Victorino had begun, little by little, to make himself heard once more in the political arena. The RIU party had opened its doors to him without reservation, and, almost without noticing, the figure of Rivas Hidalgo was starting to be overshadowed by his presence once again. Old frictions between the two reappeared like embers fanned by the wind. Harrington attempted—unsuccessfully—to exploit that rivalry, confident that the tension between the two leaders would be enough to fracture the party. But for the first time, Rivas did not let himself be dragged down by his opponent's maneuvers: he maintained his calm and avoided falling into the trap.
Meanwhile, Erick had begun to adopt the strategy Fausto had used since his beginnings: walking among the people. Campaigning in the streets, touring the country and the seven republics, letting the people see him, touch him, listen to him. Erick Victorino, that politician who had always campaigned from the capital, now found himself moving through the humblest corners and the most forgotten neighborhoods. The radios repeated the chronicles of his tours every day, and Fausto—listening from a distance—could not help but feel genuinely happy for him. It was true: Victorino had known how to take advantage of the assassination attempt, and his popularity was resurging with force.
On the other hand, Karen continued to exercise the presidency following a tight election in which the RIU nearly lost its majority. Various corruption scandals in multiple provinces had put the party on the ropes. Forced to face the music, she made a decision many considered reckless: she refused to protect or endorse the implicated officials. She publicly declared that those sectors of the party were not part of her government, regardless of the consequences. It was a devastating blow: overnight, the RIU’s structure in those provinces collapsed. The JW and UL parties gained ground rapidly.
Many historians would later view that decision as a grave political blunder: a gesture of integrity that ended up severing the RIU’s own power. However, Karen got lucky. Fausto’s political influence remained enormous, and his backing partially mitigated the damage. Even so, the party, as a unit, began to wobble. And Harrington, with the patience of a political predator, took no time to notice the crack… and to take advantage of it.
Harrington did not take long to detect the fragility. He understood that the RIU, despite still holding the presidency, was wounded. And a wounded party always left trails. He then began a silent, almost surgical campaign: he toured independent media, leaked reports, sowed doubts. He invented nothing; he simply exaggerated or gave half-truths about what was already happening. He repeated that "if a government cannot control its own party, it cannot control a country." The polls began to reflect it clearly: the perception of weakness was growing in some sectors of the Seven Republics; it wasn't overwhelming, but neither was it insignificant.
The tension in the presidential palace became almost physical. Karen barely slept. As president, she could not allow the opposition to portray her as an isolated leader or incapable of containing her own people. But as a woman who had clung to power through integrity, she could not afford to backtrack on what she had said. She could not rehabilitate the corrupt without destroying her own legitimacy.
So she made an even bolder decision: reorganize the RIU from within.
She summoned the younger leaders, those less committed to the old structures. She offered them something the party had never given: a real voice. She placed them in minor ministries, invited them to councils, allowed them to speak in her name. It was a risk, but also a gamble: to renew the party's image without destroying it.
"Either we adapt, or we disappear," she told her closest team one night, her eyes red from exhaustion. "Power is not maintained by inertia. It is sustained by decision."
Meanwhile, Harrington redoubled his offensive. If the RIU showed itself in reconstruction, he described it as decomposition. If Karen appeared speaking with young leaders, he sold it as desperation. Every move by the president was reinterpreted as a symptom of institutional disease. The country became a narrative battlefield.
But Karen had an ace up her sleeve: Fausto.
Although he was distant from the political front line, his figure remained an almost mythical symbol. Unions answered to him, civil organizations respected him, and his interventions—few, but accurate—still moved the scales. Karen understood that as long as Fausto backed her, Harrington could not devour the RIU so easily.
So she called him. One night.
"I need you to appear in public," she told him, point-blank. "Even if only once. Let people see that we remain a unit."
"What nonsense are you saying?" he said. "We are united."
Fausto’s appearance was brief, almost symbolic: a short, austere speech, without adornments. But it was enough. The headlines the next day spoke of "unity," "continuity," "internal strength."
"Many times we will face messy situations. Let us not allow politics to get dirty, but let us not let that dirt pass by when it appears either. Because what happens once, happens again. And if we let it pass, we will normalize it. A point will come when, as citizens, we won't care what a politician does or doesn't do. And then... then the politician will let go of the people's hand, fearing nothing. Prove to the country that the power is yours. Do not allow any political disappointment to distance you from it. Because if you fall and do not get up, those who pushed you will end up walking over you."
The RIU’s popularity stopped falling. It didn't rise, but it stopped bleeding.
Karen, for her part, knew she hadn't won a definitive battle. She had only bought time. Weeks, perhaps months. However, she understood better than anyone that, in politics, a breather could turn into an opportunity.
And so it was.
Taking advantage of that precarious stability, Victorino began to grow faster than expected. He started gaining strength among the bases and, above all, among the citizens of those affected provinces, mainly because he had left politics, but when he left, the whole world saw his humble home—something many did not forget, and what was worse for Harrington, they remembered Victorino.
His campaign in the streets, his presence in the most forgotten provinces, and his unexpected closeness to the people made his name become increasingly common in daily conversations.
And there lay Harrington's mistake.
He had focused so much on making the party bleed—on weakening the RIU as a structure, on wearing down Karen, on ridiculing her decisions—that he overlooked the most dangerous factor for him: Erick Victorino.
He didn't attack him, didn't discredit him, didn't even observe him. In his obsession to bleed the RIU from the inside, he forgot that a party does not die as long as a strong figure retains the loyalty of the people.
Erick was that figure. Just as Fausto was before him.
While Harrington eroded the RIU, Victorino remained clean, intact, almost by accident. And in a climate of generalized mistrust, any leader who wasn't stained ended up shining. Victorino grew not because Harrington underestimated him, but because he didn't even consider him an immediate threat. He saw him as a veteran politician in decline, without a chance, not as a rising danger.
Thus, when the country began looking for a trustworthy face amidst institutional wear, it found Erick.
Karen continued governing, accelerating the pace every day. Several months had passed since the attempt against Victorino, and the country was entering the new year 4783. The president had three years left in her term and, aware that time was limited, she poured herself into strengthening two pillars that needed reinforcing: public health and education.
At the same time, Harrington, who had spent weeks criticizing every move of the government, was unexpectedly silenced when a 31% increase in the budget for the walls was announced, compared to the 15% that had been cut from them. Maintenance tasks, which were already constant, became an absolute priority. There was no way to publicly oppose that without looking irresponsible before the citizenry. Something Harrington advocated to the four winds.
Despite her reservations, Karen also acceded to an insistent request from Rivas Hidalgo: a law allowing the armed forces to patrol atop the walls. The norm included an ambitious project to build elevated paths and turrets for exterior surveillance. For the military, that was a blessing. Not only did it give them back an active role in national security, but it offered them a way to clean the stain they had dragged since the failed coup attempt years ago. While not everyone had participated, they had been marked as traitors by the political sector and viewed with very bad eyes by part of society.
The JW party, seeing the popularity of the measure in conservative sectors, had to bite its tongue. Harrington even publicly thanked the gesture, though in private he boiled with frustration: that prominence was what he aspired to hold.
The works began immediately. When the first stage was ready, Karen inaugurated it by placing a statue of Foster at the entrance of the new surveillance path. It was a reminder of harder times, but also a signal of historical continuity. The military celebrated it.
In barely two months, the first tower was raised, an imposing structure that allowed one to see both worlds clearly: the protected interior and the savage exterior. Karen climbed to the top surrounded by journalists and ministers. Later she would recount, like many others present, how the view left her breathless: dense forests, almost motionless, ruins of ancient cities, remains of vehicles, buildings devoured by vegetation... and, barely visible, some wandering infected. The contrast between the order of the interior and the wasteland surrounding them was brutal.
The tower was christened Central Foster.
But public works were not her only legacy. Karen drove an unprecedented educational revolution. Her obsession with knowledge became state policy. History would remember her as the "Mother of the Classroom," a deserved nickname.
During her mandate, she built more than two thousand four hundred new schools, rebuilt another six thousand, and modernized rural education to levels that previously seemed impossible. She created seventeen public universities, expanded thirty-two campuses, and founded one hundred and eighty-nine technical institutes that completely transformed professional training. The republics went from depending on foreign specialists, mostly from the capital to the other republics, to beginning to export their own professionals.
And the most revolutionary thing of all: education was totally free.
At an inauguration, Karen said:
"Every tool we hand over today will allow the people of this society to become respected citizens and pillars of this nation tomorrow."
Meanwhile, Fausto toured the towns, inaugurating schools on behalf of the government. His presence, though discreet, strengthened the perception of unity within the RIU.
The opponents, however, were quick to fire unfortunate comments. Mauricio Fuentes, a member of the JW, launched a phrase that went viral for the worst reasons:
"The government wastes useless resources raising public institutions. One walks two blocks and finds two universities, here and there. No child born inside or outside the capital will ever set foot in those universities."
The words resonated forcefully in urban centers. Harrington kept silent, but in private he was furious: Fuentes had put the JW in a dangerous place. In pre-election times, no party could afford to be seen as an enemy of education.
Because that was exactly what happened.
The RIU, previously weakened, began to be perceived as the defender of knowledge, the party investing in children's future. The JW, on the other hand, became associated with ignorance, elitism, and, worse still, stagnation.
Rivas Hidalgo was the first to realize the political potential of that narrative. And he exploited it without mercy. For months, he went out to the streets, to the radios, to any space that offered him a microphone, repeating the same message: public education was the country's shield, and the JW wanted to destroy it.
For him, it was also an opportunity to recover part of the prominence Victorino was snatching from him.
Harrington, meanwhile, seethed. He couldn't allow a mediocre military man, without charisma and politically clumsy, to walk all over him. But neither could he contradict him without sowing doubts about his own party's commitment to education.
He went out to the street with the studied theatricality of those who understand that a gesture, well placed, weighs as much as a phrase. In Gálvez, he appeared with a borrowed backpack and a worn cap, as if he had returned to his own school days, because Rivas was privileged. He sat in the courtyard of a rural school and asked to see the most restless students. He asked them about their favorite subjects, about the teachers they remembered fondly; he let a little girl interrupt him to read him a newly written poem. Journalists surrounded him like insects attracted to light. In the nightly montage, the shot of Rivas listening to her, jaw tense, gaze moist, transformed into a postcard repeated on radios.
"Who can say this doesn't deserve defense?" proclaimed a triumphant headline.
In the radio studios, his strategy was precise as a hammer blow. He repeated brief, catchy slogans, impossible to rebut without looking bad.
"Public education is the country's shield," he said. "Look at those little schools that today have electricity thanks to the president; look at those kids studying medicine in the neighboring republic because they can finally access a university. Who proposes closing them? The JW?"
Every verbal slip by his adversary became, in Rivas's hands, a micro-story that traveled through networks and infiltrated community radios.
He also worked the images. Improvised inaugurations, posed photos in newly painted classrooms, emotional mothers talking about uniforms they no longer had to finance. He sought interviews with teachers, signed agreements with unions, and, in a calculated move, agreed to help paint a wall at a school in the periphery. A photographer captured the moment: hands stained with paint, Rivas with sleeves rolled up, laughter. An opposition showing itself critical of education was portrayed as blind—or worse, cruel.
And for him, all this was something more than strategy: it was his road back to prominence. Audiences that previously changed the channel upon hearing his name now followed him with attention. In cafes and workshops, his figure was mentioned alongside Karen's as defenders of the classroom. His image was wearing down, Victorino noted he had a rival for the spot, and, most decisively, he had managed to capture the moderate electorate: parents worried about the future, weary teachers, and young professionals seeking to ascend.
Act after act, Rivas stole light from Victorino’s charisma and placed himself, almost without permission, in the center of the national stage.
Meanwhile, Harrington seethed. Not out of caprice: out of calculation. It pained him to see a military man, and not just anyone, but a stubborn, decorated one reluctant to political subtleties, occupy the space he considered his own. Worse still, Rivas's narrative turned any harsh criticism from the JW toxic: attacking education was no longer just unpopular, it was morally suspicious. Harrington understood that a direct hit would be read as an attack on teachers or a mockery of a neighborhood child's dreams.
That straitjacket made him irritable. In private, he shuffled options: presenting a more efficient educational proposal; leaking reports of mismanagement in works like Central Foster; sowing doubts about scholarships, their administration, or their real efficacy. He even considered ridiculing Rivas's theatricality with a campaign showing logistical errors, delays, repeated speeches, inflated figures. But it was a knife game. If something failed, the public opinion would charge the cost to the JW, not Rivas.
He opted then for tangential tactics, equally corrosive. He ordered columns on "budgetary sustainability" and "structural priorities"; commissioned technical analyses warning about the unviability of certain long-term programs; pressured editors to position articles that "contextualized" the massive investment in education.
Precise, cold blows, wrapped in prudence.
But blows nonetheless.
Even so, none had the symbolic power of that girl reading her poem. People didn't remember graphs: they remembered held-back tears.
Harrington knew it, and the sensation of being besieged suffocated him. Every aggressive proposal against Rivas was vetoed by himself with the same phrase, almost a mantra:
"We cannot be the party against the school."
The result was inevitable: Rivas gained moral and visual ground; Harrington, astute but fearful, lost initiative. And while the RIU gathered the prestige of the educational discourse, the JW bled out between the urgency of stopping the rival and the fear of destroying its own image in the attempt.
Victorino began to admit—even if only to himself and grudgingly—that Rivas was not entirely useless. That masterstroke, as unexpected as it was effective, forced him to even applaud it. He didn't say it aloud, but his gesture spoke for him. Rivas was demonstrating that, when he wanted to, he could shine.
Meanwhile, what was Fausto doing?
In appearance, very little. After some scattered meetings and a handful of speeches in smaller cities, he had opted to retreat. Now he spent most of the time inside the Government House, moving through the hallways in silence, taking care of his two-year-old daughter as if the political world had stopped claiming him. He only spoke in public if his wife was by his side; otherwise, he ceded the space to Victorino or Rivas, who campaigned each on their own, almost as if he no longer formed part of the scenario.
A senator told an anecdote that, over the years, became a colorful legend within the party. He said he had gone to the Government House to meet with the president and discuss public funds. Upon entering the private office, he found neither solemnity nor guards nor advisors, but Joaquín Gabriel Fernández Fausto, the most unpredictable caudillo of the republic. The Firstborn of the Republic. Crawling on the floor, with his daughter mounted on his back as if he were a horse.
The strange thing was not the scene itself, but the naturalness with which Fausto sustained it. Without stopping the game, without even standing up, he pointed a finger down the hallway where the president was and kept advancing on all fours, murmuring soft whinnies to make the girl laugh.
"I understood it instantly," the senator would write in his memoirs years later.
"...I have seen leaders delight in obscene luxuries; I have seen leaders strive to be the most cultured, the most elegant, the most unreachable. But in Joaquín Gabriel Fernández Fausto, I saw something I had almost forgotten existed in politics: a father. A man with no shame whatsoever in showing tenderness. As a father of two girls, I understood his attitude perfectly. And I respected it."
Fausto continued to surprise, and disconcert, everyone who crossed paths with him, whether by design or simple spontaneity. He was not the caudillo many expected, but perhaps, precisely because of that, he remained impossible to ignore.
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and then Add to home screen.