While Crown Prince Wilhelm's mind frayed inside his gilded cage at Babelsberg—pacing in circles, muttering to himself, clutching a wine bottle as if it were the last piece of the world that still obeyed him—the rest of the world kept moving.
Germany braced for the new year.
Oskar healed, slowly and stubbornly.
And far across the Atlantic, Karl Bergmann stepped into another world with three Eternal Guards at his back.
The crossing took nine long days.
Nine days of grey water, iron wind, seasickness, tin plates, crying babies, crowded steerage decks, and families who had fled the anger now rising through Germany like smoke through floorboards. On one memorable afternoon, Gunther nearly threw an old pickpocket overboard after the man tried to steal Karl's beloved umbrella-cane. Karl, wrapped in blankets on deck with his injured leg propped up, had to order him not to start an international incident before they even reached America.
Most of the voyage, Karl did his best to look like a respectable man of business.
Mostly, he looked like a seasick dwarf in a bad disguise, silently praying he would not vomit in front of the entire Atlantic.
On the morning of the ninth day, the fog began to thin.
A murmur spread along the railings.
People rose from benches, leaned out from crowded decks, lifted children onto shoulders. Some had been sleeping moments before; now they pressed forward with sudden, trembling urgency.
Then she appeared.
The Statue of Liberty rose out of the mist, her arm lifted high above the harbour, torch held against the pale winter sky.
Around Karl, people gasped. Some wept openly. Some crossed themselves. Others simply stared, hollow-eyed faces filling with something that looked almost dangerous in its brightness.
Hope.
To most of them, she was a promise.
A new life.
A second chance.
A place where the old names, old grudges, old borders, and old police files might matter a little less.
Karl looked up at the statue, narrowed his eyes, and thought:
That would look very good in Hamburg.
Except taller.
And with Oskar holding the torch.
Or a sword.
Behind the statue, New York slowly revealed itself through the thinning fog.
Not palace domes and orderly avenues. Not church spires and military squares. A jagged world of brick, steel, smoke, cranes, warehouses, ferry slips, rooftop water tanks, elevated tracks, and chimneys. The harbour was alive with tugboats, barges, ferries, liners, coal smoke, whistles, shouting men, and gulls wheeling above the whole chaos like they owned it.
Karl had read reports about New York. He had seen numbers. Population figures. Port tonnage. Immigration statistics. Railway connections. Banking estimates.
None of that prepared him for the sight of it.
By the time the liner slid toward its berth, he felt less like a German businessman and more like a fifteenth-century peasant who had accidentally walked into the future.
Disembarkation was not romantic.
It was lines, shouting, inspections, papers, medical glances, baggage tags, officials, interpreters, and exhausted families trying not to lose children in the crowd. First- and second-class passengers were processed with relative speed, while the poorer passengers were funnelled toward the immigration machinery that fed men, women, and children through America's gates by the thousands.
Karl limped down the gangway with his umbrella-cane in one hand, his ridiculous disguise still clinging to his face, and three "fishermen" behind him who walked like soldiers no matter how hard they tried not to.
And the first thing he noticed was this: "The tide had reversed."
On one side of the docks, immigrants from Europe poured into America: Poles, Danes, Jews, Bohemians, Italians, Germans, Russians, and people whose languages Karl could not even identify. Some carried trunks. Some carried sacks. Some carried babies. Some carried nothing but papers clutched so tightly their knuckles had gone white.
But at the same time, ethnic Germans were queuing with bags and suitcases to board ships back across the Atlantic.
Not many compared to those arriving, but enough to matter.
Families with names like Müller, Schneider, Bauer, and Hoffmann stood beneath shipping notices for Hamburg and Bremen, talking excitedly about wages, housing, factory shares, German Energy, Volksbau apartments, and the chance to return to a Germany that now seemed—through newspapers and letters—less like the hard country their parents had left and more like a nation being remade by Prince Oskar.
Some had been born in America and spoke German only at home.
Some had not seen Germany since childhood.
Some had never seen it at all.
Yet still they said, with strange confidence:
"We are going home."
At the very same piers, those whom Germany had pushed away now stepped onto American soil with cheap luggage and frightened eyes.
Poles. Danes. Jews. Others who had decided that becoming "guests" in the Empire was no future at all.
Germany was calling some of its children back.
And pushing others into the arms of America.
Karl stared at it all and felt something uneasy move under his ribs.
The second thing he noticed hit even harder.
New York moved differently.
Automobiles rattled and snorted through the streets in numbers that made Berlin look provincial. Not everywhere, not yet enough to replace horses, but common enough that they no longer felt miraculous. Electric streetcars clanged along their tracks. Elevated trains thundered overhead on iron structures, casting shadows across the avenues. Delivery wagons, hansom cabs, motorcars, bicycles, handcarts, and pedestrians fought for space in a chaos that somehow did not collapse.
The roads themselves astonished him. Some were still rough, muddy, or foul with horse waste, but others were smoother and broader than anything he expected, black or paved or surfaced well enough to make him think of Oskar's endless lectures about roads, traffic flow, and "future-proofing."
Crowds surged through the crossings in every direction: businessmen in sharp suits, dockworkers with sleeves rolled to the elbow, newsboys shouting headlines, women in hats and gloves walking with the quick, decisive stride of people who had places to be, and immigrants arguing over luggage, directions, and tickets in a dozen languages at once.
The city was loud, fast, dirty, and alive.
And beneath all that chaos, Karl could feel the deeper rhythm of it: money moving, machines turning, people rushing forward as if the whole city had decided that standing still was a kind of death.
Then, on a street corner, he saw something that nearly made him laugh out loud.
A large, colourful poster had been pasted to a brick wall: "PEOPLE'S WELFARE LOTTERY — AMERICAN BRANCH! GRAND PRIZE: 50,000 DOLLARS!! PLAY FOR HOPE. PLAY FOR OTHERS. THERE IS NO TRY, ONLY DO."
Below it, a line of Americans waited patiently to buy tickets. Some wore AngelWorks scarves or shirts. A few argued over lucky numbers. One man loudly declared that if he won, he would buy a house, a motorcar, and "one of those German muscle bicycles." Another insisted it was practically charity, since part of the proceeds went to hospitals and orphan funds.
Even here, on another continent, Oskar's absurd fingerprints were everywhere.
Karl could not help a crooked smile.
He had known from ledgers and telegrams that the American branch of the lottery was profitable. He had known AngelWorks was spreading through mail-order catalogues, department stores, and clever advertisements aimed at women who wanted modernity without quite admitting it.
But numbers on paper were one thing.
Seeing it alive in New York's roaring streets was another.
For the first time, standing in the winter air of Manhattan, Karl truly understood why America had become such a goldmine for the Oskar Industrial Group.
And why, if Germany wanted to stand beside such places rather than behind them, Oskar's insane, relentless pace back home was not madness at all.
It was necessity.
Then, soon enough, they managed to push through the crowd and hail a cab willing to take one oddly dressed "businessman" and three very large "fishermen" who looked as if they might break the seats by breathing too hard. The driver eyed them suspiciously, named a price that made Karl hiss through his teeth, and then cracked his reins when Gunther leaned down and smiled too widely.
The cab rattled westward into Manhattan's veins of brick, smoke, and steel.
Karl pressed his face to the window like an enchanted child.
Then, gradually, like a horrified adult.
New York was magnificent.
It was also filthy.
A yellowish haze clung to the streets like a permanent ghost. Coal smoke poured from rooftops. Factory chimneys belched black clouds. Horse manure steamed in gutters. Waste collected where no one had yet decided whose responsibility it was to remove it. The air tasted of soot, salt, oil, sweat, and money.
Karl coughed.
Gunther patted his back sympathetically.
"Air tastes like poison, Herr Karl."
"It is poison," Karl muttered, waving the haze from his nose. "And we thought Berlin was bad."
The scale of the city shook him most. The crowds did not merely fill the streets; they churned through them like rivers. Buildings rose like cliffs. Warehouses sprawled. Banks and offices looked swollen with capital. Here was a city not designed to look ancient or noble, but to grow, consume, trade, and rise.
Karl realized something unpleasant but true.
"Germany is not behind in intelligence," he murmured to himself. "Only in size."
Even the filth proved it.
America's problems were enormous because America itself was enormous. What Germany lacked in population, land, and raw chaos, it had to compensate for with discipline, technology, and Oskar's head start.
They spent the night in a noisy hotel filled with travelling salesmen, dock agents, foreign merchants, shouting bellboys, bad coffee, cigar smoke, and wallpaper that looked as though it would peel if someone insulted it too harshly.
Karl did not sleep.
Gunther did.
Loudly.
In the morning, Karl bought train tickets west.
On the platform, the Eternal Guards practiced English.
"I would like… one ham-bur-ger," one said slowly.
"I am tourist," another declared with pride.
Gunther, consulting a phrase list, attempted: "Please stop stabbing me."
Karl struck him in the shin with the umbrella-cane.
"No. Do not use that sentence first. You will scare people."
Two long days by rail carried them into the interior of America.
They passed coal towns black with smoke, factory districts glowing at night like iron temples, endless farms, frozen fields, rivers, bridges, switching yards, stations crowded with trunks and livestock, and stretches of open land so vast they made Germany feel like a carefully arranged toy.
Karl watched it all through the window and said very little.
The United States was young, loud, vulgar, unfinished, and in places almost barbarically inefficient.
But it had room.
So much room.
Room to spread. Room to fail. Room to try again. Room for people Germany had no idea what to do with.
At last, they reached Dayton, Ohio.
Small compared to New York. Industrial. Busy. Proud in a quieter, harder way.
A town of workshops, bicycles, machinery, smoke, churches, streetcars, and men who believed that if something did not yet exist, it could probably be built in a shed.
Exactly the sort of place where genius hid.
The Wright brothers received Karl with polite curiosity and suspicion in equal measure.
Their workshop smelled of sawdust, oil, metal filings, and ambition. Bicycles stood near experimental parts. Tools lay in disciplined disorder. Glider sketches and calculations were stacked with the caution of men who knew others wanted what they had.
Karl admired everything.
The frames. The control surfaces. The engine work. The practical elegance of their solutions. He praised their gliders so vigorously he nearly gave himself a headache.
Then, when the timing felt right, he made the offer.
German citizenship, along with land, laboratories, workshops and of course unlimited funding.
Plus, a partnership with the most famous, dangerous, and baffling young prince in Europe. Which meant getting a real chance to shape aviation forever, not from a bicycle shop in Ohio, but from the industrial heart of Germany, backed by steel, engines, money, and a government that would listen.
Wilbur and Orville Wright listened carefully, then they exchanged a glance, and refused, not rudely, but firmly.
Karl tried not to show the blow.
"Perhaps," Wilbur said, choosing his words with care, "we could work with German investors in some capacity. We are not opposed to cooperation. But relocation? No."
Orville folded his arms.
"We are Americans. Our parents are buried here. Our work is here. Our future is here."
Karl leaned forward, adjusting his fake moustache, which had begun to loosen at one corner.
"Gentlemen," he said, "with respect, America may be your home, but Germany can give you resources no bicycle shop can provide. Engines. Materials. Testing grounds. Protection."
Wilbur's expression tightened.
"And ownership?"
Karl blinked.
"Partnership," he said carefully.
"That usually means ownership when governments and princes are involved," Wilbur replied.
Orville looked at the AngelWorks ballpoint pen lying on the workbench and then back at Karl.
"We have read about Prince Oskar," he said. "Everyone has. His books are sold here. His lottery posters are in New York. His products are everywhere. But if I may speak plainly… he is eighteen?"
"Yes," Karl said proudly.
Wilbur rubbed his forehead.
"That is the problem."
Karl frowned. "His age does not reduce his genius."
"No," Orville said slowly. "But no single eighteen-year-old invents all that which he has invented, it's simply just impossible." He shook his head. "It sounds less like one genius and more like a nation hiding its sources behind a prince's face."
Karl opened his mouth, then closed it. Because technically, they were wrong.
Technically, they were also more correct than anyone else in the room.
Germany had discovered a hidden archive of impossible knowledge.
It was named Oskar, and Karl had no idea how to explain it without sounding insane.
Wilbur's voice softened, but his caution remained. "We don't know what your prince really is. A prodigy, perhaps. A symbol, certainly. A useful public mask for a larger group of inventors, maybe. But we will not cross the ocean and place our work completely under a foreign crown."
Karl tried other offers as well, whatever he could think of, but it was no use. Nothing moved them.
At last, Orville spoke the final line with quiet firmness.
"We may cooperate with Germany. We may sell rights, perhaps. We may demonstrate machines abroad one day. But we will not leave America."
And that was that.
Karl walked out of the workshop with a migraine, a bruised ego, a peeling fake moustache, and the sinking realization that he had failed Oskar.
Gunther patted him on the back.
"Worry not, we will beat them next time, Herr Karl."
Karl glared up at him. "That is not how negotiation works."
"Sometimes it is," Gunther said.
The Eternal Guards dragged him back to the hotel before he could collapse from stress in the street.
Meanwhile, inside the workshop, the Wright brothers stood in uneasy silence.
"These Germans," Wilbur muttered at last. "They want our secrets."
Orville nodded.
"And that prince… I don't trust it. Nobody that young is that brilliant."
They returned to their gliders.
Karl returned to bed.
That night, he lay awake in the hotel room, staring at the ceiling while Gunther snored like a sawmill on the floor nearby. Outside, Dayton was quiet. Somewhere in the distance, a train whistle cried through the dark.
Karl thought of Oskar in his hospital bed.
Of Germany tearing at its own seams.
Of the Wright brothers' refusal.
Of the briefcase under his bed.
And of the one insane card he had not yet played.
Failure, after all, was only failure if one stopped trying.
And Karl Bergmann had crossed an ocean carrying a prototype batsuit, a parachute, a suitcase full of money, and the trust of the most dangerous prince in Europe.
He was not going home empty-handed.