Reincarnated: Vive La France

The village was nearly dead.

It sat tucked between forgotten hills and sun-bleached roads, the kind of place war never remembered and peace never improved.

Roofs sagged.

Shutters hung loose.

A broken bell tower leaned like an old drunk watching the sky for an answer.

The wind carried dust, and with it, the noise of something coming.

Moreau stepped out of the jeep and stretched his back.

His coat snapped in the wind, his face unreadable.

Beside him, Renaud chewed the inside of his cheek, eyes scanning the empty square.

"This where it happens?" Renaud asked.

Moreau didn't answer.

He was looking at the fountain in the middle of the square dry, cracked, a rusted plaque that used to say something about freedom.

He pulled out a cigarette.

Lit it.

Watched the smoke drift like a signal.

"We wait," he said.

And they did.

The first to arrive came at sunrise.

A dust trail announced him before the battered truck turned the bend.

It screeched to a halt, engine coughing, and out stepped Colonel Alexandre Delacroix.

The Butcher of the Legion.

Shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows.

Gray hair tied back to his head.

He didn't say anything at first.

Just looked at Moreau with something close to a grin.

"Still alive, eh?" Delacroix said, slinging his bag over one shoulder. "Guess I owe Renaud fifty francs."

"You're late," Moreau said.

"You're always early," Delacroix shot back. "Still chewing rocks instead of food?"

Moreau smirked. "Still split wood with your fists?"

They shook hands, hard.

No ceremony.

Next came Antoine Bellec.

His motorbike roared down the road like a mad dog.

He killed the engine, swung off the saddle, and lit a cigarette before his boots even hit the gravel.

"Looks like the circus is back in town," he said, eyeing the village. "Missing a few freaks though."

"Give it time," Renaud replied, leaning against the jeep. "The headliners are always late."

Bellec's handshake with Moreau was quiet.

No words.

Just a nod.

Louis "Singe" Mercier didn't drive.

He walked.

No one saw him approach.

He simply emerged from between two buildings like a ghost, dressed in a tattered jacket, his face all grin and dagger eyes.

"Didn't think you'd have the balls to call me," he said to Moreau.

"I almost didn't."

"Good thing you did. I was getting bored training kids to kill."

Moreau raised an eyebrow. "You were doing what?"

Mercier grinned. "Long story. Not for daylight."

Commander Vautrin came in a rusted fishing truck, smelled like the docks and stale tobacco.

He brought a crate of sardines with him and dropped it by the fountain.

"In case the meeting runs long," he said dryly. "Some of us still have manners."

He shook hands with Renaud, clapped Moreau on the shoulder, and found a step to sit on.

They kept coming.

Jean-Pierre Montagne, all muscle and silence, rode in with a van full of fishing nets and an axe wrapped in oilcloth.

He didn't speak.

Just looked at each of them like he was measuring a coffin.

Coulombe arrived drunk.

He stumbled out of the car, hair wild, eyes bloodshot, boots untied.

"WHERE IS HE?!" he bellowed. "MOREAU YOU BASTARD!"

Moreau didn't move.

"You came," he said simply.

"I SOBERED UP FOR THIS!"

"No you didn't," Renaud muttered.

Coulombe looked around, wiped his nose, and laughed. "Fuck, I missed this."

Baptiste Gaudin was next.

Quiet.

Clean.

Carried a map tube and wore a civilian scarf.

He shook hands like a professor, nodded politely, and said to Moreau, "You're about to make history. Again."

Sergeant Lucien Rousse limped into the square using a cane carved from a howitzer shell.

He had a rifle on his back and a smile on his lips.

"You all look worse than I do," he muttered.

Someone laughed.

Maybe Bellec.

Maybe Delacroix.

The last to arrive was Alain Courbet.

He walked in like a man walking into his own funeral.

Coat buttoned, eyes hard.

Alive.

After years of being declared dead.

No one spoke for a moment.

Courbet looked at Moreau.

"You sent that letter knowing I'd have to come back."

"I sent it because I knew you never left."

Courbet nodded. "Still the manipulative prick."

Moreau didn't smile, but his eyes softened.

Just a bit.

They stood in the square, ten of them.

Eleven with Moreau.

Twelve with Renaud.

Men broken by wars, abandoned by commands, hunted by their own country, scarred by betrayal.

But they stood.

Delacroix was the first to speak.

"Alright, Captain. You called the council. So what's the plan? Coup? Uprising? Another suicide mission?"

Moreau took a long drag from his cigarette, then dropped it to the ground.

"I don't know."

That stopped everyone cold.

"You don't know?" Bellec snapped. "You drag us out of hiding, call in every favor, shake the ghosts of our pasts, and you say you don't know?"

Moreau stepped forward.

"I called you here because something is wrong. And it goes beyond Germany. Beyond politics. It's rooted in the bones of this country. The rot goes deep. Every man in this square knows it. You've lived it. Been ruined by it."

They didn't answer.

But they didn't leave.

"Delon told me," Moreau continued. "That they sent me to die. That the attack wasn't an accident. That they wanted my death so they could take control of whatever that scientist had. They wanted control over me. Over all of you."

Mercier chuckled darkly. "And they still don't understand we don't work for them anymore."

"No," Moreau agreed. "We don't. We never did. We worked for something older than them. Something purer."

"France," Rousse said.

Not a cheer.

Not a roar.

Just a word.

It lingered.

"I don't know what this becomes," Moreau said. "But I know I won't let what happened go unanswered. I won't let them bury the truth. And I won't stand by while they twist everything we bled for."

He looked around.

"I need you. All of you. To think. To plan. To fight. But not with guns. Not yet. First, we learn. We expose. We burn the lies until the only thing left is truth."

Vautrin stood up, dusted off his coat. "And if that doesn't work?"

Moreau's voice was stone.

"Then we burn everything else."

Renaud stepped up beside him. "I've already moved some pieces. Arms caches. Safe houses. Listening posts. Everything's in place."

Delacroix looked at the others. "Well. Fuck it. I didn't come all this way to turn around."

Coulombe raised his flask. "To war."

"No," Courbet said. "Not yet. To the beginning."

"To the reckoning," Bellec added.

Moreau looked at the fountain, cracked and dry.

"We start here. In this dead place. We start with silence. With memory. And when we speak…"

His voice dropped.

"They will hear us in Paris."

No one smiled.

But every man felt something move deep in his chest.

The ground beneath France had shifted.

And the storm had only just begun.