Snow hammered Washington like artillery shrapnel softened into water.
Heavy. Relentless. Accumulating on marble and granite until the city looked less like a capital and more like a mausoleum dedicated to a nation trying to convince itself it was still alive.
Inside the Capitol, in a windowless committee chamber beneath the west wing, a dozen men sat in rigid silence.
Governors, senators, senior officials who once carried themselves like the United States meant something immutable.
Tonight they looked like men attending the reading of a will. A will for a country not yet officially dead.
Senator William Carter of Virginia finally broke the silence.
"Let us begin," he said quietly, "with the President’s continued diversion of resources. The... initiative."
No one used the official title anymore, they all feared it would make the lie too real.
Governor McKenna of Colorado opened the folder in front of him.
"Three additional construction sectors opened in Delaware this week. Work crews are being increased again. And material shipments are no longer a trickle."
He paused. "They’re a flood."
He set a list of requisition orders on the table.
"Steel. Copper. Diesel reserves. Generators. Pumps. Excavation equipment. Even long-term food storage containers. All routed to the north of DC."
A ripple of alarm slid across the room.
Senator Blake leaned forward.
"You’re telling us he’s still accelerating?"
McKenna exhaled slowly.
"He’s not accelerating. He’s stripping the rest of the Union to feed it."
Quiet murmurs, followed by a few curses under the breath.
Representative Donnelly shook his head.
"This is not continuity planning," he whispered. "This is triage. For a country that hasn’t admitted it’s dying."
They all knew what Roosevelt was building, or at the very least they suspected it.
Though the official broadcasts portrayed daily a strong, united America that was beating the Germans. Few inside the hallowed halls of Congress believed it.
They had seen the reports, the war was an unmitigated disaster, one that somehow deteriorated by the day.
Though Roosevelt had promiwed them victory, it was a lie only those outside the highest echelons of power actually believed.
And while Roosevelt lied to the public, he diverted American funding to an enclave of his own making.
A rump state north of DC meant to preserve the fraction of America he intended to save.
Not the whole country... Just the part he believed was worth carrying into whatever came next.
Carter flipped a page.
"The Pacific commands report shortages. Ammunition transfers delayed. Fuel rationed for the Navy. Deployments becoming erratic. Some divisions under-equipped."
"How can we be short on ammunition?" Blake demanded. "While casualties are mounting, we should still be producing twice that of our losses."
McKenna’s answer was simple.
"Not when the factories are shutting down due to lack of steel."
Silence tightened around them like a vise.
Finally Donnelly whispered the sentence that had been hanging in all their minds:
"...He’s shifting to a defeat timetable."
Because if the President of the United States was planning for defeat, the rest of them were simply standing in the path of a falling empire.
Senator Carter lowered his voice.
"We cannot forget what happened last time..."
Nobody could. The current state of the Union was one held together by the power of the military and its commander in chief. And this had been achieved tyranny.
Roosevelt gave a radio address painting the rioters who were shot in the streets, and those politicians who conspired against the Union as subversives who "sought to fracture the nation during wartime."
Since then, even speaking plainly in a sealed room felt dangerous.
Senator Blake rubbed his forehead.
"The generals are unsettled," he said. "Some of them are loyal to Roosevelt. Others are terrified of him. And the rest are too busy trying to hold the Pacific together with scraps and prayer."
"Meaning?" Carter asked.
"Meaning," Blake said, "no one knows who to trust."
McKenna closed the folder.
"Let us be clear. Roosevelt is not preserving the Union. He is preserving an image of it. A fragment. A shell."
"And what happens to the rest of us?" Donnelly asked bitterly.
"Sacrificed," McKenna replied without hesitation. "We are ballast. Disposable once the lifeboat is secured."
Carter leaned forward.
"So the question becomes: what do we do?"
Because the answer was treason, or death.
Senator Blake finally dared to speak.
"If we move against him now, he will erase us. The Justice Department already functions like his personal guard. Congress is cowed. Governors are intimidated. The courts are paralyzed."
Donnelly nodded grimly.
"And if we leak anything to the press, he will crucify us the same day. He controls the networks. The papers. Public outrage is nothing to him, he has survived worse."
Carter’s hands trembled slightly.
"So what then? We watch the Union dissolve?"
McKenna’s voice dropped to a quiet, steady tone.
McKenna looked around the chamber, meeting each fearful pair of eyes.
"For the inevitable. Roosevelt cannot hide the collapse forever. The Pacific is unraveling. Sicily is a meatgrinder, and production is failing. States are buckling under shortages. Sooner or later the illusion will break."
"And then?" Carter asked.
McKenna’s expression hardened.
"Then the President will no longer be able to silence us. When the nation realizes he’s been preparing to save only himself and a chosen few, his mandate will evaporate. And whoever is left capable of holding the pieces together..."
He let the implication hang.
"...will shape what remains of the United States."
A grim understanding settled into the room like dust.
They were not planning rebellion, they were planning survival. They were preparing for the moment Roosevelt’s arrogance finally exceeded the patience of the nation.
However... It was perhaps because of this shortsightedness that Roosevelt had not included these men on his plans to build a rump state.
For they were not alone in sensing the coming storm. And factions were brewing outside the control of DC. Spurred on by powers beyond the Atlantic. Just waiting for the moment for the bubble to pop.