Published at 24th of December 2025 7:58 am

Chapter 797: Unravel

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The telegrams arrived one after another, stacked so high on Roosevelt’s desk that his trembling hand could no longer brush them aside.

Aides came and went like ghosts, laying down new folders, new reports, new casualty estimates.

The lamps burned low in the Delaware command villa, casting jaundiced light across the room and making the fatigue carved into Roosevelt’s face look almost corpse-like.

He had not slept in thirty-six hours, he doubted he would sleep again.

A soft knock at the door.

"Mr. President?" It was Undersecretary Hall. His voice carried that brittle edge Roosevelt had come to dread. "The latest intelligence from the War Department. Sicily... North Africa... the Philippines..."

Roosevelt did not look up. "Set them down."

Hall placed the folder carefully on the desk, as though its contents were something venomous.

A moment passed.

Then Hall whispered, as if saying the words too loudly might collapse what remained of the nation:

"Sir... they know."

Roosevelt’s hand froze mid-reach.

"Who?"

"The American people."

A faint roar echoed from outside, shouting, horns, the indistinct rumble of thousands. The protests had begun two hours earlier in Wilmington.

By now they were spreading to Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and St. Louis.

People crowding the streets, demanding answers, waving photographs of sons who had not written home in months. They were demanding the truth.

Roosevelt felt an awful tightness in his chest.

"We controlled the newspapers," he rasped. "We managed the radio broadcasts. We suppressed casualty figures. How did they find out?"

Hall swallowed hard.

"Sir... too many men didn’t come home. Too many telegraphs marked ’missing,’ ’unconfirmed,’ or simply not sent at all. When Sicily fell, we put out that statement about a ’strategic repositioning’... but ships limped into New York Harbor carrying a fraction of the units that were supposed to be aboard. Hundreds of wives waited on the docks and saw empty rails, empty berths. A few soldiers started talking. And those Werwolf infiltrators amplified everything. Rumors became truth far faster than we could censor."

Roosevelt slumped back, the pain in his gut twisting like a knife.

The Werwolf Group had been a nuisance last year. Now they were gasoline in a drought-parched forest.

He opened the folder.

The first headline from an intercepted underground newspaper slapped him harder than any German artillery shell ever could:

"SICILY LOST — 600,000 DEAD? WHITE HOUSE SILENT."

The next:

"RETREAT FROM AFRICA: ONLY ONE IN TEN RETURNS."

A third:

"PHILIPPINES FALL — FAMILIES DEMAND ANSWERS."

His vision swam, and hall said nothing. Outside, the rumble grew louder.

---

Elsewhere in America, the unraveling began.

In Detroit, crowds stormed the federal building, pelting it with stones and broken bottles.

Police lines faltered within minutes; after everything that city had lived through in the last decade, the riots, the shortages, the political purges, no one had the will to fight.

In Kansas City, a column of angry farmers overturned army trucks loaded with rationed grain, shouting that their sons were "rotting in Sicily for nothing."

In Dallas, a local radio announcer defied federal orders, reading leaked casualty figures on air.

The station was raided ten minutes later, but the message was already out. People gathered in the streets with rifles, daring federal marshals to try again.

In California, longshoremen walked off the docks en masse.

"Not another ship," they said. "Not until we know the truth."

Werwolf propaganda mixed with uncomfortable truths spread like wildfire through these fractures.

Pamphlets slipped under doors, broadcasts on unauthorized bands, men with perfect English and suspiciously vague backgrounds whispering that Washington had betrayed its own people.

And in five states, the breaking point finally snapped.

Hall handed Roosevelt another telegram, this one red-stamped, urgent.

Roosevelt’s hands trembled as he unfolded it.

"Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, and South Carolina have declared coordinated suspension of federal authority. State Guards have mobilized.

Militia movements are forming defensive rings around key infrastructure.

Louisiana and Tennessee are ’considering similar action.’"

Roosevelt felt his pulse hammer unevenly. His vision darkened at the edges.

"Five states..." he said hoarsely. "Seceding?"

Hall’s expression was stone.

"They’re not using that word, sir. They’re calling it ’temporary sovereignty’ until the government proves it has not lied about the war."

Roosevelt closed his eyes.

But the voice from the past, his own, would not stop whispering in his ears:

We must enter the war to preserve stability. We must not reveal the losses. The people must believe victory is inevitable.

What a fool he had been.

Roosevelt stood slowly.

His legs trembled under the weight of truths he’d spent two years refusing to face.

"We must address the nation," he said.

Hall and Marshall exchanged a look.

"Sir," Hall said carefully, "if you appear on radio admitting these losses... the remaining states may follow the first five. Martial law will be impossible to enforce. Supply chains will collapse. Cities could revolt."

"And if I don’t?" Roosevelt whispered.

Marshall answered grimly:

"Then the mob outside becomes the entire country."

Roosevelt limped toward the window overlooking Wilmington. The streets below writhed with humanity, angry, grieving, betrayed. Some carried signs. Others rifles. All carried loss.

For a moment he felt something break inside him, some final strand of hope snapping under impossible strain.

"This war..." He exhaled shakily. "This war was supposed to unite the nation. Restore faith. Reclaim the future."

Marshall’s voice was heavy with pity.

"War never does what we want, Mr. President."

Roosevelt stared at the flickering fire of overturned cars in the distance.

"What remains of our military strength?" he asked.

Marshall shrugged helplessly.

"We still have the Atlantic Fleet, battered though it is. A handful of divisions left stateside. The National Guard. But public support for new drafts is gone. Factories are striking. Ammunition production has slowed by forty percent. Even the War Bond Campaign has collapsed, they’re burning posters in the streets."

A beat.

"And the Werwolf agitation is accelerating everything. They’re feeding every fear, every rumor. Encouraging states to break away. Suggesting that Germany will ’spare’ any region that distances itself from Washington."

Roosevelt’s breath hitched.

"We have loyalists in those states," he said desperately.

"Yes," Marshall replied, "but fewer every hour."

The radio crackled suddenly.

An aide burst into the room, face flushed.

"Mr. President! Emergency broadcast sweeping the country, it appears to be a pirate frequency."

He placed the radio on the desk and turned up the volume.

A man’s calm, confident voice echoed through the static, German, but speaking unaccented English.

"People of America you have been lied to. Your sons were sent to Sicily, Spain, North Africa, and the Philippines to die for politicians who never intended to tell you the truth. But the Central Powers have no quarrel with the people, only with those who plunged the world into war again. Your sons did not die to liberate Europe from Tyranny. But to defend allies who provoked a war they could not win on their own. I offer you my condolences, and wisdom in this grim hour. Leave this collapsing regime, demand sovereignty, demand peace."

Roosevelt slammed his fist down.

"Turn it off! Now!"

The aide hurriedly killed the signal.

Roosevelt staggered back, face ghost-white.

"They’re encouraging secession," he whispered. "Over open airwaves."

"It’s not just encouragement," Hall added. "They’re coordinating it. Sheriffs in Alabama and Mississippi have received anonymous ’advice’ from German operatives. National Guard armories have already been raided. Sir... we may be facing internal rebellion and external invasion simultaneously."

Roosevelt’s chest constricted. He clutched the back of his chair to keep from collapsing.

"What do we do?" Hall asked softly.

Roosevelt closed his eyes.

For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine a different world, a world where the landings had succeeded, where Sicily had held, where American boys were returning as heroes instead of names on telegrams.

A fantasy. Nothing more.

He opened his eyes, older, dimmer, but resolute.

"We hold," he said. "The Northeast and its states remain loyal. We consolidate. We suppress the Werwolf cells. We cut federal ties to the rebellious states until negotiations open."

"And if negotiations never open?" Marshall asked.

Roosevelt steadied himself against the desk.

"Then we find a way to keep the Union alive," he said bitterly. "Even if we must rebuild it from the ashes. Even if it must take us a hundred years to do so!"

Outside, America burned. But inside the dimly lit bunker, Roosevelt finally faced the truth he had spent two years fleeing:

The United States was dying, not from German shells,but from the weight of its own lies, its hollow victories, and its shattered illusions.

And somewhere across the ocean, the Central Powers watched with cold satisfaction as the republic tore itself apart.

Roosevelt sank into his chair, staring into the darkness. He could almost feel Bruno’s shadow stretching across the continent like an eclipse.

The war was over... Bruno knew it; the world knew it. And deep in the quiet, corroded core of his soul... Roosevelt knew it too.

Yet knowing changed nothing.

Even as the Union cracked, even as states tore themselves free, even as the dead returned home in silence, Roosevelt felt the stubborn, dying ember of defiance burn hotter in his chest.

He would fight on. If not to win, then simply to deny Bruno the clean, uncontested victory he had carved out of the world.

One final lie, one final struggle.

A president presiding over ashes, unwilling to let go of a war that had already devoured his nation.

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