Two months had passed since the first declarations. The headlines had moved on. The paperwork had not. The countries who withdraw from the UN created their own pact.
The Adriatic Arctic Pact had announced its exit from NATO with the same calm it used for everything else. NATO called it brinkmanship, then waited for the usual retreat.
No retreat came.
Brussels learned what an alliance looked like when it was being unwound bolt by bolt.
In the headquarters, corridors filled with officers who were not running, yet still moved like they were late for a fire. A liaison team from Denmark carried two metal cases between them, wrists stiff from the weight. An aide from Norway walked past the security desk with a folder under his arm and a look that suggested he had already handed over everything he cared to hand over.
Inside the council chamber, flags stayed in their holders out of habit. Chairs stayed in their places out of denial. The empty seats still looked wrong.
An acting secretary general read the legal lines twice, then stopped pretending it helped. The effective date had arrived. The exit was no longer a declaration. It was a change in the machinery.
A Dutch officer stood at a side table and watched a technician disconnect a data link as if it were a vein. The screen flickered. A strip of blue icons vanished. Air pictures that had been shared for decades simply stopped being shared.
A British air commodore leaned over a map and traced the northern corridors with a finger. He kept his voice low, but it carried.
"Identification codes. Frequencies. Shared radar. Command chains. None of this dissolves because someone gives a speech," he told the room. "It takes months to unwind, and those months are over."
The Americans listened without interrupting. Their colonel by the door wrote one sentence on his pad, then underlined it twice.
Major did not sit in Brussels for this. He sat in London, in a cabinet room with the curtains drawn and the phone lines secured. A speaker box sat in the centre of the table like a witness.
His permanent representative spoke from the other end. "They have pulled their officers. Their codes have been deactivated. Their air defence net is no longer tied into ours. Their coast guard has been folded into their navy, and their navy has orders to treat the denial zones as borders."
A minister at Major's right tried to dress panic as confidence. "Then we treat them as outside the treaty and proceed with deterrence."
Major kept his gaze on the notes in front of him. "Deterrence works when the other side is afraid of consequences," he replied. "These people have decided consequences are useful."
Someone mentioned compromise. Someone else mentioned back channels.
Major heard the same problem underneath every suggestion.
The Adriatic Arctic Pact, or AAP as they were called, had not stormed out in a tantrum. It had backed away with a measured pace, waited for the paperwork to catch up, then shut the door when NATO finally reached it.
When the secure line went quiet, Major's MI5 liaison leaned in without asking.
"They have disconnected from every shared system," the man murmured. "The Scandinavian stations are not answering. Neither are the Balkans. Not even the routine channels."
Major did not like how that sounded. Not one bit.
He glanced at the sanction drafts waiting in his folder and understood something he had been trying to avoid.
The political move had ended weeks ago. The operational move ended today.
Now the world would respond to the emptiness as if it were an insult.
The first sanctions package did not take long.
Paris pushed, Madrid pushed harder. Major, against the insistence of MI6, decided to stay neutral.
By the time the votes were tallied, the declarations sounded like moral duty dressed as policy. Trade restrictions. Travel bans. Freezes. Suspensions. The language leaned on words like rights and stability, while the real intent sat beneath it like a loaded weapon.
Major watched the drafts circulate. France wanted punishment. Spain wanted a spectacle. A few smaller states wanted to look righteous and stay safe.
He leaned to his foreign secretary and spoke low. "If we sign this, they will shut the doors completely."
The man beside him did not look up from the page. "They already have."
A week later, the cameras caught the first deportations.
Oslo Airport, late afternoon. A line of people with suitcases and stunned faces.
The soldier's uniform was Norwegian. His eyes were not.
A man with his Norwegian ID held at chest height tried to argue. He pointed to his Norwegian Passport, then to the paper declaring him an foreign. Every person who got the nationality in the last ten years was thoroughly inspected. Whoever was still holding dual citizenship has lost it immediately.
The officer flipped the paper once and handed it back.
"Mr," he told the man in English, "you are not a Norwegian. The ID Card you are holding is illegal. You are being deported for not denouncing your 'original' citizenship, knowing well it is illegal to have dual nationality." He did not raise his voice. There was no insult. Just the cold touch of laws and their effects.
"You will not be imprisoned within the borders of Norway even if you insist on staying."
The AAP had signed an agreement with multiple South American countries about deporting foreign criminals to their prisons.
"So either board the flight and return to your country of origin, or we will send you to South America with another set of papers."
The man did not argue anymore. His country may not be as prosperous as Norway, but it was much better compared to Cartel run prisons of South America.
In Stockholm, the same scene played out with different accents. In Helsinki, the queues ended with the same quiet violence of procedure.
As time went on, the AAP introduced new regulations aimed at safeguarding local traditions. These measures included the prohibition of religions that were not considered part of the region's cultural heritage, justified by claims that certain clergy were engaged in espionage and attempting to impose foreign customs. One of the most visible consequences of these policies was the closure of temples belonging to those faiths, marking a decisive effort to preserve what was seen as the community's authentic identity.
On the streets of many AAP countries, protesters formed with signs and shouted prayers when they realised their temples were not opening again. The riot line moved on cue. Batons rose, then fell, then rose again. A man hit the ground and tried to crawl. Someone stepped on his wrist to pin him.
A camera operator started filming. Two soldiers peeled away from the line, walked straight to him, and broke the lens with the butt of a rifle. This recording was one of the last from the region.
The world watched and waited, almost expectantly, for cries of humanitarian need.
But none ever came.
Many hoped that fuel shortages would humble the AAP, exposing its arrogance and folly. Yet Russia shattered those expectations.
Instead, with Moscow's backing, the AAP states found themselves paying less for fuel than ever before. An outcome that turned the world's anticipation into quiet frustration.
In London, Major's cabinet met in a room with thick curtains and thin patience. The energy secretary waved a chart. Shipping delays. Price spikes. A supply chain that had suddenly learned what a wall looked like.
"They cannot do this and keep their populations fed," one minister snapped.
Major stared at the numbers and felt a slow, cold understanding settle in. "They are doing it," he replied.
In Brussels, NATO's halls filled with frantic footsteps and quiet terror. Officers ran maps through their hands like they could iron the crisis flat.
An acting secretary general sat behind a desk that suddenly looked too large. He signed one request after another and watched answers come back as silence.
A liaison officer brought a report that stank of panic. He placed it down with both hands.
"Air corridors denied," he murmured. "Sea lanes denied. Even civilian flight paths."
Someone asked the obvious question. "How are they doing this without collapsing?"
No one answered, because the answer was the part that made them all feel stupid.
The Adriatic Arctic Pact had cut a line across Europe and dared the world to cross it.
A British air commodore pointed at a corridor on the map. "We can route around the denial zones."
A Dutch officer shook his head. "Around, where. Through whose skies. The costs are rising unnaturally. We tried to test them. The moment we approach, we are tracked. The moment we probe, we are locked on, both for Naval and Air units."
The result of the logistical nightmare hit the world hard.
In the markets, the crisis became numbers. In the streets, it became fear.
In Berlin, a group of traders shouted at a screen and then fell silent when a headline confirmed the forbidden zone from the Arctic to the Balkans. The news anchor kept using the word temporary, and everyone watching could hear the lie.
In Madrid, Felipe González held a press conference with his jaw tight and his hands too steady. He spoke of unity and European dignity. His security detail widened the perimeter by twenty meters.
In Washington, Bill Clinton listened to a national security briefing and watched his advisers avoid certain words. When a general finally said blockade, Clinton did not blink.
"Do we have to break it?" he asked.
The general hesitated. "We have to test it."
In an old city within a desert, the clergy moved with angry footsteps.
One pushed through a doorway and stopped in front of a man with a document in his hand. The seal was Norwegian.
A ban.
Not a regulation, not a negotiation. A ban on public religious practice.
"This is an assault," the clergy snapped.
An older one tried to soften it with phrasing. "It is a political move."
Their stares burned straight through that attempt. "They are closing our holy sites with rifles."
The room did not agree out loud about a religious war cry, yet the idea still found traction, because outrage travels faster than policy.
Both parts of the tension were waiting for a spark. The first stone was thrown in November.
-
Norwegian Sea, grey water, low horizon. A fishing trawler moved slowly, heavy with nets and routine.
Below it, a Spanish submarine tracked the vessel in silence.
The captain stared at the screen until his eyes dried. He listened to a voice crackle from Madrid. The orders were clear. Test their mantle.
The trawler did not look like anything but a fishing boat.
"Wrong time, wrong place." The commander murmured.
The torpedo left the tube with a jolt that ran through the hull like a kick.
A minute later, the surface exploded.
The trawler broke like wet wood. Men hit the water. Hands reached for anything that would float.
The submarine went deep. The ocean swallowed the evidence, then spat out debris as if offended.
Madrid announced an interception of Weapons of mass destruction.
Paris announced support.
They both blamed the AAP within the hour.
The statement from Spain's defence ministry arrived with the same neat structure as the UN drafts. A justification. A warning. A promise of restraint.
It sounded like a lawyer had written it while imagining an audience of voters.
In Washington, Clinton's briefing room filled with the kind of quiet that only happens when generals have already decided they will be quoted later.
A screen showed satellite images. A red circle. A label. A timeline.
Clinton listened without interrupting. When the briefing ended, he looked at the admiral and did not bother pretending it was a question.
On the other end of the line, the Pentagon started moving pieces. A carrier group diverted north. Escorts followed. Tankers, too, because even a show of force needed fuel.
In the Kremlin, Yeltsin listened to his own advisers argue and poured himself another drink. One man wanted neutrality. Another wanted advantage. Yeltsin wanted to know who had the power to humiliate Europe in broad daylight.
In Beijing, Jiang Zemin read the cables and said nothing. His foreign minister spoke about precedent and sovereignty. The real interest sat behind the formal words, quiet and sharp.
France moved first, loudly.
The aircraft carrier Clemenceau left port with a wake like a statement. Sailors ran final checks without looking up.
The helicopter cruiser Jeanne d'Arc joined the formation, smaller, faster, a blade next to the carrier's bulk.
Spain sent frigates to flank its submarine's shadow. Portugal sent its own to avoid being left out of the photograph and the consequence.
Names rolled across radios and reports.
Santa María.
Reina Sofía.
Vasco da Gama.
Corte Real.
American hull numbers followed, cold and clinical, as if war could be made neat by cataloguing it.
A destroyer's captain read the order twice, then closed the folder and stared at the sea with the face of a man who understood how small he was.
The fleets met in the north like an argument gathering weight.
In Oslo, the AAP council did not call for negotiation.
They called for readiness.
The defence minister's office had the usual flags, the usual framed photographs, the usual polished table. The man behind the desk simply sat there waiting. Soon, a soft pop sounded, and an elf brought a small note.
Corvus listened to the report of the sinking. He listened to the threat of war. He listened to the list of ships.
Then he smiled.
He ordered to mobilise their arsenal.
On a coastal base, Wizards loaded missiles into launchers and set them facing the sea. Radar operators watched screens. The sky remained empty.
In the Nest, Corvus read the Alliance report and let it sit in his hands for a breath.
France and Spain wanted a war; the lie about weapons of mass destruction was pathetic at best. Maybe they could sell it to their own people. The Americans wanted to keep their seat at the table.
In the Norwegian Sea, steel moved toward steel.
The world held its breath, waiting to learn whether the Adriatic Arctic Pact was about to be eaten, or whether it had teeth.