Not Yet

"I...didn't..do it."

"You already said that. You keep saying it. It won't change anything."

"I didn't do it." The young man whimpered through battered lips. He spit up blood and with dreadfully swollen eyes, tried to look up at the stranger sitting across from him and smoking a cigarette.

The room was dark. Nondescript. He didn't know where he was, just that he'd awakened tied to this chair and had had the thunder beaten out of him before any words had been said.

Now the dark eyes of his captor were staring daggers at him. On occasion, he would glance over at a large vial he had set on the table between them, but mostly he just glared.

"I...don't know...you."

"I'm pretty sure I know you, Paul." The dark stranger smirked and leaned in, "can I call you 'Paul'?"

He blew a fetid cloud of smoke in his face and pointed to the container.

"You see, any minute now that little vial is going to tell me exactly who you are."

His eyes grew cold.

"And if it tells me what I think it's going to tell me...you're going to have the worst day of your life."

He sat back again and let the words bore in.

It was then that the liquid in the beaker began to turn from clear to blue. The stranger snuffed out his smoke, pulled a pistol slowly from his jacket and began pushing the table aside.

"DNA's a match."

He pushed the gun against the young man's forehead.

"Paul Joseph Goebbels. I'm agent Efraim Zuroff with the Historical Correction Force. You are hereby sentenced to die for crimes against humanity."

The nineteen year old soon-to-be-Nazi's heart raced.

"B-but, I haven't done anything."

Zuroff sneered.

"No. Not yet."