknown without doing that. I don’t know if we had got too confident, or if the addition of Private Fort to our team had changed our dynamic, but I believed that we needed to get back to what we did well.

By this time it was just after midnight and I asked Sven to scout ahead while we waited in the dark, by the side of the road. Sven transformed into a small bird and flapped up into the night sky. He heads towards the village and as he is crossing the main road that runs north south he spots a motorbike and sidecar speed past heading north, as he watches it head into the distance he sees the lights of a large convoy of trucks heading south towards the village down the main road. He flies out east across the river and then turns south and flies out over the countryside and finally crosses over the woodland.

Finding the way ahead clear he swings back north towards the village of Wewelsburg and our ultimate target. The castle stands out like a beacon in the night, it’s walls are lit up by searchlights making it an imposing sight within the village. As the small bird flaps over the castle he spots a number of tents set up on the grass outside of the castle as well as a parked halftrack. The castle has a perimeter fence approximately fifty yards from the main walls and a couple of manned guard posts pierce the fence. Sven then continues back towards us in the parked car.

A small thrush lands on the roof of our car, hops onto the ground and then transforms back into Sven. Sven tells us everything that he has discovered and by zero thirty hours Frank is driving us southeast through Oberntudorf once we are beyond the village Frank turns us south towards the treeline. Once we are deep within the woods we find a small track that leads deeper into the woods, Frank attempts to drive up the track but gets the car stuck in the deep mud. I take over at the wheel, and using my borrowed skill, I manage to free the car and get it deeper into the woods.

Frank and I spend several minutes camouflaging the car and hiding the tracks that we made heading into the deep woods. Once we have finished we start to hike towards the castle, within seconds Frank is hiking alone through the woods being flanked by a couple of shadows and preceded by a small bird. Frank covers the two and a quarter miles in very little time and by zero one hundred hours he is crouched just within the treeline three quarters of a mile from Castle Wewelsburg. He raises his binoculars and spots that there are two guards stationed on top of the largest of the three towers.

Madeline, Sven, and I screw silencers onto our pistols and loosen the straps on our knives. Sven then transforms into a sea eagle and Madeline and I transform into shadows and slide onto him. This has the added effect of making him black, meaning that he will be harder to spot against the night sky. Frank agrees to wait in the treeline and keep watch with his binoculars, he lets us know that he will come in if he believes that we are in trouble.

Sven takes us on a wide berth around the castle and drops from a great height towards the darker inner edge of the roofline, aiming to land on the wide inner guttering. As he is circling it is easy to spot the tents pitched outside the castle walls but within the perimeter fence, judging by the numbers of tents I believed that there were twenty to thirty troops stationed there, an entire platoon. Sven lands almost silently in the shadow of the inner roofline between the two smaller towers, and a heartbeat later two shadows slip off of his form onto the roof. A couple of seconds later and the sea eagle is transformed into a small thrush. All is quiet and we appear not to have been detected.

I push out with my senses to see if I can detect any enhanced in the area. I get a definite hit. I push once more to ascertain the number of enhanced within my range and am both shocked and scared when I get eight returns not including my two colleagues. Three of them are on the ground floor of one of the smaller towers, a further two are located on the first and second floors adjacent to that tower, and three more are located on the fourth floor of the other small tower.

I slide around to the middle of the next block, shadowed by Madeline, and push out once again with my senses but this time I get nothing new back. We continue around to the middle of the final block and I push again. This time I get a new return and work out that it must be located in the basement of the building. Madeline and I slide onto the smaller tower containing three enhanced on the fourth floor and I push out with my sense once more, this time with the aim of finding out what enhanced powers they have. After several minutes I discover that all three of them are gifted with three hundred and sixty degree vision, that they can see in total darkness, and most concerningly they can detect enhanced abilities by sight.

We decide to use the same tactic on the three enhanced on the ground floor of the other smaller tower. I push out with my senses once again and instantly recognise the aura of one of them as a guard beast similar to the ones we encountered under Kohnstein in the Mittelwerk facility. I push my senses onto the next one of the three and discover that it is enhanced with the ability to resist damage and the ability to take greater damage before becoming incapacitated. I find that a little worrying. I move on the the third enhanced in that location and push out once more with my senses. But this time I cannot detect anything. It is as if I know that something is there, but it is just a void in my senses.

As I am worrying about the dark hole in my senses, Madeline has a dog howl from the ground floor of the tower. We quickly move back to Sven and wait to see if anything happens. I breathe a sigh of relief when nothing does. Madeline and I decide to investigate the larger of the three towers and slide down to one of it’s windows. We find ourselves looking into a large, circular room. It is empty with the exception of a spiral staircase heading up through the ceiling and down through the floor. We slip in through the window on the third floor of the tower and head down the staircase, on the second floor of the tower we discover two doors leading off into the wings.

We slide under the right hand door and find ourselves in a carpeted corridor with a single door at the far end, and three pairs of doors facing each other along the length of the corridor. The nearest pair have little white plaques declaring them as;

Verwaltung

Madeline looks at me and mouths ‘Administration’. I push out with my senses and confirm that there are no enhanced in our immediate vicinity. We move along the corridor in shadow form to the next pair of doors, these are also labelled with white plaques. The door to our right is signed;

Oberstleutnant Baynurn Stellvertretender Leiter Wolfenkorps Beta

The door opposite is marked as Oberstleutnant Baynurn’s secretary. So we have found the office of the deputy head of Wolfenkorps beta team. Move move to the final set of doors in the corridor and discover that they are signed;

Oberst Frauden Kopf Wolfenkorps Beta

Once again, the door opposite is that of Oberst Frauden’s secretary. Madeline and I slip under the Oberst’s door and find ourselves in a very tidy office. I quickly move to the filing cabinets within the room and start to leaf through the files while Madeline, using her lockpicks, unlocks the Oberst’s desk drawer. Inside she discovers a single file containing a single piece of paper. That piece of paper is a letter informing Oberst Frauden that both Wolfenkorps Alpha and Beta teams are scheduled to perform a demonstration for interested parties. The location and timing of the demonstration are to be confirmed at a later date. Madeline looks very pleased with herself.