The wind at the northern edge of Delaware was vicious, knife-cold, metallic, full of the smell of cut earth and diesel.
Roosevelt sat in the back of the armored staff car, propped up on trembling arms, watching as construction crews swarmed across the frozen landscape like ants building a citadel for a dying queen.
Searchlights cut through the snow. Steel scaffolding groaned. Tracks clattered as convoys pushed through mud that had turned to ice. The "enclave," they still refused to call it that officially, was growing, day by day, into something massive enough to swallow entire counties.
Rows of prefabricated bunkers. Mass housing blocks. Fuel depots under construction. Reinforced silos meant for grain, then quietly reclassified for "strategic material storage." Rail lines redirected. High-tension grids rising like skeletal spires.
An entire parallel America being welded together in secret.
Roosevelt drew a shuddering breath. His lungs felt heavier than the frostbitten air.
