Chapter 712: Ashes of a Republic
Smoke clung to the ruins of Norfolk like a second sky, thick and choking.
Ash fell in slow spirals, dancing on the wind like burnt confetti from a celebration no one survived; a funeral for a republic that had once proclaimed its virtue louder than its crimes.
The riots had been crushed.
But nothing felt victorious.
From the steps of what remained of the Federal Building, rows of boots stood at attention, backs straight, rifles slung across chests.
Their uniforms were spotless, new federal issue in deep navy with no unit insignia, only a single patch: a white star, blank and cold.
An unofficial army for an unofficial war.
Behind them, bodies were still being loaded into trucks, civilians, agitators, National Guard units that refused orders.
Nobody bothered counting anymore. The numbers had lost their meaning. Death was just a line item on the federal ledger.
In Washington, the mood was darker still.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat alone in the Oval Office, a single desk lamp illuminating a map of the Eastern Seaboard.
Red pins marked sites of rebellion, blue pins showed federal deployments, and black pins... the black pins were spreading.
A knock.
Elliott, his son, and now acting Chief of Staff in all but name, stepped inside.
"Norfolk’s been neutralized," he said, voice dry. "No survivors above the age of fifteen. We’re estimating the death toll will leak in under the label of ’foreign subversion event.’"
Roosevelt didn’t look up. He traced a line across the map, from Chicago to Atlanta. Trouble was brewing in both. Detroit was already lost in practice, if not in press.
"And the press?" he asked quietly.
"We’re calling it a Reich-backed false flag. Say the saboteurs were found with German arms and literature. We’ve got some old surplus uniforms to back the claim. They might now be standard issue today, but the people won’t know the difference."
Roosevelt didn’t reply.
His eyes were on the photo beside the map, Eleanor, smiling.
The picture had been taken the day before his first inauguration. He looked younger. Cleaner. More human.
Now? Now he felt like something else. A thing in a chair pretending to be a man, all mask, no soul, no center.
"When I signed the National Stability Act," he said, voice hoarse, "I thought it would be temporary."
Elliott didn’t answer.
"Two years ago, if someone had told me I’d be approving summary executions in American cities, I’d have laughed. Called them un-American."
He looked up. "Tell me, what am I now, Elliott?"
His son swallowed hard.
"A survivor," he said at last.
Later that evening, in a private meeting room beneath the Capitol, the inner circle met.
Generals, intelligence heads, economic planners. No more Cabinet meetings, those were for show.
These were war councils, the kind born in desperation, where survival outweighed legality.
The Director of Internal Security spoke first.
"The Tidewater Model worked. Quick application of armored detachments, blackout of communications, and total elimination of known ringleaders. Resistance collapsed in less than 72 hours."
Another voice chimed in, a general from the Northeast Theater.
"But it spreads. Kill one fire, three more start. We’ve got gunmen in Pittsburgh, saboteurs in St. Louis, and another worker strike in Oakland that’s dangerously close to becoming a full-scale insurrection."
"We can’t keep deploying regulars," snapped the Quartermaster. "The war machine needs steel and coal, not more street patrols. If the factories shut down..."
"Then we lose the war," Roosevelt said, his voice finally rising.
Silence.
He stood, hands on the table.
"Do you think Berlin is slowing down? Do you think Bruno is having existential crises about liberty and due process while his enemies kneel in ditches?"
"We don’t have the luxury of principle. Not anymore. Not when our cities burn and our sons our very shores are threatened by an Axis of Evil across the Atlantic."
Axis of Evil.. What a phrase to describe the Central Powers. Nations that were lawful, orderly, and other than the destruction they caused in the wake of wars waged, were still relatively peaceful.
If the Central Powers were the Axis of Evil, then what were the Allied Powers? Who had resorted to violating their own rules to simply stay afloat?
No one spoke. They didn’t need to.
They had heard whispers already. Whispers that Roosevelt was slipping, too many medications, too much weight lost, too much war.
But now, staring into his fire-glazed eyes, they saw something else:
Conviction. Steel. And maybe... the rot.
Three floors above, a memo was typed and sent through secure courier channels:
PRESIDENTIAL ORDER 4017-B
Expansion of Executive Authority for Regional Stabilization.
Suspension of habeas corpus in all major industrial zones.
Requisitioning of all private radio frequencies.
Authorization for lethal force against "domestic threats to national integrity."
Federal mandate for rationing enforcement under military oversight.
The paper smelled of ink and gunpowder.
That night, Roosevelt returned to the Oval Office. Alone again.
He poured himself a glass of bourbon with shaking hands.
Across the ocean, Bruno von Zehntner knelt in prayer within the Cathedral of St. James.
Bathed in cold moonlight.
He was a frequent patron of the Church, both in Tithe, and personage.
And on days like this, when the world burned around him, and the Reich’s own borders remain untouched by the flame.
He found himself in silent prayer to the God who had reincarnated him.
Whatever his prayers were, lament for the fallen, confession of guilt over actions taken in his will?
Or perhaps simply an expression of thanks for giving him a chance to right humanity’s wrongs, and combat the forces of fate which sought to tear the world down.
Nobody knew but Bruno what his prayers were. Until his silence was broken with a single Latin psalm.
"Non nobis, Domine, non nobis; sed nomini tuo da gloriam."
Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us; but to Your name give the glory
And while Bruno prayed in quiet humility, Roosevelt drank with a guilty conscience.
And somewhere deep inside, something broke... quietly, but irrevocably, beyond repair.