The wine cellar had been transformed. Where once a single terrified informant had shivered in the darkness, there now stood a testament to their victory. The damp, earthy smell of the cellar was now overpowered by the sharp, clean scent of gun oil and cordite. Crates of brand-new Mauser C96 pistols, their elegant wooden stocks gleaming in the lantern light, were stacked shoulder-high against one wall. Heavy boxes of dynamite were piled neatly in a corner, a silent, sleeping dragon of immense power.
The Bolsheviks of Tbilisi had, overnight, gone from a hunted sect of radicals with a handful of aging revolvers to a formidable paramilitary force. They had been on the brink of annihilation, and now they were stronger than they had ever been. It was a miracle. And it was all thanks to the man who stood in the center of the room.
Jake looked at the arsenal he had secured, but he felt no triumph. He felt only the crushing, leaden weight of his own actions. Each pistol was a reminder of the public execution. Each stick of dynamite was a symbol of the man he had sacrificed. This was the price of power, paid for in blood and lies.
Kamo and the others, however, felt no such conflict. They looked at Jake with an expression of pure, unadulterated reverence. He was more than a leader now. He was a savior, the man who had stared into the abyss and wrestled a future from its jaws.
"Soso," Kamo said, his voice thick with emotion as he placed a heavy hand on Jake's shoulder. "What you did… no one else could have done it. You saved us all."
Jake simply nodded, his face an unreadable mask.
A figure detached itself from the shadows by the cellar door. It was Stepan Shaumian. The intellectual had seen the raw, bloody birth of Jake's new authority, and he had given it his blessing. Now, he was here to formalize it.
"Soso," Shaumian said, his voice grave, his eyes scanning the incredible cache of weapons. "What you have done is a miracle. A brutal one, but a miracle nonetheless." He sighed, his gaze finally settling on Jake. "But the threat remains. Orlov is gone, but the head of the snake is still out there. Yagoda. We have traitors in our midst. The problem has not been solved; it has only been exposed."
Jake knew what was coming. He could see the inexorable logic of the path he had chosen, the next necessary, terrible step.
"The party is vulnerable," Shaumian continued, his voice taking on a formal, determined tone. "It is a body without a shield. It needs an organ dedicated to its protection. A committee focused solely on security, on enemies within. An iron fist to guard the revolution's heart. It must be a body that answers directly to the Central Committee, and it must be granted the authority to act swiftly and without sentiment."
He paused, his intelligent eyes boring into Jake's. "And such a body needs a man of iron will to lead it. A man who understands the nature of the enemy. A man who is not afraid of the dark work that must be done."
This was it. The offer. The crown of thorns. He was being asked to create the very instrument of terror he had come here to prevent. The Cheka. The secret police. The organ that would, in his original timeline, grow into the monstrous NKVD and KGB, the engine of the Great Purge.
The old Jake Vance, the gentle history teacher from 2025, screamed in the silent recesses of his soul. He wanted to refuse, to turn his back on this monstrous anointing, to declare that this was not the way.
But the man standing in the arsenal was not Jake Vance anymore. The man who had stared down Orlov, who had sacrificed Fikus, who had directed a false-flag operation and mentally dismantled an assassin, saw the cold, unassailable logic of Shaumian's proposal. To refuse now would be to leave the party vulnerable. To refuse would be to leave himself vulnerable. Yagoda was out there. He had made a powerful, brilliant, and utterly ruthless enemy. To survive, to continue his mission to avert the greater calamities to come, he needed to control the instruments of power. He had to become the monster to slay the other monsters.
He looked at Shaumian, his expression unreadable, his eyes as cold and empty as the cellar itself.
"I accept," Jake said. His voice was flat, devoid of emotion. It was the sound of a man signing his own soul away.
Later that night, exhausted beyond measure but unable to sleep, he walked through the quiet streets. He felt a desperate, clawing need to see her, to connect with the last remaining piece of his old self, the moral anchor in his storm-tossed life. He needed to see Kato.
He found her in their old apartment, the one he had not dared to return to. The room was mostly bare. She was packing a small, worn leather bag.
She looked up when he entered. There was no fear in her eyes anymore, no anger. Only a profound and bottomless sorrow. A pity that was more painful than any accusation.
"I am leaving, Soso," she said, her voice quiet, steady. She did not stop folding a small woolen shawl.
The words struck him with a force that buckled his knees. "Leaving? Where are you going?"
"To my family. In the countryside," she replied. "It will be safer there."
"Safer?" he asked, a note of desperation creeping into his voice. "I can protect you now, Kato. I have power. No one would dare harm you."
She finally stopped packing and looked at him, truly looked at him. "I know," she said softly. "I am not afraid of them anymore, Soso. I am afraid of you."
The confession was a whisper, but it shattered the remaining fragments of his heart.
"The man I married is gone," she said, her voice breaking for the first time. "He was a poet. He was gentle, even when he tried to be hard. I don't know who you are anymore. You look like him, but your eyes… your eyes are like the cellar downstairs. They are cold and empty. I cannot live with a ghost."
She closed her bag, the click of the latch a sound of finality. She picked it up and walked toward the door, not looking at him.
"Wait," Jake said, the word a raw, ragged crack in his iron composure. The carefully constructed walls of Soso, of Stalin, crumbled. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, the terrified, heartbroken Jake Vance from 2025 broke through the surface. "Kato, please. Don't go."
He reached for her, his hand outstretched, a desperate, pleading gesture.
She flinched.
It was a small, almost imperceptible movement, an involuntary recoiling from his touch. But it was more devastating than any slap, more final than any gunshot. It was a physical rejection of the man he had become.
Her eyes filled with tears, but she did not let them fall. "Goodbye, Soso," she whispered.
And then she walked out the door, leaving him completely and utterly alone in the empty room. He was the newly crowned king of the Tbilisi revolution, the head of its security, the master of its arsenal. And he had just lost the one thing that made any of it matter. He had just lost his soul.
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