Cañon City, Colorado, United States of America

October 1st, 2025

0800 Hours

It was supposed to be just another normal day in Cañon City, Colorado. Children were starting school, stores and shops across the small city were getting ready to open their doors, and like many others in the city, officer Mathew Hernandez was getting ready to start his work day. After dropping his daughter, Olivia, off at school, he'd begin his shift. After adjusting his belt and grabbing his daughter's lunch box, he waited patiently by the front door for lady of the house to see them off.

"See you after school, sweetie!" his wife, Isabella said as she scooped the girl up in her arms, squeezing her tightly and kissing her forehead. "Love you!"

"Love you too mommy!" she replied as she started skipping out the door and to her father's patrol car parked in the driveway.

"And I'll see you later, handsome!" after giving her husband a kiss goodbye, she too was out the door to her job. With everything out of the way, he patted the family cat as he rubbed up against his leg, grabbed his own lunch, and got out the door. Like always, his daughter was cheerfully jumping around his squad car, anxiously waiting to get inside. Getting inside the car, he buckled his seat belt before starting the car, and making his to the school. Despite being in 6th grade, Olivia was still very much a daddy's girl, something that Mathew didn't want to change any time soon. He was content with his little girl staying sweet and innocent.

"So Liv, have you figured out what you want to wear to the costume contest at school yet? We've only got a few weeks left." he reminded her as they drove past the local Catholic Church, Father O'Brian waving as they went. He looked over at his daughter, still staring out the window as if she didn't hear him. "Olivia, did you hear me?"

"I wanna be a Jedi!" she replied quickly.

"I should've guessed that one. You take definitely take after my side of the family for that." Mathew said grinning. "You know who you want to be or do you just want to be your own?" he asked.

"I dunno. Some of my friends are dressing up as comic heroes and want me to join them. They told me they just need a Wonder Woman. But I don't want to be Wonder Woman. I just don't want my friends to be mad at me." she explained. Mat pursed his lips he thought of how to respond.

"Well they are your friends right? If they get made at a choice you make, especially one this simple, then they aren't your friends." Olivia just looked at her father as he continued to speak. "You do what makes you happy, don't go out of your way to please others. That make sense?"

"I think so. I'll tell them I made up my mind."

"Good, I'll let your mother know when we get home and we'll start looking for a costume. I also have an old toy lightsaber in my closet from when I was younger. When we pick out what you want, I'll go dig it out for you, sound good?"

"Thank you, daddy!" she replied immediately.

"Good to hear. Now since we're almost at the school, open up the glove compartment. I got something inside for you." he told her as a small grin grew on his face. That smile only grew bigger as the contents were pulled out and revealed, making Olivia squeal in joy. A king sized snickers bar firmly gripped in her hands.

"Don't tell your mother about this, ok? She's pretty adamant about lowering your junk food diet with Halloween coming up, so don't let her know about this." he told her as they approached the front of the school. "You have a good day at school sweetheart, I'll see you when I get off work." he gave her a kiss on her forehead and she jumped out the passenger seat of his cruiser.

"Love you dad!"

"Love you too! Stay out of trouble." he reminded her. Now it was time to start the day the same way he'd done countless times before. "28 to Dispatch!" he spoke into the radio."

"28" came the reply from dispatch.

"28, 10-41, 10-8."

"10-4. Possible 10-15 reported at Cañon City High School, can you respond?" dispatch informed

"10-4 Dispatch, I'm on the way." not even a minute into his shift and he's responding to a fight at the high school. 'This is the third time this week this week a kid has been dragged out in cuffs.' he thought to himself as he turned right onto Main Street and made his way towards the high school. "What the hell is going on with these kids lately?

"All units we have a 10-32 at Cañon City High School, all cars please respond." his eyes widened as the dispatcher's voice came over the radio with the announcement. This was any officer's worst fear materializing right now. Matters were made worse as more frantic calls came over the radio from the school resource officers.

"Multiple armed individuals approaching the school from from Rudd Park, requesting bac-fuck!" gunshots rang out over the radio as Hernandez floored the accelerator and gunned it down the road for the high school. "This is car 28, I'm on the way!" he radioed in as his hands were white knuckled on the steering wheel. As he approached the intersection, two more cars screamed past, heading directly for the school.

"Car 17, I'm 10-76!"

"Car 25, I'm just down the road"

"Cañon cars 14 and 16 will arrive on scene in 30 seconds!

"We've got three shooters, repeat, three shooters in the parking lot!"

Turning the corner at high speed, the school was now visible as he drove past Rudd Park, which seemed unusually dark for some reason, driving full speed towards the school. Three cars were already parked right outside the bus circle, as well as on the grass next to it. As he pulled in to block the exit, two more cruisers arrived and blocked the entrance, with the officers practically jumping from their cars. As he exited his car and went for his AR-15 in the trunk, he realized the situation was both worse and better than he had thought. In the parking lot next to the bus circle, stood 3 armed men, two of which were carrying sidearms, while the other held a shotgun. At their feet was a screaming woman, who one of them was in the process of binding before the police arrived.

"Unit 28 to dispatch, 10-52 at the high school, multiple gun shot victims, request-" his words were cut off as the assailants opened fire in his direction. The rounds cratering his windshield and smashing his driver side window. The officers responded with a hail of their own gunfire, wounding one of the men, forcing the other two to run behind nearby vehicles. "MICHAEL!" he yelled at the occupants of car 19 that was parked adjacent to his own. The man taking cover behind the driver side door looked over, acknowledging him.

"One hell of a start to our day!" Michael White quickly said as he racked back his shotgun and fired at man holding the shotgun, forcing him to duck back down. "If you can go around to Jackson's car, me and Alex will keep the bastards occupied." he yelled as shotgun pellets impacted the door he was behind. This time it was Hernandez that responded with three rounds from his rifle, silencing the gunfire, and leaving one last gunmen.

"Why me?" screamed Hernandez as he watched the gunman's lifeless body collapse.

"Because your the only one here with a rifle right now! If you can get over to James' car, you might have an angle on the bastard!"

"It also puts me in the shooters line of sight!"

"We'll keep him pinned down long enough for to get in position. Be ready to go on the count of three."

"Fuck my life!" he whispered to himself as he steeled himself for what he was about to do. "Start the clock."

"Alright, three, two, ONE!" on cue, Hernandez leapt from behind his car and sprinted towards the car parked ahead. Jackson was the first officer to arrive on scene and first to trade shots with the gunmen. As he got closer to the car, he noticed Jackson was on his side, clutching his right arm. He was doing his best to apply pressure, but he was still bleeding heavily.

"Shit, where'd you get hit?" Hernandez asked his fellow officer is a worried tone.

"Don't you worry about me, just get those motherfuckers." he said grinding his teeth. "After what they did, they need to pay!" as he looked out at the sidewalk, he could make out the bodies of not only the school resource officer, but of four of the students as well. They were all moving, but barely. In that moment, the only thing that drove him was anger. Anger that this had happened so close to home. That these children were the targets of some petty psychopaths. Some of his own fellow officers even had children that attended the school. All he could think about was what if it was his daughter lying on the ground.

"Stay here brother, I'll get this son of a bitch." the hesitation in his mind was gone and he was ready to end this. Checking his vest once more, he shouldered his rifle, and began sidestepping as he got closer and closer to the final gunmen. His fellow officers had done a good job of making sure the man was unable to move. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed another officer approaching from the north, his view blocked by the cars in the parking lot. However, the gunmen still had his buddy, who was bleeding out on the ground, as an extra set of eyes.

"Holt, look out!" the man weakly warned just as Hernandez turned the corner with his rifle aimed directly at the man.

To say they were confused was putting it mildly. They were on the outskirts of Canon City, chasing a runaway who had escaped from the Moulton Concentration Camp, when their vision was overtaken by a bright light. When it was all clear, they saw the girl they were after running across a street over to what looked like a school building. They made quick time and eventually tackled her to the ground in the parking lot. But that's when they realized something was very wrong about the world they were in. The first was that there shouldn't have even been a school here in the first place. Even worse is that when they looked at the students, who had now taken notice of their work, many were not white. None of the cars they saw looked anything like back in the Reich. But the biggest was when they stared upon the flagpole present at the school. Flying proudly was the stars and stripes, only with 60 stars instead of 48.

"What kinda fucked up world is this, Holt?"

"A world where whites and niggers go to school together? Sounds like a Jews paradise is what." he spat as he looked over at the students, who were being quickly rushed inside by the teachers. "Hurry up with that bitch Griggs, looks like we may have trouble." he ordered as he saw what looked to be a police officer approaching them. Racking his shotgun, he took a step forward, hoping to deter the man. However the officer drew his sidearm and fired at them, forcing them to fire back.

"Fuck, get to goddamn cover!" Earle shouted as Holt raised the shotgun at the officer and fired. His shot landed, but it only wounded the officer, sending him down next to school bus.

"How about we show these niggers and race traitors their place before leaving? We can always come back another time." Griggs suggested.

"I like that idea. First I say we start these kids." Holt laughed as he fired on the crowd of still retreating students. However as he began to reload his revolver, another officer opened fire from another section of the parking lot, forcing them to take cover behind a rather large truck. Then they heard sirens blaring from all directions. The runaway had once more tried to flee, but Griggs had forced her down once more and began to bind her hands behind her back. As Holt and Earle traded shots, Griggs couldn't help but notice the sirens got closer and closer. Finally, he heard the screech of car tires and saw a police car pull up a few dozen meters away.

"A negro cop?" Earle said confused before ducking for cover against the incoming fire. "Just where the hell are we?"

"Wherever we are, there will be hell to pay for these heathens once New York hears about this." Holt replied firing his shotgun at the newly arrived officer, sending his back behind the car. "We need to leave right now! Just throw that bitch over your shoulder and lets get the fuck out of here!" he ordered. However, it was far too late. One of the newly arrived police officers put a bullet directly in Griggs' leg, forcing him down. Holt and Earle raced for cover, leaving their partner, as well as their bounty, laying on the pavement.

"This is bullshit!" Earle shouted in frustration. "Where they hell did these people even get guns? Only the police in Denver had any, and they weren't this good!"

"I don't fucking know, but I'm not letting these bastards take me down!" he replied definitely as he got back up and fired his shotgun twice at the nearby police car. But as soon as he did, three rounds tore through his chest, leaving Earle as the last man standing.

"Fuck!" Holt said terrified as he realized he was now the last one capable of fighting back. Griggs took a bullet to his right knee and was desperately trying to crawl closer to the vehicle he was behind, which was being riddled from gunfire from all directions. He took one final look over to Griggs, who was pointing past him to his left.

"Holt, look out!" he warned. But it was too late. As he turned to face what was there, his world went black.

"Die you filthy ni-" the man attempted to raise his sidearm, but was cut down as five rifle rounds tore through his chest, sending him down to the pavement. Kicking the gun away with his feet, Hernandez radioed in the all clear for his fellow officers.

"All shooters down, I say again, all shooters are down." he looked at the surviving gunman, keeping his rifle trained on him even as other officers rushed over and threw him into handcuffs. The man, who was relatively dirty, had long black hair, and thick beard that connected with his mustache. He glared daggers at the officers as they patted him down and emptied every object from his pockets. For the officers searching him however, they were confused beyond belief.

"Secure the suspect!" one officer shouted.

"Check his pockets, we don't need any more surprises!" another ordered.

"What the fuck is this shit?" Officer Jones said stunned as he checked the man's wallet and pulled out the currency inside. He waved one of the bills around for his fellow officers to see, only for them to stare back in disbelief. Alongside a picture of Adolf Hitler, and two eagles with a swastika beneath them, the following was written across the bill;

REICHS Banknote

5 Reichmark

"This has got to be some sick joke?" Hernandez chuckled morbidly. However the looks of the officers that were sorting the rest of his belongings were far from amused. In fact, officer Davis, who was holding some small notebook in is hand, turned pale white as he flipped through the pages. Sergeant Anderson, who had just arrived on scene, took notice and grabbed the book from Davis, who immediately turned away and threw up once the book was taken.

"Where in the fuck did you come from, you sick son of a bitch?" looking down from the notebook, he gave the man a look that was a mixture of pure hatred, disgust, and contempt. "Drag his sorry ass out of my sight. Rest of you, follow me back to the cars. Paramedics aren't that far out and we need a complete perimeter around the school." As more units began to arrive and paramedics arrived on scene, most of them still had a hard time trying to process what had just transpired. Two of their own were wounded, one critically, along with four students. This was ignoring the unknown teenage girl who was the intended victim, the two dead gunmen, and the one survivor.

"Anyway, take a look at this bullshit. Tell me if I'm hallucinating and need a drug test." he morbidly joked as he handed the book off to his left.

"This can't be real, is it?" Officer Garcia questioned as she stared in disbelief at what was written inside of it. There was a list of names on each page, each individual had a picture, height, weight, eye color, race, gender, and religious section on them. But that's not what stuck out the most. Under each picture, it gave the location of the concentration camp said individual had escaped from. It made sense for Davis acted the way he did, he had family who survived the holocaust. Seeing something like this was too much for him.

"I don't believe this." Hernandez said at a loss for words. "I just don't get what the fuck this is. This says she escaped a concentration camp in Moulton, Alabama. I know Alabama is pretty fucking bad, but there aren't concentration camps there."

"Nor does anyone use money with Adolf Hitler's face on it." Anderson replied as he flipped back to the page that had a sticky note sticking up. "That girl they tried to kidnap, all the information about her is on this page. Her name is Adrian Piper, born 1948, age 14, born one year after Victory over America, escaped from the Moulton Concentration camp in 1950 with her mother. Last known location was Canon City, in the Rocky Mountain Buffer Zone." as he finished, the look of pure disgust and confusion was written on the faces of his fellow officers.

"You guys aren't going to believe what that girls been saying." Michael said as he ran up to the group.

"Let me guess, she told you she's running from Nazis who want to bring her back to a concentration camp?" Anderson replied, already knowing the answer. Michael looked a bit confused at first as he saw the faces of his fellow officers.

"Uh, yeah." he said scratching his head. "That's exactly what she said. How the hell did you know that?" Anderson simply raised the book in his hand for Michael to see.

"We took this book off the surviving gunman. Has a whole list of names in it, many of which have X's marked across them. That girl is listed here as well."

"Well I'm not sure what fucked up kidnapping case this is, but that girl has a number tattoo on her right arm and is crying her eyes out with my partner over there. He's trying to calm her down for the paramedics, but the shit she's saying just ain't making any sense."

"None of this is making any sense. Any idea where the hell they even came from in the first place?" he asked befuddled at the situation.

"Sergeant, you may want to come see Rudd Park." a voice crackled over his radio.

"What is it, officer Taylor?" he replied.

"I honestly can't say what this is. But you may want to call the National Guard or the FBI, because this is out of our pay grade." Taylor told him.

"After today, I doubt anything will surprise me at this point. Hernandez, White, with me, rest of you stay here." as they walked south towards Rudd park, they couldn't help but notice it was far darker than the trees should normally allow. The area where they saw officer Taylor flagging them down in was supposed to be a clearing. But all they could see was a dark mass in its place. "Just what the hell are you going on about?" Anderson asked confused as he stared at Taylor.

"That, Sergeant." he said pointing at the inside of the park. Where the expected to see a clearing that would normally host parties, was instead a large black mass. None of them could quite describe what they were looking at. It was as though they were looking inside a vortex. They couldn't make out something on the inside, but none of them knew what.

"Any of you have any idea what that thing is?" he asked to no one in particular.

"No idea Sergeant."

"How the hell did this even get here?" once again, no one had any answers to give. They were all at a loss for words.

"It kinda looks like a wormhole." Hernandez remarked.

"I swear I read something online that was very similar to this. Where a rift to another world opens and out comes an army."

"White, that makes no fucking sense."

"Well given everything that just happened, including a girl screaming about not wanting to go back to the Reich, and these three gunmen with everything we found on them, I can't exactly think of anything else." Michael argued back. Anderson simply sighed and rubbed his temples as he tried assessing the situation.

"Have all new arriving units post up around here. If anyone else comes through, be ready to put them down. I'm gonna get ahold of dispatch and give them a run down. See if I can convince the Chief to contact the FBI field office in Denver, as well as convince the governor to contact the Guard. Something tells me we're in for a long couple of days." he said while patting Hernandez and Michael on the shoulder before walking over to his cruiser.

"If that's what I think it is, and half of what that girl said is true," he paused, shuddering at the thought of what resides on the other side. "Dear lord, that's not a good thought. And if these assholes managed to stumble through, who's to say an army won't be next."

"That's not something I want to think about, Michael. If the axis in their world learn about this, the last thing any of us want to see are German and Japanese trying to add our world to their possessions."

"Let's just hope the governor doesn't drag ass in mobilizing the Guard. Although its gonna be hell on this town once all of Fort Carson races down here and fortifies this area to hell and back."

"Well if we're right about what's on the other side, I doubt we'll just sit here and wait forever. The whole country will want us to figure out what the other side looks like, and to take the fight to them."

"I guess we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, I think we should see if we can't get our families out of town, just in case." Michael suggested.

"Yeah, that's probably not a bad idea. School's gonna be shut down for a while anyway, so might as well send the family to my parents in Texas."

"Damn shame it happened around this time, I was gonna fill every kid's bag on Halloween night.

"Every kid loves coming to your house." Hernandez chuckled. "My wife damn near killed you after all the candy you gave Liv last year."

"What can I say, I love kids." Michael smiled for a moment before it faded from his face. "But the horror on Halloween this year won't be from costumes and scary stories. It'll be the hell that awaits us on the other side of this portal."