The backroom of the print shop stank of ink, tobacco, and fear. Smoke hung low, curling through the lamplight like something alive. A dozen revolutionaries crowded around a rough table—planks laid over barrels, scarred with burn marks and old knife cuts. The men were gaunt, tense, eyes darting at every creak of the floorboards. This was the heart of the Tbilisi cell, and the heart was thundering itself toward collapse.
When Jake and Kamo stepped inside, the murmur of voices died instantly. Every head turned, every stare sharpened. The news of the ambush had already raced ahead of them. In these men's eyes, they weren't just comrades now. They were symbols. Survivors. Executioners. The men who had lived while Mikho was dragged screaming into the cold.
And at the far end of the table sat Comrade Orlov.
History had never captured him properly. Books mentioned his strategies, his place among the pre-revolutionaries, but none of them conveyed the magnetic weight of his presence. Orlov was tall, solid, handsome in a workingman's way. His smile looked warm, his handshake looked firm, and his voice—a deep, resonant baritone—wrapped around a room like a promise. He radiated confidence, conviction, and a dangerous kind of charisma.
Jake took one look at him and understood exactly why historical movements followed men like this into fire.
"Ah, Soso! Kamo!" Orlov stood, arms open wide, dripping camaraderie. "The heroes of the night! You gave the Tsar's dogs a taste of their own cruelty."
He clapped Kamo's shoulder, then extended a hand to Jake. Jake took it. Orlov's grip was firm. His eyes were bright and unreadable.
"Luck," Jake murmured, forcing a smile he didn't feel.
"Luck favors the bold," Orlov replied with a grin. He gestured to two empty chairs. "Sit. We have much to discuss."
Jake sat. And the game began.
Orlov commanded the room with unnerving ease. His words came polished, sharp, seamless. He spoke first of grief—of Mikho's capture, of the pain of losing a comrade. His tone thickened with sorrow, rich and heavy. Jake almost believed him. Almost.
"Comrade Mikho's courage will be remembered," Orlov said, voice warm with sincerity. "But his capture proves something terrible. The old ways are failing. We hide like vermin, and so they hunt us like vermin."
Nods circled the table. The rhythm was perfect—soft sorrow hardening into righteous anger.
"I say no more!" Orlov thundered, slamming a fist on the table. Lanterns shook, shadows trembled. "No more scurrying through alleys like rats! We are lions!"
The room sat frozen in his fire.
"It's time we show them what that means."
He leaned forward, lowering his voice to a hungry whisper. "A campaign of action. Bombings. The police headquarters on Golovin Avenue. The governor's residence. Let them choke on the fear they feed us."
The silence afterward wasn't mere silence—it was stunned, electric, dangerous. Then came scattered murmurs. Nervous. Intrigued.
Jake's stomach dropped. This wasn't strategy. It was suicide dressed as glory. The perfect trap. The type of plan the Okhrana would love. Bold enough to lure in the reckless, doomed enough to wipe out the entire cell.
Orlov watched them absorb his idea like a conductor savoring a rising crescendo.
And then he rested his gaze on Jake.
"And for such a bold new beginning," Orlov said, smiling, "we will need a man of action. A man with fire in his blood. A man who proved his courage only hours ago."
Jake felt the room tilt toward him.
"We need you, Comrade Soso."
Every eye swung to him. Kamo's hand twitched toward his holster, ready to leap into whatever Orlov wanted. Sweat rolled slow and cold down Jake's back.
If he refused, he'd be marked a coward. The cell's trust would rot away. Even Kamo—who had dragged him from the brink hours earlier—might turn on him.
If he accepted, he'd march these people straight into the Okhrana's jaws.
Orlov smiled wider. Patient. Confident. Certain the trap had closed.
Jake rose slowly. His chair scraped loud across the floor, loud enough to make several men flinch. He didn't look at Orlov. He looked at the others—faces lined with exhaustion, devotion, and paranoia. Faces belonging to men who would die if he said the wrong thing.
"Comrade Orlov is right," Jake said, voice steady.
A sigh rippled through the room. Relief. Approval. Kamo nodded once. Orlov leaned back, triumphant.
Jake let the silence stretch like a wire.
"He is right that we must stop acting like rats," Jake continued. "But he is wrong to think lions win by roaring."
A few heads turned, confused. Orlov's smile tensed.
"A bombing is loud," Jake said. "It makes noise, it flashes bright—and then it dies. The state will crush us for it. We'll lose our best people. Our bravest. We'll trade our queen and our rooks for their pawns."
He let his voice sharpen.
"That's not courage. That's stupidity dressed as sacrifice."
The word stupidity landed with the force of a hammer. In this world of ideology and pride, stupidity was the deadliest accusation.
"True boldness," Jake said, "is precision. Patience. We don't die for symbols. We win by seeing what others miss."
He swept the room with his gaze, then pointed decisively at the table.
"Ask yourselves this: how did the Okhrana know about Mikho? About the dockworkers? About the coat? About the boy? Because we are flooded with informants. They see everything we do."
The men stiffened. Some whispered curses. Some shifted nervously.
"We don't bomb a web," Jake said. "We kill the spider."
Orlov opened his mouth, but Jake cut him off, leaning in sharply, lowering his voice so the room had to lean toward him.
"Before we roar, we silence theirs. Before we strike, we blind them."
He saw the spark catch in their eyes.
"I propose a new campaign," Jake said, voice steady, deliberate. "A campaign of revolutionary counter-intelligence."
The phrase slid into the smoke like a blade. Clean. Dangerous. Strategic.
"We hunt informants," Jake continued. "Not policemen. Not civilians. The informants. The traitors. We turn the Okhrana's spies against them. We make them doubt their own shadows."
Murmurs spread again—but these murmurs carried awe.
"We make them question every whisper," Jake said. "Every face. Every friend. When the Okhrana is blind and deaf, when they no longer know which way is up—then we strike."
This silence was different from the one earlier. This one vibrated. This one obeyed.
"I'll lead it," Jake finished. Then he turned his head and met Orlov's eyes, unblinking. "If the comrades agree."
All around, heads nodded. Kamo's did too—slow, thoughtful, approving. The men leaned forward, breath held, waiting for Orlov to confirm the new direction.
But Orlov—Jake saw the truth instantly—had lost the board.
His smile was gone. His posture stiff. His jaw tight. Behind his eyes burned the fury of a man who had just been outplayed in his own room.
In two minutes, Jake hadn't just dodged the ambush.
He had taken command of the cell.
And in Orlov's stare, Jake saw something else—something terrifying, something familiar.
Recognition.
A mirror of the same cold instinct Jake had been wrestling since the moment he woke up in this body.
The same instinct that built an empire of fear.
The game hadn't ended.
It had only changed shape.