Published at 23rd of December 2025 8:18 am

Chapter 793: Deterioration

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Roosevelt’s breath fogged faintly in the cold air of the underground corridor.

The heating in the Delaware complex was functional, more than functional, but the chill still clung to the concrete like mold.

It wasn’t really cold, not like a New York winter, but the kind that seeped into a man’s bones when he sat too long and carried too much.

His doctor had insisted he use the chair today; Roosevelt however, stubbornly insisted on walking.

Each step of his cane rang against the polished floor, out of rhythm with the soft roll of the wheelchair being pushed just behind him by a nervous aide.

"If you stumble, Mister President..."

"I won’t," Roosevelt snapped, though his hand shook on the cane. "If the Commander-in-Chief can no longer walk from his quarters to his own war room, then we may as well surrender now and be done with it."

The aide fell silent.

Secret Service men moved ahead, their faces hard, their eyes tired. They had been reassigned from guarding a sprawling, open republic to babysitting a shrinking bunker of an America. It showed in their shoulders.

At the steel door to the operations chamber, Roosevelt paused.

The Marine outside saluted, jaw tight. The brass placard beside him still read: Presidential Strategic Operation Center.

"Sir," the Marine said quietly. "Joint Chiefs are assembled. Waiting on you."

"Let them wait no longer," Roosevelt muttered.

The war room was oval, windowless, lined with maps and status boards. Electric lights buzzed overhead.

Generals and admirals rose as he entered.

Roosevelt waved them back down with an impatient flick of his fingers and eased himself into the high-backed chair at the head of the table.

His legs were weak, numb and heavy, as if they belonged to someone else, and yet he pretended not to notice.

General Marshall sat to his right, his face gaunter than it had been a year ago. Admiral King to his left, jaw clenched, eyes bloodshot.

Further down were Air Force, Logistics, Intelligence, and a handful of carefully selected civilians whose loyalty had already been tested by crisis and found useful.

Roosevelt smoothed the front of his uniform jacket and folded his hands to steady them.

"Alright, George," he said, voice low but firm. "Let’s have it."

Marshall glanced at the others, then opened the folder before him. The paper inside was still warm from the machine.

"Sir... we’ve received confirmation from all remaining assets in theater," he began. "Sicily has been... lost."

The word hung in the air like smoke.

Roosevelt’s lips tightened.

"Define ’lost’," he said.

King exhaled, eyes on the map table.

"There are no functioning American divisions on the island, Mister President," he said. "Only remnants. Stragglers. No coherent command and control. The last organized unit transmissions ceased as of 0430 local time."

Marshall added, "Our forward command posts have gone dark. Radio silence, then nothing but static. Recon flights can’t get close enough to properly assess; the luftstreitkräfte and those damn rocket batteries on Sardinia have turned the central approaches into a no-fly zone."

Roosevelt’s left hand twitched, fingers curling slightly, as if they wanted a cigarette he had given up on doctor’s orders.

He ignored it.

"And the men," he said. "Our men."

No one answered at first.

There was a shifting of uniforms, eyes glancing to one another, silently nominating someone else to be the one to say it.

Roosevelt’s voice sharpened.

"I asked," he repeated, "about our men."

It was General Somervell, head of Supply, who finally found his voice. He didn’t look up from the paper he was holding, as if the numbers might change if he stared hard enough.

"Sir," he began quietly, "from the start of the campaign until now, preliminary estimates put our losses on Sicily at... six hundred thousand."

The word might as well have been a gunshot.

Roosevelt blinked once, slowly.

"Six hundred thousand what?" he asked, tone oddly conversational.

Somervell swallowed.

"Dead, sir," he whispered. "Killed in action. Not counting the missing... who, at this stage... are unlikely to be found alive."

The silence that followed felt heavier than any artillery barrage.

From the beginning, Roosevelt had known the war would be expensive. No one beat Germany on the cheap, not a Germany that had spent twenty years sharpening knives.

But numbers on reports had always been... abstract. Six hundred thousand, on a single island, the exact opposite.

Marshall cleared his throat carefully.

"If we include losses in the Philippines, major naval engagements, and the failed Gibraltar operation," he said, "our current working estimate places total American battlefield deaths somewhere between one point two and one point five million, Mister President."

He hesitated, then added:

"Our allies combined have taken up to two million killed. Perhaps more. The Central Powers do not seem... inclined to take prisoners this time, sir. Reports from Sicily, Tunisia, and the Pacific all... reinforce that conclusion."

Roosevelt’s hand drifted to his chest for a moment, as if to steady his breath. The pain there was dull and familiar, like a worn knife under the ribs.

"I see," he said.

His voice did not break.

His eyes burned, but that might have been the fatigue.

Admiral King broke the silence.

"The immediate question," he said, "is North Africa. Our remaining bases in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria are under sustained missile and bombing attack. Our fuel depots... most of them are gone. Ports are damaged. If we don’t act, our men there are going to be rolled up the same way as Sicily."

Roosevelt forced his attention back to the table.

"Options," he said.

Marshall slid a second folder forward.

"Option one: reinforce," he said. "We attempt to send more troops, more air support, more shipping. Try to reassert control in North Africa and hold the Mediterranean line."

King shook his head grimly before Marshall finished.

"That’s fantasy," the admiral said bluntly. "We no longer control the sea lanes in the central basin. Their bombers, missile batteries, and submarines make any major deployment a gamble bordering on suicide. We’d be sending good men into a meatgrinder for no strategic benefit."

Marshall didn’t argue.

"Option two," he continued. "Evacuation. We begin pulling our forces out of North Africa immediately. Staged withdrawals from Casablanca, then Oran, then Algiers and Tunis. We prioritize combat veterans and key technical personnel."

"And abandon North Africa entirely?" one of the younger generals blurted out. "Hand it to the Germans on a silver platter?"

King gave him a withering look.

"It’s already on the platter, son," he said. "The only question is whether we lose the silver too."

Roosevelt closed his eyes for a moment, listening.

Underneath their words, he heard something else.

Fear.

Not of the Germans, not exactly.

Fear of the truth.

"Option three?" he asked quietly.

Marshall hesitated.

"Option three," he said, "is to dig in. We keep what we can, fortify what we must, and hope that Bruno’s attention shifts elsewhere. It’s a holding pattern. No major offensives. Just... surviving long enough to regroup."

Roosevelt stared at the wall map.

Bright pins marked proud positions that no longer existed.

Sicily was a smear.

"So," he said, "our options are: fantasy, retreat, or cowering in place."

No one contradicted him.

He lifted his hand slightly, fingers trembling, and motioned to the map of the continental United States, where red strings led from factories to ports to... Delaware.

"Whichever we choose," he said, "it cannot be seen as defeat. Not by the public. Not now."

One of his civilian advisors, a thin man from the Office of War Information, spoke up carefully.

"We can frame it as a ’strategic redeployment’, Mister President," he suggested. "Repositioning forces from overextended fronts to vital defensive sectors. Emphasize that the war has entered a new phase. That we are consolidating for the final push."

"How many times," King muttered under his breath, "have we promised them a final push?"

Roosevelt heard him and did not pretend otherwise.

"As many times as it takes," he said. "Until we can deliver one. Or until there’s no one left to hear it."

The advisor nodded rapidly.

"We can also blame some of the setbacks on unreliable partners," he added. "Latin American contingents, colonial forces, French remnants. Talk about insufficient resolve, battlefield failures of... foreign units. Take some heat off our own casualties."

Marshall’s jaw tightened.

"That won’t bring a single boy home," he said.

"It could keep the home front from exploding," the advisor snapped back, harsher than he intended. "Detroit shows us the knife-edge we’re standing on. If they get concrete numbers, if they hear ’six hundred thousand dead on Sicily’ you will not be able to put that genie back in the bottle, sir."

All eyes returned to Roosevelt.

He steepled his fingers, feeling how cold they were.

"Publicly," he said slowly, "we will say Sicily was an exploratory campaign. A beachhead intended to test German reactions, not a full-scale commitment. We will praise the valor of the men who fought, speak of valuable lessons learned, and promise they did not die in vain."

He took a shallow breath.

"That is the lie."

He looked at Marshall.

"Privately, we plan for evacuation. However much you can get out of North Africa intact, you bring home or send to safer ground. No more ’limited offensives’. No more bleeding men for prestige positions we cannot hold."

Marshall nodded once.

"Yes, Mister President."

Roosevelt turned his gaze to King.

"You have my authority to begin naval redeployment," he said. "You are to preserve the fleet above all else. Ships can still be built, but not fast enough. We lose our carriers, our heavy cruisers, we lose any chance of controlling the Atlantic."

King’s mouth tightened, but he nodded.

"Yes, sir."

Roosevelt felt the pain in his chest spike again, a sharp flare that radiated down his left arm before ebbing into a numb ache. His vision swam as he began to struggle to keep his thoughts in order.

He couldn’t believe it, just how quickly things had progressed. Just how close the United States was to completely and totally falling apart.

He opened his mouth, ready to make one final statement, and then he felt his breath catch in the back of his throat. He stuttered for but a moment, before finally being able to take a deep breath and speak his thoughts clearly.

"That will be all for now.... You have your orders, so go fulfill them. Dismissed...."

Nobody dared to linger longer, at least nobody but the President’s doctor. Who stayed and began to perform a checkup. To make sure that the stress wouldn’t kill the man, at least not yet.

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