"Are you sure this will work, Doctor Janetzsky?"
Janetzsky carefully concealed a sigh as she turned once again to placate her guest. She had a dozen things more important to do than waste time on him... but a man of his importance was not used to standing quietly in the corner whilst others got on with their work.
"Quite sure, Herr Speer," she said. "Of course there are always possible difficulties, but I believe that we have ironed out the teething troubles and are ready for our first production prototype." She did not say that those difficulties were purely in the realm of the engineering challenges involved in implementing her science; the science itself was perfect, she knew. Ironing out those little engineering 'difficulties' had taken years of work and cost over two hundred lives. The thought didn't trouble Janetzsky in the least; in fact, she barely thought of her victims as victims at all. In her twisted Nazi mind, they were 'only Jews'.
"We have spent a lot of money on this project, Frau Doctor. I would hope - I would expect - that we would have more than your belief in success."
This time she did sigh. "We deal in the real world, Minister. We can work as hard as we wish, spend as much as we wish, but the real world is rarely willing to guarantee success. In any case, we are about to find out." She turned to the guards who flanked the door, big tough combat veterans who held a loaded MP-40 across his chest. "Bring in the volunteer!"
One of them unbolted and opened the steel door, and motioned through it.
A woman stepped through. She looked, Eva thought, every inch the perfect Nazi Aryan. Young, slim, glowing with health, long blonde hair, piercing blue eyes. That had been a major factor in her selection. That, and her absolute bone-deep fanatical belief in National Socialism.
"Over here please, Greta," Janetzsky said. She indicated the Coffin.
It was not a coffin in the literal sense, of course - at least, it was not intended to be. In fact it looked only vaguely like a coffin. A rounded metal cocoon, three metres tall, a little over a metre wide and half a metre deep. The front was hinged open, revealing thick soft padding inside, decorated with better than two dozen syringes mounted at strategic spots around the interior. A hundred cables and pipes of all sorts connected the thing to banks of machinery and tanks of chemicals which filled half of the room.
No, not really anything like a coffin - except that it had become the temporary home for all of those two hundred people that Eva dismissed as failed test subjects.
"Inside please," Eva said. To her credit, Greta barely hesitated before stepping into the thing. That was to be expected - there was absolutely nothing Greta Katz would not do in the name of the Party.
Lining up the various syringes took about twenty minutes. Finally Eva fitted the scuba-type mouthpiece and stepped back. She met Greta's eye. "You know it will be painful," she said softly. "It will be the worst thing you have ever experienced. But you must endure."
"For Germany... for National Socialism." Greta mumbled around the mouthpiece. Deep pride shone in her eyes.
Eva nodded and slammed the coffin lid closed. She secured it and returned to the control console.
"How long, Doctor?" Speer asked. He sounded nervous, she thought. Typical of men. They were all children, under the surface.
"Ninety minutes," she said. She activated the first control. A mix of chemicals began to fill the coffin. Within minutes, the thing was completely full. "The first formula must be absorbed thorough the skin," she explained, exactly as if she had not explained the whole process to him on at least six prior occasions. They waited, giving the chemicals time to work.
"And now... formula two," she said, activating another control. Within the coffin twenty eight syringes plunged inward, injecting their thick yellowish liquid into the subject's muscles.
And now?" Speer asked.
"We wait some more, for the formula to spread fully through her system."
As they waited, Eva busied herself with preparations for the final stage. The chemical bath Greta was immersed in, the chemicals slowly spreading through her body, these had taken the better part of fifteen years of intensive work to produce - most of it, she acknowledged, only accomplished in the last two years with the money, the resources and the disregard of basic ethics that the Nazis had provided.
But the chemicals, important as they were, were ultimately there only to prepare the body for the real breakthrough.
The clock hit the forty five minute mark. Eva took a deep breath and slammed a giant lever down.
The massive synchrotron which took up most of the building powered up. The thing used C-shaped magnets to accelerate particles to over a thirty Giga-electronVolts. It had taken her most of a year to build the thing; it was decades ahead of anything that existed in the rest of the world - and the exotic particles it produced had properties so incredible that most scientists outside this building would have dubbed them as magical.
She turned a bank of knobs one after the other, adding layer upon layer of power to the device. No less than four entire electricity stations nearby sent their entire output to this building, sending it enough power to run a small city.
She took a deep breath and touched one final control. Above the coffin, a series of relays closed; and a stream of powerful radiation poured down into the interior.
A scream of total anguish pierced the deep thrum of the machinery. Eva winced.
"What is that?" Speer said, shocked. The scream seemed to go on and on. If hell is real, Eva mused, then it is probably filled with sounds like that.
"The radiation," she said. "It interacts with the altered body chemistry. As part of the transformation process, the nervous system is reconfigured. But in the process the nerves are stimulated, Herr Minister. Every pain nerve in the body, every pain centre there is... all stimulated at the highest level. It is beyond painful, Herr Minister. One could not feel more pain if one were dropped into molten metal."
Speer, clearly shaken, said nothing.
"Perhaps with refinement I may find a way to avoid this," Eva said softly. "But right now, we do not have time for niceties."
On and on it went. Minutes ticked by as the machinery did its fiendish work, and Greta screamed and screamed. Eva could only guess at the hellish existence within the device... though that might change one day, she mused.
Finally it ended. The machines shut down, and silence fell upon the room. Even the screaming stopped.
Doctor Janetzsky drained the excess fluid from the coffin - not that there would be much left, most of it being absorbed into the body. She stepped over and with shaking hands releasing the door of the coffin and pulled it.
"Gott im Himmel," Speer whispered, awed.
Greta stepped out of the coffin, her bare foot hitting the stone floor with a soft but clearly audible thump. The last few shreds of her clothing fell from her body, joining the ruptured leather shreds that had been her shoes. She stood, naked, her body glistening with the few traces of liquid which it had not absorbed.
And what a body! Doctor Janetzsky could hardly believe it. An hour and a half ago, Greta had been a perfect physical specimen of womanhood - 172 cm tall, 54 kilos, fit but graced with soft, feminine curves.
Now she stood before them, fully 220 cm tall. Her 200 kilo body rippled with ultra dense super-muscle, a physique beyond the dreams of the most fervent bodybuilder. Greta looked down at herself, awed. She raised a massive arm and flexed; perfectly defined biceps swelled to tremendous size, easily 58 cm in circumference. Massive pectoral muscles held her tremendous breasts high and proud, not a millimetre of sag despite their HH cup size - a feat that seemed to defy gravity.
"It worked," Greta said wonderingly.
"How do you feel?" Eva asked.
"The pain was-" Greta broke off, a tremor passing through her incredible body at the memory. She took a breath and straightened. "But now... I feel wonderful. I feel perfect."
"Here," Eva said, picking up a bulky package and offering it to the giant. Greta took it and ripped the paper open, finding a collection of clothing inside.
She glanced down at herself with a smile. "Almost seems a shame to cover this up," she said. As it turned out, the clothing was barely adequate for the job - the increase in Greta's physique had surpassed Eva's most optimistic projection. The white shirt covered the thick corded muscle of her abdomen, but it was not up to the job of covering her tremendous chest - she managed to get the buttons closed but as soon as she took a breath several of them burst open, leaving a deep valley of cleavage free. The soft black leather trousers and boots did manage to contain her thickly muscled legs, though they were rather more skin-tight than expected. Finally she donned the black leather jacket.
"How strong is she?" Speer asked. His could not disguise the slight tremble in his voice; his eyes were bulging practically out of their sockets, locked on the physical perfection of the creature they had created.
"Do you feel up to a demonstration, Greta?" Eva asked with a smile.
"Absolutely, Frau Doctor," Greta said. "I feel wonderful."
They went through to a nearby room. It had been fitted out as a testing/training area, essentially a gymnasium. "We will start with some weight lifting," Eva said. She motioned towards a large barbell which was loaded with iron weights. "It is loaded with 410 kg," she said. "That equals Josef Manger's gold medal win at the '36 Olympics. See if you can lift it."
Greta looked at the bar dubiously. She took the jacket off and tossed it aside, then walked over to the mat and took a deep breath - threatening to finish off her shirt. She squatted, took a grip of the bar in the classic clean & jerk pose... then straightened her knees.
Her muscles exploded with power; the 410 kg bar as if it were a feather. She jerked it up to her chest - and the bar, weights and all flew straight up into the ceiling with a tremendous crash, smashing several massive chunks of concrete free. The whole lot fell back in a shower of concrete dust, slamming into the mat.
Speer's mouth fell open in shock. Greta herself took a step back, blinking in astonishment. For a long moment, there was complete silence.
"Well, that might have been a little bit light for you," Eva said finally.
"I think you may be correct, Doctor," Greta said. She glanced down at her hands, flexing her fingers.
"Next we will move on to the stones." Eva indicated a series of large concrete spheres along one wall. Each had a large metal ring set into the top, and each was larger than the last - the first had '500 kg' painted on the front, and they went up in 250 kg increments all the way to 3,000 kg.
Greta stepped over to the first one, and took a grip of the metal ring. Cautiously she lifted it off the floor. "Why it feels like it weighs nothing," she exclaimed. "It's like it was hollow."
"Try the next one," Eva said. They worked their way down the row, Greta lifting each one in turn. She had no trouble with any of them. At the end, she lifted up the 3,000 kg weight in one hand and the 2,750 kg in the other and turned, holding each of them out to the side, her arms perfectly horizontal. The shirt sleeves strained under the pressure as her muscles swelled.
"It takes a little effort for this," she said. "Not much at all, though. I think I could lift more. A lot more."
They went outside, into the large field behind the building. A couple of old tank hulks decorated the field. There was a Panzer III across the field and a newer, much larger Panzer IV nearby, both retired after taking combat damage in the invasion of Poland at the start of the war. Eva gestured towards them. "Let's see what you can really do," she said with a smile.
Greta gave a feral grin and bounded past the larger Panzer IV, across the field toward the smaller hulk. She took long loping strides, covering two hundred metres in under six seconds. She reached the machine and skidded to a stop, her boot heels leaving two long furrows in the ground. She smiled, feeling the tremendous power in her body, the sheer strength now at her command. She jumped up onto front of the hull, examining the turret. The 3.7 cm KwK 36 cannon had been removed along with the 7.92 mm Maschinengewehr 34 machine guns, probably to be donated to some other tank. She squatted, searching for purchase under the bulky metal. She took a deep breath, braced herself, and lifted.
With a groan of metal bending, the turret began to give. Greta strained, and somewhere inside the hulk there was a sharp crack as something gave way. She tore the turret from the tank, lifting it above her head. With a fierce grin she turned, and began to do overhead presses with the almost 2,000 kg lump of metal. She did twenty presses in rapid succession then hurled the turret, sending it a good fifty metres through the air before it hit the turf in an impact that shook the ground and left a massive furrow.
Delighted, Greta jumped to the ground beside the tank and slid her hands under the track. She lifted the thing, tipping it easily onto its side. She took another grip and hauled the entire body of the Panzer up into the air above her head. She laughed, delighted at the feeling of sheer power - she held a tank in the air, and it hardly felt like anything!
She was not enough for her! She had more power than this, she knew it, and she wanted to prove it. She tossed the hulk aside contemptuously. The feeling of power coursed through her. She was a Goddess, she was physical perfection beyond anything the world had ever seen! She would show those two what she could do - and soon, she would show the rest of the world!
She trotted back across the field to where Doctor Janetzsky and Minister Speer were watching with stunned expressions on their faces. As they watched, she went over to the Panzer IV and took a long look at it.
This would be a much tougher proposition than the Panzer III, she decided. Whereas the older tank weighed only nine tons, the IV weighed twenty five. Where the III had frontal armour 14 mm thick, the armour on the model IV was 80 mm.
She reached out for the armour, taking a good hold on it. She felt herself having to strain for the first time, gritting her teeth with effort as she squeezed...
It's impossible, she thought to herself, no human being could hope to do this, not really, not even with these near-magical enhancements. But she must try. All her short life she had yearned to be nothing more than an instrument of the Nazi party. She knew that as far as the party was concerned, her primary role was to be a mother - raising good strong Aryan sons to fight and die for the Party.
She had accepted that; it was, after all, not her place to question the demands that the State placed on her. But deep inside she had yearned for more, wished it could somehow be her who went out to the battlefields to exterminate the vermin which dared to think itself the equal of the proud Aryan race.
And now she was within a hair's breadth of achieving that goal. She understood little of Doctor Janetzsky's process, but one thing she did know - for whatever reason, it only worked on women. Every single man that had ever entered the coffin had been turned into little more than a puddle of goo. If the Party's new biological "wunderwaffe" were to make a difference, women would be doing the fighting - and Greta could be part of it.
But she had to give her all. She took a deep breath, focused, and put every bit of power she could into it.
And incredibly, in defiance of all logic, her fingers sank into the thick steel.
Her deltoids and triceps bulged incredibly, swelling as she poured on the power, splitting the seams all around the shoulders and arms of her much-abused shirt. She strained,?? emitting a roar of fury, willing the metal to part. How dare it try to resist her, she who was the Nazi Goddess incarnate!
She felt the steel bend under her hands, her fingers sinking deeper into the metal. She strained, her lovely features twisted into a feral snarl - and with a sudden titanic crack, the metal split open and she literally tore the body of the tank in two.
The Panzer IV still had the gun in place; as the turret fell from the ruins of the body it smashed into her skull. She barely felt the impact; she reached up, taking hold of the steel barrel, and with one tremendous heave ripped the entire turret clear off the tank. She spun in a circle, treating the turret like the hammer throw in some demented Olympic event. She threw it at a low angle this time; twenty metres away the turret edge caught the ground and the mass of metal began flipping end over end as it cartwheeled across the field.
Not enough! She must use more power, create more destruction! Always more! She felt like she could rip the world itself apart!
She picked up the bulky diesel engine, hefting it over her head. She turned, slowly smiling at the stunned expression on her audience's face as her titanic muscles easily held up the massive lump of metal. She tilted her arms back, bracing herself as her back took the strain, and then flung the engine across the field with all her strength. The massive diesel flew through the air a good hundred meters before smashing into the ground, shattering into several pieces.
Greta turned to the remains of the Panzer, two roughly equal halves of the main body. She clenched a fist and punched one of them with all her might; she punched a massive dent in the armour and the shattered hulk rolled across the field. She laughed delightedly and picked the other half up. The armour gave, bending beneath her monumental strength as she slowly crushed it.
She tossed it aside and walked over to where Speer and Janetzsky were watching. Eva looked shocked, almost frightened. Speer, on the other hand, gazed at Greta in awe, almost in rapture.
After a long silence, he finally managed to find his voice.
"How many of... of these... of her... can you make?" He asked. His eyes remained locked on Greta; it was as if he was completely unable to remove his gaze from her. She glanced down and smirked as she saw that his reaction was undeniably one of excitement.
"The chemicals are not cheap to make, but production isn't that difficult," she said quietly. "The machine needs periodic maintenance and adjustment... it can turn out perhaps ten a day. We have five more machines under construction... and ten more planned after that. Within a week, I see no reason why production cannot reach sixty a day. Within a month after that, a hundred and sixty. Within six months... five hundred a day. Or more."
Speer licked his lips. "Hundreds... per day," he whispered. "Do you know what this means, Frau Doctor? Do you really understand?"
"Herr Minister?" She asked.
Greta smiled at him, knowing that he could not look away. Looking upon the Goddess can burn the eyes out of a man... but what man can resist, even knowing the price?
"The war is won," he whispered. "That is what this means, Doctor. The war is won."
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