Taking a Duce (A Benito Mussolini SI)

[Benjamin Plutsick]

In "Segregate This!!!!" Two minor mistakes: "An excerpt from Maya Angelou's 1977 book: We just wanted to be free"

and then a little further in:

"In what would become his final interview—given from his deathbed in 1983 and broadcast live—he said this:"

This whole chapter is from the POV of an in universe book chapter, yes? So she couldn't have possible known about the 1983 interview just yet, but maybe you can edit it to be like an in universe reprinted edition that has minor updates or something to excuse the addition?

 

[ATP]

Caliphate - bad idea.Muslims made it to conqer world known to them,not become pals woth Rome.
But - possible.Mussolini so far beat only turks,and both arabs and iranians hate them.

 

[Alenco98]

November 23, 1942
Paris, 16ᵉ arrondissement
Kingdom of France

The chandelier above me swayed gently—just enough to remind me of the ceiling fan in Kigali, that slow, hypnotic circle that used to lull me to sleep during those stifling, insect-haunted nights. I had loved Rwanda. Not for its peace—there was none—but for the mask it wore, the polite delusion of optimism. The Peace Corps was supposed to be my escape, my penance, my attempt to matter. And now, here I am: Il Duce of an empire of corpses, reading casualty reports in a gilded salon in the 16th arrondissement while Wink's cover of "Turn It Into Love" plays in the recesses of my skull like some deranged metronome.

They think I'm staring at the report. I'm not. I'm staring through it—through time, through space, through the absurdity of it all after I finished reading it. A report on the Scuola.

The Scuola della Guerra Moderna.
My beloved Frankenstein. My grandiose, blood-slicked laboratory for manufacturing men who kill with brains as much as bullets. Italy's officer corps had once been a caricature of aristocratic ineptitude—men who thought flanking was a kind of dance. So I gave them a school. No, I gave them a ritual. A rite of passage. A crucible.

At first, I let the old dogs have their say: Graziani, Pricolo, Cavagnari. They and their bureaucratic parasites drafted a curriculum filled with all the usual fare—rifle drills, Roman virtue, heroic nonsense. I let them have their moment. Then I threw it all into the furnace.

I rewrote everything. I brought in Clausewitz, of course. Sun Tzu, inevitably. Mao's guerrilla doctrines. Tukhachevsky's deep operations. I even had a few nights where I lay awake, scrawling in the margins like a lunatic, writing entire syllabi while chain-smoking and muttering about 4th generation warfare, asymmetrical engagements, the utility of fear, and what Machiavelli would've done with a Predator drone. Thank God for poli-sci.

They called me mad. Some wept. Others left the room pale and wordless after reading my modules on psychological warfare, simulated torture, and the importance of perceived moral superiority.

One colonel quit after the "Hearts and Minds or Heads on Spikes" chapter. Weakling.

What they didn't understand—and what I couldn't exactly explain without sounding like a prophet of doom—is that I'd seen the future. I'd lived it. I had read Wikipedia at 3 a.m. like it was scripture. I had absorbed the histories of Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, the Phoenix Program, the war in Chechnya, the counterinsurgency doctrines of Petraeus, the genocidal logic of Bosnia.

I knew the war on terror before it was a spark in some bureaucrat's wet dream. I knew how to wage wars that never end, how to kill an idea by seducing it first.

So I made something new. Something monstrous.
A hybrid doctrine. A chimera. My graduates could play dirty in the jungle and orchestrate combined arms assaults with the grace of a ballet. They were officers of death with the flexibility of insurgents and the firepower of states.

And it worked.

In Bulgaria, partisan leaders were dying by the dozen—sometimes from bullets, sometimes from "heart failure" induced by mysterious accidents. Compliance was up. King Boris, ever the opportunist, began building his own Scuola, using the very graduates I had gifted him as trainers.

In Greece, Pangalos' thugs had transformed into something resembling an army—or a pack of wolves trained to hunt communists and royalists alike. The mountains no longer protected them. Even the villages turned informant, seduced by clinics, food, electricity—or just too scared to resist after we made examples of a few. Nothing says "hearts and minds" like watching your neighbor's house burn because they hid a partisan.

In Croatia, the old nightmare of Yugoslav unity was unraveling with surgical precision. Bosniaks were rebranded as "Muslim Croats"—pampered, recruited, elevated. The Serbs? They got the boot, the baton, or the bribe. Sometimes all three. Tito's boys were running like dogs, hiding in rat tunnels, whispering about betrayals and starvation.

Spain was a mop-up operation. Republicans, anarchists, a few Carlist extremists—ideologies cooked up by the desperate and the drunk—snuffed out with efficient, industrial cruelty. They fought like heroes, died like footnotes.

Syria? A delicious mess. Sunnis and republicans who thought the French were bad? They hadn't met me. I let their factions tear themselves apart, then sent in the purges. Blood in the streets, and not a single outcry from the "international community."

And Yemen... Oh, Yemen.
The Saudis called us devils. We took it as a compliment.

The Wahhabis, that incestuous gaggle of neo-pagan zealots, had wrapped their bastardized creed in the flag of prophecy and oil money. So we flayed them. Not metaphorically—literally. The al-Saud clan was marked for total liquidation. Man, woman, child, midwife, concubine, infant, lapdog—gone. Imam Yahya himself offered bounties. I matched them, doubled them, turned them into currency. Saud heads were worth more than gold.

I built a machine. A machine of unrelenting violence and moral hypocrisy so profound it should've collapsed under its own absurdity.

And soon the Scuola model would be applied to the entire military.

And the machine wouldn't collapse.
Because I wrapped it all in justice.

Anti-racism. Anti-colonialism. Civil rights.
We sheltered Jews, gave citizenship and free passage to African Americans in the deep south, educated Libyans, kissed babies in Ethiopia, handed out pamphlets extolling "universal dignity" and "self-determination."

And then we carpet-bombed villages and choked the survivors with chemical weapons.

Because that's the trick, isn't it? You tell the world you're the good guy loud enough and often enough, and suddenly genocide looks like community service.

I finish the final report. I don't even blink as I read how Yemeni irregulars broke the Saudi flank and butchered an entire convoy of al-Saud loyalists—women and infants included. The Imam is reportedly smiling. I know I am.

The song ends. Silence.
Then, unbidden, Wink's cover of Sinitta's "Cross My Broken Heart" takes its place.

A love song. Ha. Of course.

I think of Sofie.
I think of her freckles, her laugh, the way she used to yell at me for hoarding instant ramen in our little kitchen.

She would hate me now.

And yet, a part of me thinks she would understand.
Because I did this for her.

For all of them.
For a world where this madness might mean something.

And if not…
Well.

At least I was the last sane man left in Hell.

A knock. The creak of hinges. He enters. My Praetorian.

Somali Askari. Hakim, that's his name I think. They all look alike to me. Towering, carved from onyx and vengeance. A man who looked like he could dislocate your spine just by cracking his knuckles too close to your soul.

He stood straight, silent, eyes forward. As if he were carved from basalt by some forgotten sculptor of wrath. A living monument to discipline and the bitter wages of empire.

Somalia. Yes. Somalia and all of East Africa. Soon, they would be free.
Free in the same way a cow in a smartly air-conditioned barn is "free." They'll have a flag, an anthem, a prime minister with a mustache and a Lambo from Milan. And all the while, I will rule them. Quietly. Absolutely. As Emperor. A twisted commonwealth of hidden tyranny.

Italian companies would swarm in like termites with law degrees. ENI, FIAT, SNAM, Olivetti—even those sad bureaucrats from Turin would suddenly remember they care about "investment in the South." They'd own the copper mines, the plantations, the roads, the ports, the air itself. We'd build schools and clinics with cheerful tricolor ribbons. Call it "justice." Call it "development." Call it "Africa rising." We'd write it in the brochures and give TED Talks to clapping Americans.

We'd send doctors, teachers, journalists with ring lights and hashtags. "La Nuova Fratellanza Africana." Have that bitch Leni make a whole documentary about it. Soft jazz. Shots of smiling kids with dusty foreheads.

They'd love us. And they'd never realize we were holding the whip behind our back, smiling.

And from them, I would forge my Black Guard. My Praetorians. A modern echo of ancient ghosts. Except these would not be fickle Roman elites plotting behind togas and fig trees. These men would have no blood ties to Rome, no family in the senate, no senator uncle begging for clemency.

Loyal. Alien. Apolitical. They would be my answer—my rebuttal—to the mess of coups, crises, and constitutional cock-ups that plagued Rome and played a part in it's collapse. Saddam had his Republican Guard. I would have fifty thousand black angels of death camped in Rome. The last line of defense against coups, betrayals, backstabbing monarchists, and horny fascist philosophers with dreams of grandeur. Armed with the latest weapons of war and all trained in the Scuola to be fanatically loyal and effective killers.

I remember that day. The Grand Council. The betrayal. When I strangled the monarchy with its own sash and dared the aristocracy to blink. My life, my regime—balanced on a knife's edge. No more.

Now, the Grand Council would sit beneath the shadow of my Praetorians. Rifles always in the room. Always in frame. Always watching. Smiling.

I imagine it. I fantasize. The moment they get out of line. A purge. A glorious purge. Broadcast live in tasteful black and white while Leni directs it, complete with dramatic music and a five-second delay for dramatic gasps.

Saddam would weep tears of joy. Stalin would nod in fatherly approval. I'd read the names slowly—each minister proclaiming loyalty even as the guard drags them away by the collar. Then make them execute each other as their families watched. Knife in one hand, confession in the other. Replace them with loyalists. Graduates of the Scuola. Cold-eyed fanatics with clipboards and dreams of conquest.

The soundtrack? Wink's cover of "Cross My Broken Heart." A ballad of heartbreak, of shattered illusions, of being ghosted after giving your soul to a regime. The kind of song you listen to while sipping cheap wine alone and planning civilizational overhauls.

Then my Praetorian speaks—his Italian marked by the subtle rhythm of Somali, like rain falling on steel.
"My Emperor, Imam Yahia is here."

Good.

I nod. "Let him in. And summon Sultan Abdulmecid as well."

Two out of three. If I could convince them to work together, the plan—the vision—was nearly complete. The final act of my trilogy: Empire, Faith, and Fanaticism.

My gaze falls to the books sprawled across the table. Sacred texts and manifestos. A translated Quran, every flavor of hadith, Al-Banna's political theology, the works of Ibn Taymiyyah, and even the dusty wisdom of Ibn Khaldun. Muqaddimah, lying like an old prophet's skull beneath a pile of bloodstained manifestos.

This wasn't a war of bullets.

This was a war of minds. Of souls.

I needed to seduce Al-Banna intellectually, disarm him ideologically, penetrate the fortress of his faith with mine. I needed to know what made him tick, what he feared, what he desired. I read his words like a serial killer studying a future victim's diary.

It wasn't enough to quote the Quran—I had to understand how Islam nested itself into Egyptian society, how it rooted itself in trauma, empire, resistance. What made it viral? What gave it teeth?

I'd already read the Quran cover to cover. Even highlighted it like a college sophomore prepping for a midterm. I kept it buried under other books. Imam Yahia and Sultan Abdulmecid were devout men—too devout to stomach a mere translation of the sacred text. I understood. Even agreed, in a strange way. The original language matters.

I'd learn Arabic. I'd promised myself. Maybe after the next coup attempt.

For now, I flipped open Muqaddimah. The ink smelled like prophecy and dictatorship.

A few minutes later, Yahia entered. Lean, sun-worn, eyes like a desert storm. He brought the translator I had given him. The man bowed slightly. I stood.

I greeted him in Arabic—stilted, but sincere:
"As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh."

"Wa alaykum as-salam," Yahia replied, voice like gravel poured over silk.

Then entered the Sultan. Abdulmecid II. The last Caliph of Islam. Dignity draped over his shoulders like a ghost. Eyes like a disappointed teacher who knows you copied your homework.

He said nothing as he sat. Neither did Yahia. They looked at me. Waiting.

And so I began my pitch.
Not with weapons.
Not with bribes.
But with a smile.
And the devil's fluency.
And the calm, measured voice of a man who had read every religious text he could find…
…and decided to write a few of his own.

"Gentlemen," I said, with the slow gravitas of a man who has long since lost his moral compass, his sense of time, and his ability to distinguish between strategy and madness.

The translator snapped into motion immediately, a human typewriter spewing out syllables in Arabic like a machine gun with theological ammunition. Imam Yahia watched me through narrowed eyes, blinking slow and reptilian, as if trying to decipher whether I was a prophet, a lunatic, or a European demon sent to test his faith.

Thank God, Abdulmecid spoke French—actual, elegant French, not the colonial variety that got processed through half a dozen North African mouthfuls and spat out like sandpaper in a diplomatic trench. No, his was courtly. Civilized. He understood me perfectly. That made one of us.

"I have brought you here together," I continued, "to bring order to the world. To make things right for the Middle East once and for all. To stitch back the heart of the Ummah with Roman thread."

Boom. Translated. Delivered. A theological hand grenade lobbed with polite colonial timing.

Wink's song faded in the back of my mind, replaced by Saitou Yuki's "Julia."
That opening chord—haunting. Like a dream that remembered you better than you remembered it.
But she wasn't singing Julia. Not to me.
No.
She was singing Sofie.

In my mind, she was always there—Sofie, with her ponytails bouncing like the drums in a Northern Virginia coffee shop. That white-and-purple jacket from a day lost to time and hormones. That strange, intoxicating smile that turned my knees to soft spaghetti. It was the first week of January. High school. A timeline that no longer exists, destroyed by my own hand.

I didn't know then how deeply, violently, catastrophically I would fall for her. Or what I would trade to hold her hand one more time.
Now that I was here—now that I was this—I understood Anakin Skywalker. I understood his madness. The temple. The massacre. The fear of loss that eats your spine from the inside. The night terrors that wake you up sweating and crying into a fascist pillow embroidered with your own insignia.

If someone had told me back then—some Peace Corps official with a clipboard and a cigarette—"Hey, look, all you have to do is wipe out this random village of children in Rwanda and you'll get to stay in your timeline. You'll get Sofie, your family, your Spotify playlists, your kitchen with the IKEA pans, your crappy little bike you used to ride to the store…"

God help me, I'd have done it.
I would've carved their names into the dirt with their blood while whispering I'm sorry between sobs and their parents begged for me to spare them. And then I'd go home and make grilled cheese.

But I didn't.
I couldn't.
Because I was here.

A man torn out of time, wrapped in Mussolini's skin like some horrific political cosplay.
A time traveler cursed to play dictator.
A man haunted by the knowledge that the woman he loved may never be born, not now, not in this mangled reality.
And that I may never be born either. My parents? Gone. Grandparents? Vaporized. My whole bloodline erased by a few dozen butterflies that flapped their wings somewhere around the world when I began to fuck with the timeline. I killed my own family and myself without even realizing it.
Not out of malice.
But out of momentum.

And now? Now I'm here.
Drinking black coffee in gilded rooms.
Waging ideological warfare with ancient clerics and deposed monarchs.
Thinking about a girl with a purple jacket who laughed like sunlight and used to call me idiot in the sweetest voice imaginable.

This is my life now.
A fascist romance with no one left to love.

I snapped out of it—barely—because Yahia's eyes were twitching. He smelled the scent of power in the air. He was a shark circling a promise.

"I have spoken to the Sultan," I said, switching to my more officious tone. "Imam Yahia, I am now here to present the terms."

The translator returned to his task, flicking his eyes between us like a nervous chess player forced to play both sides of the board.

"The Sultan," I continued, "is interested in restoring the Caliphate—not as a memory, not as a token, but as a reality. You, Imam Yahia, will be granted sovereignty—not merely over a Greater Yemen as you desire, but over the entire Arabian Peninsula."

A pause. A calculated one. Like the silence before a dictator slaps a map on the table.

"You will have Kuwait. Saudi Arabia. The Trucial States. Oman. British Aden. All of it. A new Meccan axis. Under your flag, your seal, your God. A united Arab stage—restored to glory not as Ottoman satellite, but as divine inheritance."

I watched his face twist. First in disbelief. Then calculation. Then—yes, there it was—hunger.
He tried to suppress it, but I could see it.
His fingers twitching ever so slightly. Like a man trying not to reach for a gun he knows he shouldn't have.
An ambitious man about to be handed everything he'd ever dared to pray for.

I smiled like a crocodile that just got tenure.

This was my game.
This was my hell.
And I would play it better than any of them.

Because I had nothing left to lose but the ghosts that followed me through time, and the echoes of a girl named Sofie whose laughter could still reach me, even here, beneath a fascist flag in a war that never should have happened.

Let them come. Let the Caliphate rise. Let Rome burn again.
I would rule over the ashes with a tear in my eye and blood on my hands.
All for a girl who once kissed me on a bridge in January.

And I would do it all again.

"But there is a price," I continued, my voice steady, almost reverent, like a priest at the altar of some blood-soaked, mechanized religion.

The room fell silent except for the faint hum of the air conditioning and the translator clearing his throat. I was about to offer Imam Yahya his Faustian bargain, inked in the blood of the twentieth century and sealed with the rotting hand of history.

"The Two Holy Mosques—Mecca and Medina—will, in name, belong to the Caliph. A formality. Appeasement for the sunnis. There will be an honor guard guarding the mosques. But on the ground, in the streets, in the alleys of Mecca and Medina, behind every crumbling Arabian wall, they will belong to you. You and your men. Armed. Sovereign. Unchallenged. Guardians of the cities, with the keys, the guns, and the quiet terror of absolute authority. All revenues made from the pilgrims will be yours imam Yahia."

I could see the whites of his eyes dilate like a junkie offered his fix in a gold syringe.

"In return, your kingdom will not object to having Abdulmecid as Caliph. You don't have to recognize him. It'll be like the treaty of Daan your nations once signed. The sultan will recognize your rule over the Arabian peninsula. And you will renounce any rights to the caliphate as you did before. And to secure this union—blood to blood—there will be marriage. Royal marriage. Your house and his. The Prophet's bloodline conjoined with yours. No more whispered doubts in seminaries. No more splinter caliphates in the shadows. The future of Islam written in genealogies and sealed with wedding rings forged in Roman iron."

He didn't speak. His tongue, like mine, was probably halfway down his throat, choking on the sheer weight of the offer.

"And Jerusalem," I said, my voice suddenly heavier, like I was reading from an ancient, cursed text found buried beneath a mass grave. "Jerusalem's Muslim Quarter will be ruled jointly—Ottoman, Yemeni, and Roman. Tripartite. A corpse with three heads. To keep peace, we'll deploy Somali Praetorians—representing us all. Black, Muslim, disciplined, invisible. Men who will follow orders without dreams of grandeur. My Praetorians will ensure you two don't strangle each other in your sleep over the Dome of the Rock."

I inhaled. The next part, I admit, even made me sick.

"And the Kingdom of Israel, which I remind you two proudly rests beneath the Roman eagle as my vassal, will guarantee the rights of all Palestinians. No expulsions. No atrocities. No bulldozers in the night or phosphorus in the schools and mosques. If they so much as raise a finger..."

My voice dropped.

"I will finish what Hitler started."

I let the silence ring like a gunshot in a cathedral.

"And not just the men," I added. "But the women. And the children too. Down to the fucking infants."

It took everything in me not to laugh out loud. Not because it was funny. No, not at all. But because it was so utterly obscene. So magnificently hypocritical. So absurd it circled back around into poetry. I meant every word of it.

I had taken in Jews once. I remember that. That was supposed to be the point, wasn't it? A noble mission. A moral crusade. A modern Moses with an Italian accent and a fucked-up soul. Save the Jews. Rewrite history. Fix what broke in the 20th century.

And now?

Now they were pawns. Numbers on a ledger. Names in folders. Bargaining chips for bored bureaucrats and dying kings. And if it bought me peace in Arabia—or a throne in Jerusalem—I would toss them into the furnace and unleash my ex-Nazi hounds with the same indifference as a man deleting emails from his spam folder.

Inbox: 6 million unread.

I—I am a monster.

There it was. No euphemism. No poetry. Just the truth, stark and naked and cold. A volunteer in Rwanda. A man who once cleaned latrines and taught English to orphans. A man who cried when his girlfriend sent him a video of her dancing to ABBA in their apartment back home.

Now I sat in marble halls, wearing a dictator's flesh, making deals soaked in blood and prophecy, aching for a woman who might never be born.

The translator finished. Imam Yahya was blinking. Abdulmecid was silent. No one breathed.

I smiled.

And God help me, I missed Sofie so much I could taste her in my mouth like the copper sting of a bullet.

Imam Yahya's lips curled, just slightly. His fingers, adorned in rings and cracked callouses, tapped once against the wooden arm of his chair.

"You make generous offers, Emperor Constantine, but we are not fools," he said in French. His voice was steady, but the crackle of defiance was unmistakable then he went back to his Arabic. "We know the Romans. We know the Ottomans. We know the Europeans come bearing gold and promises and leave with our blood and oil."

I didn't respond at first. I let him speak. I wanted to see the resistance rise in him like steam from boiling water. I wanted to watch it die in real time.

"You speak of guardianship over Mecca and Medina, yet demand a treaty a sultan who fled Constantinople like a eunuch escaping a burning harem. You offer Jerusalem only to divide it into three carcasses. And the Jews—do not lecture me on mercy while you casually wage genocide like a merchant haggling for spices."

He leaned forward now. His eyes met mine, full of contempt and calculation.

"You say you serve the Prophet's will, yet you come wrapped in the garb of Caesar. Tell me, emperor, are you fitna in flesh?"

I smiled.

No teeth. Just the smile.

Then I stood up. Slowly. Deliberately. The Praetorian guards flinched slightly, hands grazing the butts of their rifles. My boots echoed against the marble floor like war drums. My coat swayed behind me, heavy with death.

"You speak of the Prophet, Imam Yahya," I began, my voice calm and cold like the surface of a mountain lake before an avalanche. "Then let me remind you: Muhammad, peace be upon him, forged his alliances in blood and marriage. He did not wait for consensus. He dictated it."

I turned to Abdulmecid, then back to the Imam.

"You speak of the Ottomans fleeing. And yet here I am—the Roman Caesar reborn—bringing them back to you. Did Suleiman ever offer you fusion-powered weaponry wrapped in silk?"

I reached into my coat. Gasps rang out. Hands flew to rifles.

But it wasn't a gun.

It was a folder.

Thick. Weathered. Bound in red leather and tied with twine.

I threw it onto the table before Yahya. The slap of it hitting the oak sounded like a guillotine blade kissing a neck.

He blinked. Leaned forward. Opened it.

Blueprints. Equations. Diagrams.

Implosion triggers. Neutron reflectors. Uranium enrichment cycles. Plutonium core schematics. Manhattan in Arabic. Los Alamos translated into tribal calligraphy.

I took a breath and laid it out.

"This," I said, pointing at the documents, "is the power to erase cities."

He said nothing.

"Tehran. Jerusalem. Paris. Riyadh. Gone. In seconds."

Still silence.

"This is peace," I whispered, "via the terror of mutually assured destruction. A sword so sharp that none dare swing it."

I circled the table now, a shark gliding between two whales.

"This is not a threat. This is a gift. I give it to you because I recognize you as an equal. No more vassals. No more mandates. No more colonial shadows pretending to be friends. Just men. Monarchs. Monsters, if we must be—but monsters who look each other in the eye."

Yahya looked down at the folder again, his fingers twitching over the scrawled diagrams. I could feel the cogs turning behind his eyes, a hundred years of tribal memory grinding against the mathematics of annihilation.

"You quoted the Prophet?" I continued, voice rising, teeth finally showing. "Then let me quote Ali, karam Allahu wajhahu: He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere."

I turned my gaze to the ceiling.

"Hussein bled in Karbala because the caliph forgot the price of pride."

Then back to the Imam, like a blade snapping into place.

"You think I offer you slavery? I offer you the Muqaddimah in real time. I offer you Ibn Khaldun's theory of cyclical empires made manifest in uranium and doctrine. You, Imam, will not be a footnote. You will be a fulcrum of Islamic history. A modern day Saladin. That's what I offer you."

I leaned in, close enough for him to smell the tobacco on my breath and the madness in my blood.

"You will never get an offer like this again."

And in my mind, somewhere behind the steel and scripture, I saw Sofie.

Smiling on a beach that never existed. Laughing under a sky that I had wiped away.

She would not recognize me now.

Not with my hands stained by atoms. Not with my soul brined in theology, ambition, and ash.

But it didn't matter.

Because monsters don't need to be understood.

They just need to win.

Abdulmecid's face had gone pale, the way milk goes sour before your tongue catches up. He hadn't spoken in minutes. His fingers kept running over the diagrams in the folder as if the ink might vanish, as if this were a hallucination—a hallucination brought on by too much coffee and too many broken dreams.

"This... this is madness," he finally muttered. "These weapons—these are not tools. These are... endings."

I turned to him slowly. Calm. Measured.

"No, Your Majesty," I said, voice velveted with contempt. "These are beginnings. Fire is the first tool of civilization, and this—this is Prometheus."

He stared at me. "You would give these to Yahya? He has tribal warlords who still believe the earth is flat."

"I'll give them to you, too."

That shut him up.

"Don't look so offended. You're a Caliph in name and exile. You will preside over a reconstituted nation that will only exist because I stitched it together with blood, money, and atrocities. And I'm offering you real power now. The kind that doesn't just rule over men—but over time."

"You would give both of us these weapons?" Yahya said slowly, eyes narrowing like a snake sizing up another snake. "Knowing we bear no love for each other?"

"Of course," I said, as if discussing umbrellas before a monsoon. "That's the point. Rule through terror. Mutually assured destruction. Like Cain and Abel both holding revolvers at each other's temples. Peace, not because you love each other—but because if you even think about blinking wrong, you both die."

I turned, pacing now, my boots clicking like metronomes at a funeral.

"This isn't madness. This is order. This is deterrence. This is me making you both emperors and telling you: go ahead, try and sin. But know that the other one will answer with fire and scream."

Abdulmecid slumped into his chair like a man realizing he was being offered a throne made entirely of scorpions. He rubbed his face. "You plan to give these... to others?"

"Oh yes," I replied, almost cheerfully. "Greece. Hungary. Somalia. The Amhara. Oromo. Afar. Tigray. Croatia. France. Spain."

"Spain?!" Yahya spat.

"They deserve a chance at self-annihilation like everyone else."

"You're insane."

"No. I'm consistent." I turned and slammed my palm against the folder. "Do you think the British will hesitate to build their own arsenal? The Russians already have whispers of their own bomb. The Americans are eating uranium like it's grain. If I don't offer this to my allies, I doom them to dependency, to irrelevance, to vassalage. I don't breed vassals—I breed wolves."

Yahya stood. "You breed lunatics!"

"Then let the madness begin!" I yelled.

I stepped toward him, voice dropping into a sinister lull.

"You speak of lunacy, Imam? You command a kingdom stitched together from tribal feuds and khat-fueled warlords, and you dare lecture me about restraint?"

"To give such power to so many," Abdulmecid whispered, "is to guarantee apocalypse."

I turned to him. Softly, almost tenderly, I replied:

"So what? Let the world balance on a knife. Let every nation wake up with a gun to its own temple. Let every king kiss his children goodnight knowing one misstep will turn them to shadows on a wall."

They were quiet. Both of them. The Imam gripping the chair like it was a lifeboat, the future Caliph cradling his own hands like they might start glowing with radiation.

I leaned forward. My voice was low and heavy, like thunder waiting to fall.

"Peace," I said, "is not the absence of war. Peace is the threat of a war so total, so unimaginable, that no one dares draw the first breath of violence. That is what I offer you."

I gestured between them.

"Two men. Two civilizations. Two beasts who would slit each other's throats for water in the desert. And now—now—you have the power to burn each other into glass. But you won't. You'll blink. You'll swallow your rage. And that, my friends, is diplomacy."

And in the corner of my mind, far beyond the folders and the fire, I saw Sofie again.

She would be screaming.

But not out of fear.

Out of grief. Out of the unbearable realization that I had gone so far I couldn't even hear her voice anymore.

Good.

I didn't need a voice in my head.

I had bombs now.

And in this world I was building—only the monsters got to make the rules.

The Imam was the first to nod.

Slow. Heavy. Like a guillotine choosing to fall.

"I accept," he said, voice hollow. "But if even a single city vanishes under Roman fire, I will call upon every demon and djinn in our collective memory to drag your soul to hell."

I smiled, all teeth and shadows.

"Of course you will. That's the point."

Then Abdulmecid. Hands trembling. He tried to sign the agreement with dignity, but his pen scratched like a dying man's breath.

"I don't trust you," he said softly, the words barely making it across the room.

"Good," I said. "Trust is for children and poets."

The moment the papers were signed and the folders collected, I stood. My cape swayed like a curtain at a bad omen's window.

"Excellent. Gentlemen, you've just become emperors."

They said nothing.

They were both staring at me the way you stare at a wounded lion—too weak to hunt, too dangerous to ignore.

Their eyes said it all:

He's unhinged.
He's powerful.
He's terrifying.

When they left the chamber, they walked like survivors out of a collapsed cathedral.

I remained behind.

My praetorians stood at the edges of the room, motionless and unreadable behind their curved visors, rifles slung over Somali shoulders like the weight of fate.

Then I said the words I never said.

"Leave me."

They hesitated.

"Now."

They obeyed.

The great steel doors sealed behind them like the vault of some ancient tomb.

And I stood there, in that great war room—now just another echo chamber filled with maps, secrets, and ghosts.

The silence was suffocating. Like the world had decided to stop breathing.

I looked at the long table, the chairs left crooked, the half-drunk tea of men who now wielded the power to turn cities to ash.

I had done it.

I had given fire to the desert.

I had made monsters into kings and crowned them with annihilation.

And I had no one to talk to about it.

No Sofie.

No family.

Not even God.

Only the ghosts and the silence and the taste of ash in my mouth.

And then, like a sickness crawling up from my stomach, I began to hum a song from memory.

"I'm... so... ronery... so ronery... so ronery and sadry arone…"

The words slipped from my lips like poison disguised as sugar. I swayed slightly, arms limp, walking toward the far end of the chamber where the light couldn't reach.

"I know it's sirry... But not rerry... sitting on my wittre throne…"

I tried to laugh.

But the laugh got stuck in my throat.

And then the tears came.

Hot, ugly, raw.

They burned my cheeks, as if even my body was ashamed of me.

I collapsed against the table, clutching its edge like it might keep me from falling into myself.

Sobs echoed in that vast, empty room—choking, shaking sobs that clawed their way out of the beast I had become.

All the titles, all the fire, all the gods and kings and caliphs...

And none of it could fill the hole I had carved in my soul with ambition.

Because in the end, I had become the monster they all feared.

And monsters are always alone.

 

[Alenco98]

In "Segregate This!!!!" Two minor mistakes: "An excerpt from Maya Angelou's 1977 book: We just wanted to be free"

and then a little further in:

"In what would become his final interview—given from his deathbed in 1983 and broadcast live—he said this:"

This whole chapter is from the POV of an in universe book chapter, yes? So she couldn't have possible known about the 1983 interview just yet, but maybe you can edit it to be like an in universe reprinted edition that has minor updates or something to excuse the addition?

Click to shrink...

Fixed

It's 1987 now

 

[Alenco98]

November 23, 1942
The Old City of Haifa,
British Mandate of Palestine

Anne stood in the shadowed corner of the dimly lit room, watching with cold detachment as the OVRA agent her Lehi cell was assigned to assist knelt beside the captured British officer, tending—if one could call it that—to the man's wounds. The room stank of blood, sweat, and burnt flesh, and the air hung thick with the coppery tang of suffering.

She recognized the officer. Even after all this time, his face was seared into her memory. He had been among the governor's staff in Haifa, one of the clean, well-dressed men who had looked on impassively, even amused, as her father was hanged in the town square—strangled slowly as the crowd, corralled by British police, watched in terrified silence. She remembered that day as if it had happened moments ago: her father's boots twitching above the dusty ground, the way her mother screamed, the way she—had felt the scream catch in her own throat and never quite leave.

And yet now, she cursed herself.
Not for what she had done to him—no.
But for revealing she was fluent in German.

That careless admission had sealed her role. She had been assigned as a translator for the OVRA agent—codename Carnicero, "the Butcher"—a former SS agent now turned Italian asset. Schlomo, her cell leader, had told her flatly: "He's renounced Nazism. He's useful. You don't have to like him. Just translate. That's all."

So she did. She followed orders.

She was a cog now. One of many.
The cause was all she had left.

"You can still live," the Butcher said now, his voice thick with a Teutonic accent as he addressed the British officer. His English was precise but slow, heavy like machinery grinding into motion. "Tell us who the traitors are. We know there are still Mapai and Haganah cells hiding in this city. Working for the British. Give us their names. Their locations."

The officer met his gaze, defiance flickering behind his bloodshot eyes. There was fear too—undeniable, human—but he had not broken yet.

And then the Butcher laughed. A deep, mirthless laugh that chilled Anne more than the scream that followed.

"Good," he said softly. "It wouldn't be any fun if you gave in too soon."

He turned his head slightly, eyes falling on Anne. "Feuerzeug," he said in clipped German—lighter.

Without a word, she pulled the silver Zippo from her coat pocket and tossed it to him. He caught it with a practiced flick, lit it, and then slowly pulled a combat knife from the sheath at his belt. The flame crackled as he held the blade above it, heating the steel until it glowed a dull, menacing red.

A minute passed. The heat from the blade was palpable even across the room. Anne could see the officer's body tense, his breath coming in shallow gasps. His torso was a ruin of blood and broken flesh, laced with cuts both old and new. He had been in their hands for only twenty-four hours. But Butcher worked fast.

"Please," the officer whimpered, his voice barely audible. "I'll tell you anything. Please..."

The Butcher paused, as if savoring the moment.

"Ohh," he murmured with mock surprise, "will you tell us where they are? The Haganah, the Mapai?"

His voice was almost gentle, conversational, disarmingly polite.

"I'm telling you…" the officer began, desperation rising. "I don't know what you're talking ab—"

"Liar!" the Butcher screamed, and Anne flinched before she could stop herself.

Without hesitation, the red-hot blade came down on the officer's forearm—not a stab, but a slow, deliberate branding. The man's screams echoed through the walls like the howling of an injured animal. Not even the radio could fully shut it out.

"I don't know! Please!" he shrieked.

Butcher pulled the blade away and followed with a vicious right hook that connected with the man's nose, breaking it with a sickening crunch.

He stepped back, letting the officer slump forward in his restraints. Anne's eyes followed him as he crossed the room to a table near the wall. There, a folder lay next to a notebook and a pen. She had seen it before—carefully compiled intelligence, observations, names.

The officer's face was a swollen mess. Blood dripped steadily from his nose and scorched cheek. He turned toward Anne, eyes glassy with tears and pain. There was something in his expression—pleading, searching. A man begging for a shred of mercy, a human connection.

She felt nothing.

No hatred. No rage.
No pity.

The same nothing she imagined he had felt when he'd watched her father kick and choke on a British rope.

Then the Butcher returned. He opened the folder and laid the contents before the officer.

"We've been following you for days," he said calmly. "You and your unit. We know you're MI6. We know you're in contact with Mapai and Haganah. You've met them. You've given them funds. Weapons. Escape routes. Not just you—your fellow agents too. We know everything."

He leaned in close, grabbing the officer's chin with his right hand, the knife—no longer glowing, but still dangerously hot—in his left.

"If you lie again," he whispered, pressing the flat of the blade against the man's cheek, "next time I'll start with your eyes. Or maybe your genitals. That always sends a message."

The officer's breath quickened. Panic overtook him. "Okay… okay," he whimpered. "I'll tell you. Please…"

The Butcher turned back to Anne, then gestured at the table. "Start writing," he said in German. His tone was pleasant, even courteous. But she knew better. She had learned to hear the menace beneath it.

She moved wordlessly, retrieved the notebook and pen, and sat. Her hand trembled slightly as she braced it on the table, though not from fear—just exhaustion.

"Start from the beginning," the Butcher said. "No lies. No omissions. We will keep you alive until we find our targets. Then, we let you go. But if we find even one falsehood... we will send OVRA agents to Britain. We will hunt your family. Wife? Children? Parents? Siblings? Cousins? All of them. OVRA always collects its due."

The officer nodded through tears, and the confession began.

Anne wrote, dutifully, mechanically. Names. Locations. Contacts. Safehouses. Every Mapai sympathizer, every Haganah operative, every Irgun traitor who had made peace with the British while they claimed to fight for the Jewish people's freedom. She wrote it all.

"They will join us or die as traitors," Schlomo had told her once, eyes ablaze with manic fervor. At least he still felt something. She was no longer sure she did.

After thirty minutes, the notebook was full. She tore out the pages, handed them to the Butcher. He accepted them with a nod of thanks.

"You've done well," he said. "Go get some rest. Tomorrow, you'll be hunting with your cell."

She didn't reply. He left.

She turned to the officer. He had slumped forward, exhausted, half-conscious. She picked up the gag and shoved it back into his mouth. He mumbled something through it—words she didn't care to hear.

"The only time you speak to the enemy outside of interrogation," Schlomo had told her during her first month in the field, "is when you're putting a bullet or a knife into him."

She'd had to do self-criticism that week for the infraction—a humiliating ritual where each member stood before the others to confess faults and failures, to seek forgiveness, and to pledge to be better. She hated it. The way they cried together. Hugged each other. Then went out the next day to kill again.

But it worked. It made them loyal. Fanatical. Desperate for approval, desperate to win.

She crossed to the radio and turned down the volume. The old broadcast ended, and she switched to another frequency until she heard something strange and sweet—Sinatra. A love song. Gentle, longing.

She hummed softly to herself as she opened a letter—a worn, crumpled envelope from her cousin in Switzerland. She read and reread the lines by candlelight, each word a relic from a lost world.

"There's a home for you here."

She looked up. The officer was slumped again. She crossed the room and slapped him hard, rousing him. A tactic, Butcher had said. Sleep deprivation. "To break the spirit. To make them beg for clarity, for silence."

"Sleep again," she said in accented English, "and I'll cut a finger off."

He stared at her now with the same terror he gave the Butcher.

She knew, in that moment, she was no different.

Just younger.

She sat back down, humming Sinatra, as she reread her cousin's letter for the fourth time.

And outside, somewhere in the night, Haifa pulsed with secrets and sins.

The low hum of the radio still played behind her, Frank Sinatra's voice drifting like smoke through the dim, dust-laden air. Anne sat slouched in the wooden chair, her eyes flicking from the crumpled letter in her lap to the British officer tied in the corner, barely conscious, his skin slick with sweat and blood. The iron stench of human suffering clung to the room like mildew.

The silence was broken by the creak of the door. It opened slowly at first, then all at once, as if someone had burst through it in a fury barely contained. Anne stood quickly, stuffing the letter into her coat. Her hand hovered near the small pistol holstered under her belt as her eyes locked with the figure that entered.

It was Ludwig.

Seventeen years old. Explosives expert. Pale, wiry, all sharp edges and raw nerves. He'd only been in Haifa a week, transferred from Acre after a bombing went wrong. He hadn't said much since arriving—just enough to follow orders, just enough to be trusted. But now, his face was a canvas of anguish and barely suppressed rage. His chest heaved, his fists clenched at his sides.

"Ludwig?" Anne asked in hebrew, stepping toward him. "What happened?"

His lips trembled. He looked around the room, eyes darting to the prisoner, to the blood on the floor, to the folder still lying open on the desk. Then, slowly, he turned his gaze on her, and she saw something fracture behind his eyes.

"It's him," he whispered.

Anne's brow furrowed. "Who?"

"That OVRA agent," he said, voice rising with each word. "The one you're working with. The German. The one they call Carnicero. The Butcher."

Her blood ran cold.

"I've seen his face before," Ludwig said, stepping closer. "Not here. A little over two years ago. In the Netherlands. He came to our town—under a different name. SS. He spoke Dutch with a strange accent. He came with others. They raided our neighborhood. Said it was retaliation for resistance activity. I watched from under the floorboards while they shot my father in the back. Then my mother. Then my little sisters. All of them."

He swallowed hard, his jaw shaking.

"I remember his voice. His laugh. He laughed when my baby sister cried out. He laughed." He looked at her, pleading now. "I thought he died in the war. But then I saw him. Here. Working with us. Torturing for us."

Anne said nothing at first. She felt her stomach knot, her skin go clammy. She thought back to Carnicero's cold eyes, the casual way he'd heated the knife, the precise brutality he employed like a master craftsman. And then she remembered the moment he looked at her—when he asked for the lighter with that dry, almost bored authority. She wasn't surprised anymore. She sighed and shook her head.

"I need to be sure," Ludwig said. His voice broke, but he caught himself. "I need you to find out. I need you to talk to him. Make him slip up. Say something only he would know. Something from that time. If he's who I think he is, then I want you to let me kill him."

Anne looked away. Her eyes fell on the officer again, barely conscious, his breathing ragged and shallow. Her mind swam.

She thought of her father's broken neck swinging from the gallows.

She thought of Schlomo's words: "They will join us, or they will die as traitors."

She thought of the cell's weekly self-criticism sessions, the laughter through tears, the embraces after confession, the way they bled for one another not just out of ideology—but out of loss. Out of love.

She looked back at Ludwig, saw the desperation carved into every line of his face.

"All right," she said finally.

His eyes widened.

"I'll find out," she continued. "I'll make him talk. If he's the one who murdered your family, then do whatever you want. I'll cover it up."

"Thank you," Ludwig whispered, trembling.

"But if he's not him," Anne warned, her voice sharpening, "if there's even a shred of doubt, you don't touch him. We need him. He's a monster, but he's our monster now. You understand?"

He nodded, though his jaw was still tight.

Anne stepped forward, placed a hand on his shoulder—brief, cold, but grounding.

"I'll handle it," she said.

And with that, she turned, walking back into the flickering darkness of the interrogation room, the radio still playing Sinatra's love song behind her like a cruel joke, the lyrics a relic from a life that felt centuries away.

Tomorrow, she would see the Butcher again.

Tomorrow, she'd ask questions.

And tomorrow, perhaps, she'd find out if she was working beside a murderer worse than even she had imagined.

And if he was—

She would let Ludwig have his vengeance.

Anne left the room shortly after and closed the door behind her with a quiet click.

Ludwig didn't look up. He was already sitting in the chair she had vacated, elbows on knees, eyes locked on the broken prisoner as if he could burn the truth out of him by sheer force of will. Anne didn't say anything—just gave a small nod.

She turned away.

The corridor was dark, lit only by flickering bulbs that buzzed overhead like angry flies. She passed the weapons cache, the maps, the radio room. The walls were cracked and peeling, the hallway soaked in the stench of rust, cordite, and fear.

She reached her cot in the back room—a space barely wide enough for a bedroll, a crate she used as a table, and a battered locker. She sat down hard, pulled the letter from her coat pocket, and unfolded it again with trembling fingers.

She read it slowly this time. Every word like a thread winding around her heart. A home in Switzerland. His aunt, uncle and cousin still alive. Cousin Bernhardt who taught her to skate. There was still someone. Something.

A home, she thought.

Her breath hitched.

She remembered how she had shown the letter to Schlomo just a week ago, beneath the orange tree in the courtyard while the sun bled across the tiles.

He had smiled, that rare, warm smile he only showed when he wasn't planning the next raid or when he talked to Anissa.

"That's good," he'd said. "That's very good. Hope keeps your hand steady. Makes you fight harder."

She had looked at him, skeptical. "Is that why you fight, Schlomo? For hope?"

He'd laughed. "Partially. Mostly for revenge." Then he softened again. "But yes. Hope too. I want a world where our people can have a home."

He'd leaned in and whispered like a secret: "Anissa and I… we're going to get married. When this is all over. We'll run away. Maybe Brazil, maybe Colombia. Someplace green. Somewhere quiet."

She had smiled, surprised. "Does she know that?"

"She will one day," he'd said, grinning.

Then he pointed to her chest, where the letter rested.

"Hold onto that. Hold it like a weapon. There will be a future."

Now, in the dark, alone, Anne covered her face and wept.

Not the controlled tears she sometimes allowed herself in the shower or under the desert stars, but great, heaving sobs—silent, aching, and bitter. Her ribs ached with each breath, her eyes burning from more than just grief.

She thought of Margot. Of her mother. Of her father, whispering lullabies to her when she was sick with fever as a child. All gone. All gone except this—this paper, this promise, this scrap of a world that might still exist.

She wanted to live.

God, she wanted to live.

To go to Switzerland.

To find Bernhardt.

To skate again.

To eat a peach and sing in the snow.

To wear a red dress and laugh without guilt.

Her fingers moved of their own accord. She reached into her satchel and pulled out the battered black diary, its pages already stained with blood, dust, and dreams. She opened to a blank page. Picked up her pen. And began to write.

----------

Monday, November 23, 1942

Today I helped to torture a man.

I watched the British agent scream and shake and sob. I felt nothing. Then I felt everything.

I told myself it was for the mission. That pain makes men speak. That monsters deserve no mercy.

But he wasn't the monster. Not the real one. That one might be the butcher, the man that tortured him, and me, who stood and watched.

I still don't know if I believe in good or evil. But I know I want to live. I want to breathe cold air and taste real food again. I want to fall in love. I want to skate across a frozen lake and fall laughing into the snow.

I want to go home. Even if it's only a ghost of one.

For the first time since Margot died, I believe there might be a future. Not a clean one. Not a peaceful one. But a future.

A twisted kind of hope, maybe. But it's mine.

--------

She set the pen down. Her hand trembled.

Then, for the first time in months, Anne Frank folded her hands and prayed. Not for victory. Not for vengeance. But for life.

"Please," she whispered into the shadows. "Just let me live."

And somewhere, beyond the iron doors and blood-streaked halls, a new day crept toward them.

November 24, 1942
The Old City of Haifa,
British Mandate of Palestine

The sun had already begun to set, casting long, bruised shadows over the stone courtyard. The call to prayer drifted in faintly from somewhere across the rooftops, blending with the sound of boots scuffing against dirt, the occasional crackle of a radio, the low murmur of voices behind doors that never stayed closed for long.

Anne sat on a crate outside the holding room, her diary open on her lap, her fingers ink-stained and shaking slightly.

She began to write:

---

Tuesday, November 24, 1942

We spent the morning chasing a ghost. A Mapai courier—young, fast, and smarter than he looked. He led us through the alleys like a rat that knew every tunnel. We caught him in an abandoned bathhouse by the port. He tried to swallow his notes. But Schlomo shot him in the leg, and I dug the wet paper out of his throat before he could choke on it.

He screamed the whole way back. They always do.

We're running out of sedatives. So Butcher used a belt and salt water this time. It worked. Eventually.

----

The holding room smelled of copper and ammonia.

The Mapai agent hung from the ceiling by his wrists, his breath shallow and wet, blood crusting beneath his nose and around his fingernails. Anne stood beside a rusting table, jotting notes into a ledger as Butcher worked—the same quiet rhythm as always. A bucket. A cloth. A dull blade. Nothing fancy. Nothing poetic.

Just pain.

She didn't look at the prisoner. Not anymore. She only looked at the information: names, dates, handoff points, numbers.

But as Butcher stepped back to catch his breath, she broke the silence.

"You have a Dutch accent," she said lightly, almost conversationally, as if they were sitting in a café, as if he weren't standing ankle-deep in blood.

Butcher paused. He rolled his shoulder. Wiped his hands on a towel.

"You've a good ear," he replied, his voice low and even. "Yes. I was stationed in the Netherlands."

Anne's pen stilled over the page.

"Amsterdam?"

He nodded. "For a while."

She tilted her head. "Where?"

"South," he said, his eyes distant. "Near the Singel. Close to where the flower market was. There was a little shop… candies, mostly. Run by an old man with a limp."

Anne's mouth dried.

"I know that shop," she whispered.

He looked at her then, really looked at her. "You do?"

She nodded. "He used to give free caramels to children on Fridays."

"He did," Butcher said, smiling faintly. "Those were my favorite."

Anne smiled back before she could stop herself. A reflex. A ghost of a girl long buried.

"I liked the orange drops," she said. "And the hazelnut clusters."

Butcher chuckled, just once. "Too sweet. They stuck to your teeth."

There was a strange silence then. A thread stretched tight across memory and bloodshed. Two people standing across a gulf of fire, staring at a bridge neither of them meant to build.

Anne's voice dropped, curious now.

"What were you doing there?" she asked.

He turned away. Pulled a cigarette from his coat. Lit it.

"I was with the SD."

"What did you do?"

"I kept order."

"You killed partisans," she said quietly.

He exhaled slowly. "Yes."

She said nothing. Just watched the smoke curl toward the cracked ceiling. Watched his hands, remembering the way they moved when he beat a man half to death, how steady they were.

"What's your name?" she asked.

He looked at her.

"Your real name," she added, before he could lie.

He paused, long enough that she thought he wouldn't answer.

Then:

"Klaus."

She didn't blink. Didn't write it down.

She just nodded.

"Thank you. Anne."

She said nothing more. Just closed her notebook and stepped outside, the door swinging softly shut behind her.

Later that night, in her room, by candlelight, Anne opened her diary again.

---

Klaus.

The Butcher has a name. A real one. He liked caramels. He smiled at the memory of a shop where I once stood holding my sister's hand. Where we bought sweets for Shabbat. He laughed. I laughed. It didn't feel real.

He killed partisans. Maybe neighbors. Maybe friends. Maybe people who had no names left.

But he remembers the same streets. The same bridges. The same old man with the limp and the jars of candy behind glass.

He is a monster. But he was there. In my city. My memory. And now he's here, in the blood and dirt, just like me.

I memorized his name. I don't know why. But I won't forget it.

Klaus.

The man who broke bones with precision. The man who once stood in the same candy shop as me, and walked out into a different kind of future.

Now I'll tell Ludwig. And if he killed his family he'll be dead within the week.

---

She paused.

Then added, in smaller handwriting:

---

Is this what war does? Takes children and turns them into killers, and killers into men who remember chocolate?

---

She closed the book gently.

Tonight, she wouldn't pray.

She would dream.

Not of hope.

But of memory.

And of names.

Always the names.

November 25, 1942 – After midnight
The Safehouse, Haifa
British Palestine

The hallway was cold, narrow, the whitewashed walls humming with the sound of distant voices and the flicker of bad wiring. Anne walked slowly, deliberately, her boots heavy on the stone floor. She passed the supply closet. The communications room. Then finally, the cell on the far end—where Ludwig had been keeping watch.

She found him seated on a metal chair, hunched forward, his eyes locked on the closed door of the adjacent room. The prisoner was inside—unconscious, tied to a pipe, beaten but alive. Ludwig didn't notice her at first. He was gripping the edge of the chair so tightly his knuckles had gone white.

"Ludwig," she said softly.

He turned, eyes hollow, almost feverish.

She crouched in front of him. "His name is Klaus," she said.

That was all it took.

The words hit him like a sledgehammer. His shoulders jolted, and then his hands rose to his face. A sound escaped him—half gasp, half sob. He doubled over, trembling.

"Netherlands," she added, quietly. "Amsterdam. He was there."

Ludwig began to shake.

"That's him," he whispered through his hands. "That's him. That's—oh God. It's him. I knew it, I—"

He slid off the chair, collapsing onto the floor, kneeling like a child. His hands clutched at his scalp, his face contorted in a raw, almost animal grief.

"He killed them—my mother, my father, my sisters, he—" His voice cracked, then broke entirely. "Laughed. I saw him through the floorboards. I was hiding like a coward. He—he smiled while they screamed."

Anne felt her stomach turn to ice.

Ludwig buried his face in her lap, sobbing uncontrollably.

"Please," he wept as he glanced at her."Anne, please. You have to let me do it. I need to—I need to make him pay. I see their faces every night. I see their hands reaching for me, burning. I want him to burn. Please, I need this—I can't live with myself. I have to avenge them, please."

Anne hesitated, her arms hovering in the air. And then, slowly, she wrapped them around him. She held him close, cradling his shaking body, the heat of his grief seeping into her like a fever.

He wept like a boy, broken and bare.

And Anne hated him for it.

Not for his pain. But because he could still feel it. Because he hadn't become like her. Because he hadn't shut it all off just to keep breathing.

She hated him because his tears were pure.

And she hated herself for feeling that way.

So she held him tighter.

She pressed her chin to his hair and let him cry.

And in the silence that followed, she stared past him, into the dark corner of the room, and thought: I don't even remember what my mother's voice sounded like.

---

Wednesday, November 25, 1942

Ludwig collapsed tonight.

I told him the Butcher's name. Klaus. I told him he had served in Amsterdam. He knew immediately. Knew it with the kind of certainty that can only come from fire and blood and screaming. He wept. He wept like a child.

He told me what happened. I won't write it down. I can't. But I will remember it. I will remember the way his hands shook. The way his voice fell apart. The way he begged for permission to kill.

And I… I didn't know what to say.

I held him. Because it was the only thing I could do. Because I couldn't speak. Because I couldn't tell him the truth.

That I wanted to feel what he felt. That I missed it. The rawness. The grief. The unbearable, soul-wracking grief that at least meant you still loved something enough to lose it.

All I have left now is a heartbeat and vague hope for the future. And sometimes not even that.

Ludwig is still human. He still dreams of justice. I dream of silence.

But I will give him what he asks.

When the time comes.

And Klaus will burn.

---

Anne closed the diary.

Outside, the night wind howled like a wounded animal.

Inside, Anne sat by the door and watched Ludwig sleep on the floor, curled around his own sorrow like a dying flame.

And she thought, not for the first time, that whatever innocence she once had died in a place with a checkered floor and a diary in the attic.

But something else had been born in its place.

Something colder. Sharper.

And it, too, had a name.

Justice.

November 25, 1942 – Afternoon
Outside Haifa, Near the Carmel Ridge
British Palestine

The sun hung low over the hills, filtered through dust and smoke. The air smelled of orange blossoms and burnt oil. Anne crouched behind a crumbling stone wall, her rifle slung over one shoulder, eyes narrowed at the squat white building across the dirt road. The Haganah safehouse. One entrance. Two windows. One armed sentry.

She had been watching it for an hour.

Klaus stood beside her, arms crossed, chewing on a strip of dried meat. He looked bored. Arrogant. A predator playing human.

Ludwig knelt a few feet behind them, backpack open, checking the wires on a small charge. His hands were steady. His eyes were not.

Anne's voice was quiet. Controlled.

"I'm thinking we go around back once the sun drops. Blow the generator, draw them out. Then move in."

Klaus grunted. "Clean and quick. I like it."

She nodded. "Ludwig, you good with the pack?"

He gave a tense nod. "Wired and ready."

Klaus checked his pistol. "Well then, let's go say hello."

They moved fast. Quiet. Through the brush, up the slope, past a shattered olive tree where a bullet had lodged in the bark. As they approached the building's rear, Anne slowed. She motioned for Klaus to check the door.

As he stepped past her, she reached into her coat.

A long, thin wire.

She moved fast—like she'd done it a thousand times.

The wire slipped around his throat in an instant. She twisted and pulled. Klaus's body jerked backward, his boots scuffing against the dirt. He flailed, arms reaching, voice a gurgling rasp. He elbowed her once, hard—but she held on, biting down, her muscles screaming.

She dragged him down.

He collapsed in the dust.

Unconscious.

Ludwig was already beside her. Silent. Breathing hard.

Together, they dragged Klaus behind a thicket of dry brush.

Anne tied his hands. Tight. Then his ankles. Then stuffed a rag into his mouth.

She didn't say a word.

She didn't need to.

Ludwig just stared at her.

And she nodded once.

That was enough.

He knelt beside Klaus, pulled a rusted trench knife from his belt, and began.

It was not quick.

Ludwig started with the fingers—methodical, almost surgical. Klaus awoke screaming into the rag, thrashing against the cords, choking on pain and dust and blood. Anne watched from a few feet away, her face blank, her hands clenched in her coat.

Ludwig's voice was hoarse. "My sister was twelve. My baby sister."

He carved a line down Klaus's thigh.

Klaus tried to speak. To plead.

Ludwig silenced him with a punch so hard his jaw dislocated.

"My mother begged."

Anne turned her head away but did not stop him.

She had made this decision.

She had let the monster into the room and given the child the knife.

And now the monster bled.

After half an hour, Klaus's screams were only moans. Then gasps. Then nothing at all.

His head lolled to one side. His eyes glassed over.

Ludwig slumped forward, soaked in sweat and blood, shaking.

Anne knelt beside the corpse. She reached into the man's torn jacket.

A leather wallet.

She opened it slowly.

Inside: a photograph of a woman, yellowed and creased. A child. A folded slip of paper. And an identification card.

She stared at it for a long time.

Then spoke aloud.

"Klaus Barbie."

Ludwig flinched. "Barbie…?"

She nodded.

Ludwig sat back, staring at the corpse. His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

Anne stood slowly. Wiped her hands on her pants.

Then turned to him. "He's dead. And you killed him. And maybe that's justice. Or maybe it's just more blood in the river. But it's done. We'll tell Schlomo the Haganah got away, that they killed Klaus."

Ludwig didn't answer. His eyes were empty. He only nodded.

Anne looked down at Klaus Barbie's face one last time.

The man who had hunted her kind.

Now he lay in the dirt like an animal.

And she felt nothing.

No relief.

No triumph.

Just… nothing.

She wrote in her diary that night.

---

Klaus Barbie is dead.

Butchers name. A man who laughed in the streets while families burned. The man who visited the candy shop where I once bought licorice with Margot, and left blood in its shadowed alley a week later.

Ludwig killed him.

I let it happen. I made it happen.

And now the world is minus one monster. And it still feels broken.

But I looked at his face, and I wasn't afraid. I wasn't sad. I wasn't anything.

Does that make me strong? Or does it make me something else entirely?

I don't know anymore.

But I do know this: the past is catching up to all of us. And there will be no heaven for men like Klaus. And not for me probably.

But Switzerland.

Maybe I can still hope.

---

The candle burned low.

Outside, the safehouse slept.

Inside, Anne sat in the dark, holding the ID card of a dead man in one hand and her pen in the other.

And for the first time in a long time, she began to feel like maybe—just maybe—she could keep going.

Because monsters die.

And someone has to be there to make sure they do.

Note: NGL I am invested in the Anne Frank story. She'll have a happy ending, but she needs to wade through hell first. Next chapter we get back to Il Duce and his mad antics

Then our crazy mafioso crusader Franco

 

[wetwipefatass]

NGL I am invested in the Anne Frank story

Click to shrink...

A friend asked me if i had been reading anything recently. i told him i was reading an alt-hist drama novel that has an insane protagonist. when he asked for further details, i said "terrorist Anne Frank"

there's a good chance you'll be getting a new reader soon

 

[Alenco98]

So,

I've been rereading the first several chapters in the story up until Mussolini fully goes cracked and I realize I hate it. His fall to madness is too sudden. That and part of me wants to compete for a turtledove award over on alt hist where this story is published too, I doubt I'll get it but it would be funny if I did.

So I'll spend the next few days re-writing and editing then doing a mass upload. I'll make the fall slow and subtle, it will be glorious, the slow addiction to city pop and increasing homesickness and madness, the rest of the story will be mostly unaffected. Maybe a few retcons here and there.

I'll make another announcement post saying it's ready once I've uploaded the re-edited chapters.

 

[ATP]

A bombs for everybody? now i undarstandt.Dude is Fallout fan,and decide to made it better !

 

[Pef]

The Rouge Prince, a sweeping religious and political TV series

Click to shrink...

I swear, that word makes my eye bleed. Rouge? Fuck sakes. That means lipstick.
It's Rogue. Even the novel whence you copied the title of your fake movie is called the same Rogue Prince

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/The_Rogue_Prince

 

[Alenco98]

Excerpt from Walter Cronkite's 1961 Interview with Anne Frank
CEO of Frank Security—the Rome Pact's first private military company—and author of the 1959 novel Diary of a Young Girl

The wind whispers through the trees surrounding a secluded, sun-dappled villa nestled in one of Haifa's most opulent neighborhoods. A shaded veranda overlooks a manicured garden where the scent of jasmine floats on the breeze. Seated across from each other at a small stone table, Walter Cronkite and Anne Frank are served glasses of ice-cold lemonade by a quiet attendant.

Walter Cronkite: Thank you for agreeing to this interview, Anne.

Anne Frank: And thank you for flying all the way out here, Walter. I hope the journey wasn't too exhausting.

Walter: Not at all. Now, before we begin, would you prefer I address you as "Mrs. Frank," or by your former rank in the Lehi?

Anne: Just Anne is perfectly fine.

Walter: Very well, Anne. As you know, your book was recently translated into English and has become a sensation among American readers. What moved you to publish Diary of a Young Girl after all these years?

Anne: (Smiling softly, nodding) It happened shortly after the birth of my youngest son, Otto—he's three now. At the time, my husband Bernhardt and I were living in Switzerland. His mother, my Aunt Helene, had fallen ill, and we were there caring for her.

I already had two daughters, Margot and Edith—both were easy births. But Otto was different. It took an entire day to bring him into the world, and from the moment he emerged, he howled like a storm. (Laughs lightly) Bernhardt, God bless him, was an angel through it all.

It was about a month later, if memory serves. Otto had finally gone down for a nap. Bernhardt was helping my uncle fix a leaky kitchen pipe and had asked for his toolbox. I went up to the attic to fetch it—and stumbled upon an old, dust-covered box of things I'd brought back from Israel after the War of Independence.

Curiosity got the better of me. I opened it. Right on top... was my diary.

I hadn't touched it in years. And the moment I cracked it open, the memories came flooding back—sharp, unrelenting. I sat there, stunned. Then I began to cry.

Bernhardt came up after a few minutes to check on me. He found me sitting there in tears, the diary in my lap, the toolbox forgotten beside me.

Walter: Did you ever speak to him about your time in Israel before that moment?

Anne: (Shakes her head slowly) Not really. I told him only that I had been a runner during the conflict, and that my family had died in the fighting. It wasn't a lie... but it wasn't the full truth either.

My old Lehi cell leader, Schlomo, once told me: "There's a future, but our past—our struggle—is for us alone. The world wouldn't understand." He was right, in a way.

So I buried it. All of it. I moved on. Went to school. Got married. Opened my company.

Walter: What did you say when Bernhardt found you?

Anne: He asked me what was wrong—if I was alright. He saw the diary in my hands and asked about it. I hesitated. Until that moment, his family only knew a carefully sanitized version of my past: that I had once been a courier for the underground, that my parents died in the war, and that Margot had been a nurse and the British killed her.

But that night, something changed. I told him about the diary—how I'd recorded everything, how the memories had returned. Bernhardt... (sniffs) he's always been kind. Gentle. Patient. He asked if he could read it.

I didn't speak—I just nodded.

He sat beside me, opened it, and we read it together. We were up most of the night. (Chuckles) Poor Uncle Erich had to wait a bit longer for that toolbox.

Walter: So you read the diary together that night?

Anne: (Nods, voice soft) Yes. And not just read—we shared everything. I told him in full: how my father was executed by the British, how I took up arms afterward. How I killed for the first time and many times. How I helped "Raoul" track and eliminate Reinhard, the ex-SS officer who had slaughtered his family.

Telling him... it was cathartic. A release.

I'd only ever shared those memories with comrades—people who had blood on their hands too. But Bernhardt was an outsider. I was terrified of how he'd react.

Walter: Terrified of what, exactly?

Anne: That he'd see me as a monster.

(She laughs, softly but bitterly) I was such a fool. I still am, sometimes. He didn't judge me. He didn't recoil. He simply held me. As dawn broke, he wrapped his arms around me and said, "I didn't know. But I understand now." He was hurt that I hadn't told him sooner—but he forgave me.

Walter: Was that when you decided to publish the diary?

Anne: No, not at first. I didn't want to publish it at all. It was Bernhardt who pushed for it—persistently. The very next morning, after he made breakfast, he said, "People need to read this. It's a part of history. Our history."

Walter: So he persuaded you.

Anne: (Laughs) You could say that. I was on maternity leave from Frank Security at the time, but still very much involved—consulting, reviewing operations, working with Schlomo and Anissa. They did an excellent job running things, but I couldn't fully disengage.

But Bernhardt wouldn't drop it. Even when we returned to Israel, he kept bringing it up. Every time he came back from one of his Holiday on Ice tours, the first thing he'd say was, "Anne, you should publish the diary. It matters."

Walter: And when did you finally give in?

Anne: Late summer—August or September of 1958, I think. He had just returned from a tour in Norway. He'd made dinner, and I was exhausted after a tense meeting with General Barre and his head of security, Müller [1]—former Werhmacht, half-mad. We were discussing new training regimens for their presidential guard. Classified stuff.

After I told him all this, he just smiled and said, "What about the diary?" (Laughs) I lost it. I yelled, "Why don't you publish it yourself if it's so important?! I'm running a company!"

Looking back, I regret raising my voice. He only meant well. And to my surprise... he did just that.

Walter: He published it?

Anne: He took the diary, drafted a manuscript based on it, and included all the context I had given him. Every few days, he would show me pages and ask, "Does this feel right? Anything you want to change?"

Walter: So some of it is edited?

Anne: (Nods) Some names. A few details. Many of my comrades are now in the military, Mossad, or the Ministry of Defense. Take "Raoul"—the boy I helped assassinate an SS officer who butchered his family in Holland. That's not his real name. Reinhard wasn't the SS officers name. And Raoul is a senior official now. I won't compromise him.

And OVRA... well, now the CIA, doesn't appreciate when their assets are killed. Some of their people still hold grudges.

Walter: That chapter about murdering the SS agent Lehi had under them—very controversial. Several Falag Knesset members even called for your expulsion from the party and even imprisonment. They said you embarrassed the party and dishonored Lehi's legacy.

Anne: (Nods solemnly) They did. But the emperor intervened.

Walter: Emperor Constantine?

Anne: Yes. I'd met him once before, in 1940, in a refugee camp in Libya along with a group of Jewish refugees. He was younger then, almost idealistic. When the diary was published, he asked to meet again.

He told me he would guarantee my safety and my family's. Apparently, certain elements in the CIA—mostly the ex-Nazis they'd employed—wanted revenge. (She laughs, casually lifts a Beretta from her waistband and sets it on the table) Please. Let them try.

Walter: (Visibly unsettled) That's quite the statement.

Anne: It's not a threat. It's a warning. But I digress. The emperor made calls. He issued a pardon, met with Stern, the Knesset and the cabinet, and made it clear—leave Anne Frank alone. And they did.

Walter: Has any of this affected your business?

Anne: If anything, it's helped. Frank Security now operates in Somalia, Yemen, Katanga, Guinea, Maoist China, the Maghreb—governments seek out our expertise. Business is booming.

(She leans back in her chair, takes a sip of lemonade, and smiles) I'm going to sound cynical for this, but if I'd known publishing the diary would turn into the best PR campaign for my company, I'd have done it sooner.

Cronkite (nodding): Let's circle back to your diary for a moment. There have been reports circulating that you're collaborating with Leni Riefenstahl on a film adaptation. Can you confirm that?

Anne (visibly a bit uncomfortable, but composed): Yes... that's true. The Emperor himself was very insistent on turning my story into a film. He personally arranged a meeting between Leni and me late last year. It was surreal, to be honest. I never imagined I'd be sitting across from her discussing the logistics of a screenplay based on my life.

Cronkite: That must have been quite the experience. How far along are you in the process?

Anne: Well, at this stage, Leni, Bernhardt, and I have been working intensively on the script and overall screenplay. It's been a long and meticulous process. Our absolute priority has been historical accuracy—portraying the events truthfully, without romanticizing or sanitizing them. There's so much trauma wrapped in those pages, and we don't want to exploit that too much. We want it to mean something.

Cronkite: So filming hasn't begun yet?

Anne (shaking her head slightly): No, not yet. Production is scheduled to begin early next year, if all goes according to plan. Part of the delay is simply scheduling—Leni is incredibly busy at the moment, especially with the Star Wars project.

Cronkite: Star Wars? That's quite a shift in tone from your story, isn't it?

Anne: (smirking faintly) You'd be surprised. The emperor wrote the script according to her. It's not what you'd expect from him, but... I suppose war makes men do strange things, whether it's in the stars or in the mud.

[1]: Siegfried Müller— "Kongo Müller" in our timeline—will appear prominently in my African chapters. Look him up, crazy bastard

Note: You all wanted Ann to have a happy ending, here's a flash forward. I got 2 chapters edited so far.

Edit: edited a few things, Siegfried muller was never SS but German army. Changed Klaus' name to Reinhard to make Anne's cover up of details consistent covering

Note 2: there's more Anne chapters coming, there will be suffering. But she'll be happy, I kind of needed this chapter too now that I think about it. If I recall I read a comment either on QQ or althist on how writing crazy shit makes you crazy and honestly, I agree. Writing this has warped my brain a little. I followed and read a lot about modern conflicts today, sudan, burma, Pakistan-india and even though I read and see videos of the brutality of it all I just brush it off and write more brutal shit on this story and feel nothing from it.


Sorry about the rant I guess, but tl;dr, i'll try to add some happy chapters in between the sheer suffering and depravity but I don't guarantee anything

Because it's addictive and I can't stop.

 

[CelestialNorth]

Honestly, thanks for the happy ending. It felt almost cathartic.

 

[Alenco98]

An excerpt from Leni Riefenstahl's 1943 propaganda epic, A Glimpse into the Emperor.

Scene opens with a slow tracking shot through the high-vaulted corridors of the Palazzo Venezia. Mahogany doors. Gold filigree. Corinthian columns. Gregorian chants and classical piano playing in the background. The voice is smooth, composed, clinically calm. Constantine XII speaks in multiple dubbed languages—his cadence is precise, studied, mercilessly polished.

Voiceover begins.

My name is Constantine. Constantine Benito Amilcare Mussolini, the Twelfth of that name. I am Emperor of the Romans, King of Greater Austria, Protector of Syria, Israel, Croatia, Albania. I am 59 years old. Almost 60.

I reside in the Palazzo Venezia, a 15th-century Renaissance fortress in the center of the Eternal City. My day begins at exactly 5:55 a.m. Not 5:54. Not 5:56. At 5:55, I open my eyes. The ceiling above me is hand-painted—angels, gods, demons, all locked in an eternal struggle above my bed. I don't gaze at it for any spiritual reason. It's a stimulus. Like an alarm.

The bed is custom, commissioned in Venice. The mattress is Egyptian cotton over memory foam, calibrated to my bodyweight by an orthopedic consultant from Milan. My wife is still asleep beside me. She breathes slowly, curled into herself. I remove her arm from my chest and roll out of bed with surgical precision.

No speaking. Not yet. The day hasn't earned words.

I slide down onto the cold marble floor and immediately enter a headstand. It centers me. I count slowly—uno, due, tre, quattro—until I reach two hundred. At around one-sixty, my vision tunnels slightly. That's normal. I breathe through it. My eyes water. Pain is not an obstacle. It's a metric.

Camera shows footage of the Emperor upside down, veins slightly bulging, whispering the count through gritted teeth.

Afterward, I dress in silence. A black Prada shirt—tailored to my frame, single-stitched seams—and gray trousers with a regulation crease. I walk out into the early Roman morning, past frescoed halls and into the courtyard, where four Carcano-armed guards fall into formation behind me without a word. They do not speak unless spoken to. They are from Bari. I know all their names. I do not use them.

I jog. I do not run. Running is frantic. Jogging is deliberate. I move past Bernini fountains, down the Corso, through the Forum. Past people waving. Smiling. Bowing. Worshipping. The city opens for me like a flower. This is not narcissism. It is Rome. And I am its nerve center.

6:45 a.m. I enter the Palestra del Duce. A gym-palace. Only three people are ever permitted inside when I train: my OVRA security man, stopwatch and clipboard in hand; my physical trainer, a former Olympic decathlete named Remo; and myself.

There is no music. Only breath. Only the sound of tendon and sinew. I begin with weighted pull-ups—30 kilograms, three sets of ten. Rest: 90 seconds between sets. Always 90. My mind wanders slightly by set two, so I focus on the burn in my lats. I welcome it. It means the discipline is working.

Then come push-ups. Four sets. Slow. Each rep takes six seconds. My arms tremble. My jaw clenches. I increase the vest weight to 40 kilos. I embrace the sensation of rupture. Afterward, squats. Three sets. Controlled. Precise.

Shot of the Emperor in a deep squat, body taut like coiled wire.

Then stretching. Five minutes. No more. No less. I stare into the mirror during every hamstring curl. My reflection is not a man. It is an idea. An abstraction of order. The personification of civilization held taut by ritual and steel.

8:30 a.m., I remove the ice pack from my face. I shower with a Roman shampoo developed in a private lab in Milan. The scent is strawberry, faint, artificial—clean. I use a honey-based exfoliant, followed by a peppermint aftershave. My skin is pale. Ageless. Imperial.

By 9:15 I am in the backseat of a black Italian-made Fiat. No limousine. Opulence is for the insecure. The driver doesn't speak. He wears gloves. I eat oatmeal, fresh-cut strawberries, a dash of Umbrian honey, and a glass of cold milk from a farm I personally own in Lazio. The milk is raw. Alive.

10:00 a.m., cabinet meeting. They wait for me. Always. I enter without announcement. Di Stefano reads the economic figures—solid. Grain production in Dalmatia is up 12%. Syrian factories are online. Treasury reports steady growth. The Interior Minister updates me on domestic arrests. OVRA operatives have neutralized four dissidents. Good. Rome requires purity.

I nod. I smile slightly. I sign. I approve. The machinery moves.

At noon, I allow myself lunch. Napoli-style pizza. Thick crust. Imported olive oil. Basil leaves arranged by hand. Tomato so sweet it's almost sensual. I do not speak while eating. I eat like a wolf.

2:00 p.m., back to business. Foreign dispatches. Decrees. Budgets. I read everything. Line by line. I do not skim. Skimming is for middle managers and poets.

6:30 p.m., I retreat to my private office. The air smells of leather, paper, ink, and dried blood. I sign warrants. Approvals. Execution orders. Some of them will die tonight. I feel nothing. Rome is too important for sentiment.

By 9:00 p.m., I'm home. Dinner with my wife, children and grandchildren. My sanctuary. My tether. We eat spaghetti with basil. Soft eggs. A rare steak, bleeding slightly. I eat it slowly, as if punishing it.

10:00 p.m., back in bed. I read ten pages of The Prince. I underline with a gold pen. I annotate. I cross-reference with a secret commentary printed in Florence in 1532.

By 10:30, I'm still awake. Lying still. Eyes open. Listening to the ticking of a clock carved from Syrian cedar.

I pray. An our father who art in heaven. Then I sleep. I do not dream. I calculate. Tomorrow, the machine starts again.

Rome moves forward. It must. It has me.

And I am not tired.

I am necessary.

Note: I'm almost done rewriting the old chapters. Give it a day or 2. This little bit here is a result of me recently rewatching American psycho.