Published at 19th of December 2025 9:19 am

Chapter 787: Only the Strong Survive

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

Snow fell over Berlin like ash from a distant fire.

From the upper floors of the Reich Chancellery, the city looked almost peaceful. Trams glided along their rails, and headlights cut clean lines through the evening haze.

Somewhere far below, a church bell tolled the hour, swallowed by the hum of a capital at war.

Inside the Bruno’s official office, there was no peace.

Maps covered the walls, Europe, Africa, the Pacific, the eastern seaboard of North America, each one layered with pins and wax pencil, arrows and shaded zones that represented lives in neat, clean lines.

Kaiser Wilhelm II stood before the Atlantic chart, one gloved hand resting on a cane, the other hovering near the coast of New England.

His beard was silver now, but his back was still straight, his eyes still sharp. Age had not beaten him so much as polished him.

"You have Siam and Japan playing constable in the Pacific," Wilhelm said, not turning around. "Mittelafrika feeds our factories like a second Ruhr. Sicily is..."

He paused, wincing at a cluster of pins near Palermo, as if trying to put the thought of what was happening to the back of his mind."... costly, for our enemies that is."

He finally turned, with the faintest trace of irritation in his expression.

"But America," he said, "America is a festering wound that has become a blight upon us all, and one with no end in sight."

Bruno sat at the long table, hands folded, posture relaxed in a way that only made his presence more oppressive.

"Yes," he said calmly. "That would appear to be the case."

Before he could elaborate, there was a knock at the door.

An adjutant entered, young, crisp, nervous in the way of men who knew they were about to interrupt the two most powerful men in Europe.

He bowed quickly.

"Your Imperial Majesty, Your Royal Highness. We have intercepted and recorded an emergency national broadcast from President Roosevelt. It was transmitted less than an hour ago. Our monitoring stations in Norway and Iceland caught the signal."

Wilhelm’s brows rose.

"An emergency broadcast?" he asked. "About what?"

The adjutant held out a folder and a transcription.

"Riots in Detroit, Sire. And... alleged foreign sabotage."

That earned Bruno’s full attention.

He gestured with two fingers.

"Read it."

The young officer began to recite, stumbling only once or twice before settling into a rhythm.

Roosevelt’s voice came alive in the dry German prose, a grave hour, a wounded republic, foreign agents subverting American labor, German saboteurs turning workers into pawns.

Roosevelt spoke of evidence, of uncovered plots, of decisive action to protect the homeland. He spoke of unity, of discipline, of traitors within.

When the adjutant finished, the room was silent. Wilhelm turned his gaze from the map to Bruno. It was not quite a glare. Not yet. But it was close.

At last, he spoke.

"Well?" the Kaiser asked. "Have you decided to start signing your work?"

Bruno’s lips twitched.

He lifted his right hand, palm outward, as if surrendering to a schoolmaster.

"You got me," he said.

Wilhelm scowled.

"This is not the time for jokes, Bruno. If he has uncovered..."

"He has uncovered nothing," Bruno cut in, tone still mild. "He is guessing. And worse... he is guessing publicly."

The Kaiser’s scowl deepened.

"So you admit it was your little pet project that started this?"

Bruno gave him a look that was almost amused.

"Your Majesty," he said, "for matters such as these, mercenaries continue to prove a useful asset. And if I had not hired them, then it would have been some other spark. You cannot heap munitions, corpses, and lies on a nation and then be surprised when something explodes."

Wilhelm tapped his cane against the floor.

"That is not an answer."

Bruno leaned back slightly in his chair, eyes drifting to the North American map.

"Our man in Detroit," he said, "was a catalyst. Nothing more. A single sniper with an American-made rifle, firing American-made ammunition, wearing American clothes, standing among American workers."

He spread his hands.

"No forged papers. No cipher pads. Nothing that can be traced back to us. Roosevelt knows it was foreign intervention because he would do the same thing in our position. But knowing and proving are not the same."

The Kaiser frowned.

"And this talk of ’evidence?’ This folder he waves in front of his people?"

"Fabricated," Bruno said at once. "It must be. There is nothing real for him to hold. So he holds fantasies sewn together from fear."

He smiled faintly.

"Which means, Wilhelm, that for the first time since this war began, he has made a truly catastrophic mistake."

Wilhelm did not look convinced.

"He draws his nation together under an external threat," the old Emperor said. "That is what leaders do. We have done it ourselves. Many times."

Bruno shook his head.

"Not like this," he replied. "He is trying to weld a cracked vessel with lies while the hull is already leaking. Every day that passes, more men do not come home. More factories slow, then stop. More governors see the steel vanishing into Delaware, and wonder why the capital is hoarding while they starve."

He let his words hang in the air like frost.

"Now he tells them that Germans, not Washington, are to blame for their misery. He names a phantom, and behind that phantom he hides his enclave, his retreat, his attempt to carve out a fortress on the bones of his own republic."

Wilhelm’s eyes narrowed.

"And what," he said slowly, "do you propose to do about it?"

Bruno’s answer was immediate.

"Stir the pot," he said. "And ensure it does not simmer... but boils."

Wilhelm stared at him.

"You mean to push them into a second revolt."

"I mean," Bruno replied, "to give fate the last nudge it requires."

The Kaiser took a long breath, forcing his temper to remain in check.

"Explain," he demanded.

Bruno rose from his chair, walking slowly toward the map of America. His fingers traced the eastern seaboard thoughtfully.

"Roosevelt has made three fatal errors tonight," he began. "First, he has openly admitted that the homeland is no longer secure. Second, he has accused foreign powers without presenting any verifiable evidence. And third, most dangerous of all, he continues stripping the interior states to feed his coastal enclave."

His hand hovered over Michigan, then slid downward, following rail lines only he could see.

"We have eyes in their rail yards," he said. "Dockworkers in New York. Clerks in Pennsylvania. Longshoremen in Boston. Men who have no love for Washington, but great love for money."

He glanced at Wilhelm.

"We know the volume of steel moving east. The fuel. The grain. The generators. We have the shipping ledgers, the naval redeployments, the quiet reassignment of National Guard units away from the Midwest."

Wilhelm’s brows rose.

"And you believe," he said, "that if the governors and labor leaders saw this in black-and-white..."

Bruno cut in softly.

"...they would understand that Roosevelt is not preserving a Union. He is preserving his union. A northern rump state, a favored corridor. The rest?" He tapped the Midwest. "Expendable."

The Kaiser stared at the map.

"And your Werwolf mercenaries?" he asked. "What role do they play in this... boiling?"

Bruno’s expression didn’t change, but something colder entered his eyes.

"Agitation, protection, escalation when necessary," he said. "They will continue to pose as workers, as foremen, as guards. They will ensure the right documents find their way into the hands of the right men at the right time. They will whisper that Roosevelt lied about foreign sabotage because he needed an excuse to tighten his grip while he fled north and left them to starve."

He looked back toward Wilhelm.

"In short, Sire, we will give the American people the truth."

The Kaiser snorted.

"And surround it with your own lies."

"Of course," Bruno said, utterly unashamed. "Raw truth is too bright for most men. It must be wrapped in something familiar, or they will go blind before they can act."

Wilhelm’s fingers tightened on his cane.

"You are playing with a great deal of fire," he said. "If America shatters completely, there will be chaos for decades. Warlords. Militias. Desperate men with access to factories and shipyards."

"And no single flag unifying them behind a singular industrial machine," Bruno replied quietly.

"No single navy rules two oceans. No single currency to bully the world. Fifty bickering republics, kingdoms, and juntas we can buy, threaten, or ignore as needed is a far lesser danger than one wounded colossus that survives this war resentful, vengeful, and humiliated."

He paused.

" ’If an injury has to be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.’ I presume you are well read on your Machiavelli, right, Wilhelm?"

Wilhelm’s gaze sharpened.

"I would not be in my position today, if I weren’t... Let me ask you this, Bruno, since you are so convinced that the United States of America needs to be dismantled, when the union finally implodes, and enters a state of total chaos, what if some of these new factions that will inevitably rise pose a threat to our national security?"

Bruno smirked, but did not hesitate in the slightest to answer.

"That is the beautiful thing about Balkanization, Wilhelm; the enemy of our enemy becomes our proxy...."

For a long moment, Kaiser Wilhelm II said nothing.

He studied the man before him, a man he had known since he was but an adolescent boy. A man who had done the unthinkable, and climbed to greater heights than any man before him.

Throughout the decades, Wilhelm had placed his faith in Bruno, and every time the man delivered more than he had promised.

No matter how crazy this plan might seem, Wilhelm was willing to trust Bruno one last time. ’

"Very well," Wilhelm said quietly. "You will have what you need to... stir your pot. Expand the funding to your foreign networks. Coordinate with the Foreign Office to prepare denials. And for God’s sake, keep our fingerprints off this mess as long as possible."

He hesitated, then added:

"And Bruno... when it burns, try to spare the innocents."

Bruno inclined his head.

"I will spare as many as the situation allows," he said. "But you know as well as I do, Sire..."

His gaze drifted back to the map of America, to Detroit, to Pennsylvania, to the uneasily quiet South.

"...revolutions are not performed with scalpels. And amidst the flames of anarchy, only the strong will survive."

Wilhelm muttered something under his breath that might have been a prayer, or a curse, or both.

"Then go," he said.

Bruno bowed, not as a servant, but as a man acknowledging another’s burden.

"As you wish, Your Majesty."

He turned and left the room, boots echoing softly on the polished floor.

Behind him, the snow continued to fall over Berlin, light as ash, as somewhere across an ocean a republic spoke of foreign saboteurs...

...and unknowingly marched faster toward the cliff he had chosen for it.

Share