Jake was about to begin the final phase of Pyotr's conditioning—the dry, meticulous memorization of the false confession—when the door creaked open again. It was Kamo, his usual stoic expression replaced by a look of profound unease. He looked less like a hardened revolutionary and more like a man who had just seen an actual ghost.
"Soso," Kamo began, his voice a low, hesitant rumble that was completely out of character. "Forgive the interruption. This is… not a military matter."
Jake turned, a flicker of irritation crossing his face. His focus was absolute, a finely honed instrument. He did not appreciate distractions, especially now, at the most critical juncture of his gambit. "What is it, Kamo? If the safe house is compromised, you have your orders."
"No, the house is secure," Kamo said, shifting his weight. He seemed to be struggling with how to phrase his next words. "There is… a visitor. At the main headquarters. She is asking for you."
"I am not seeing visitors," Jake snapped, his voice sharp. "No one. Is that not clear?"
"I know your orders," Kamo replied, his gaze unwavering. "But this is… different. She says her name is Kato Svanidze. She says you sent her a message. That you told her it was safe to return to Tbilisi."
The name landed in the silent, sterile room with the force of a physical detonation.
Kato.
For a moment that stretched into an eternity, Jake's mind went completely blank. The meticulously constructed world of his grand strategy—the forged soul of Pyotr Dolidze, the impending indictment of Shaumian, the invisible chess match with Stolypin—all of it dissolved into a meaningless, grey haze. The cold, brilliant architect, the man who was becoming Stalin, vanished. In his place was Jake Vance, a history teacher from the 21st century, standing in a dusty room in 1907, his heart suddenly hammering against his ribs with a force that made him feel lightheaded.
Kato. The one person in this entire, brutal timeline who represented his last connection to the man he used to be. His moral anchor. The woman whose gentle face was the only thing that could pierce the armor of his monstrous persona.
His face, which had been a mask of cold, intellectual focus, became a canvas of shock. Kamo, watching him, saw not the unreadable commander, but a man struck by lightning.
"A message?" Jake finally managed to say, his voice a rough, unfamiliar croak. "I… I sent no message."
Kamo looked down at the floor, a flicker of guilt crossing his hard features. "I… took the liberty, Soso. After your victory in London, when you consolidated power… I thought… I thought you would want her here. I thought it would be a comfort. I found a way to get a message to her village. I told her you had made the city safe and that you missed her."
Kamo had meant it as a gift. A gesture of loyalty, of a brutish man's attempt at kindness for his commander. He could not possibly have known that he had just armed a bomb and placed it in the very heart of Jake's meticulously ordered universe.
"You did what?" Jake whispered, the words barely audible.
"I will send her away," Kamo said quickly, seeing the storm in Jake's eyes.
"No," Jake said, his mind beginning to race again, trying to regain control, to process this impossible new variable. "No, stay here. Continue the drills with… with him." He gestured vaguely at Pyotr. "The list of facts. The names of Luka's contacts. Do not let anyone else in this room."
He turned and walked out, his movements stiff, robotic. The short walk from the secondary safe house to the main headquarters felt like the longest journey of his life. The cool Tbilisi air did nothing to calm the fire in his mind. One part of him, the strategist, was screaming. A variable he had not accounted for. A catastrophic emotional complication. A weakness, exposed and vulnerable at the worst possible moment.
But another part of him, the buried, starved soul of Jake Vance, was filled with a desperate, agonizing, and undeniable ache. Kato. He was going to see her again.
The main safe house was a hive of tense activity. Men were cleaning rifles, quietly debating the news of Shaumian's transfer. The air was thick with the anticipation of a battle that Jake knew would never come. They all fell silent as he entered, their eyes on him, their unquestioning leader. He ignored them, his gaze fixed on the woman standing by the window in the common room.
It was her. She was thinner than he remembered, the lines of worry around her eyes deeper. But she was there, a beacon of impossible warmth in this cold, grey world. She turned as she sensed his presence, and her face, for a moment, was illuminated with a pure, unadulterated hope that was more painful than any accusation.
"Soso," she breathed, and the name from her lips was not the call sign of a revolutionary, but a term of endearment, a piece of a life he had stolen.
She crossed the room to him, her eyes searching his face, looking for the husband she had left. "I received your message," she said, her voice a soft whisper that was only for him. "I came as soon as I could. I was so worried."
He had to say something. He had to perform. This was the most difficult acting of his life, a role for which he had no script. He could not be the cold, hard monster he had become at the other safe house; she would recoil from him, her hope shattering into a million pieces. He could not be the loving, gentle Soso she remembered; he no longer knew how to be that man. The part of him that was Jake Vance was a screaming, guilty mess.
He reached for a middle ground, for a version of himself that might be plausible. A man broken by the weight of his work.
"Kato," he said, his voice rough, hoarse with an emotion that was a cocktail of feigned surprise and terrifyingly real guilt. "You… you shouldn't have come. Kamo was mistaken. It's not safe here. The city is a tinderbox."
She didn't hear the warning. She only heard the pain in his voice. Her expression softened from hope to a deep, profound empathy. This was the man she knew—the man who carried the world on his shoulders, who let the fight consume him. She saw not a monster, but a husband drowning in darkness.
"Then let me help you," she pleaded, and she did the one thing he was not prepared for. She reached out and took his hand.
Her touch was not a comfort. It was a brand. An electric shock of sensation, of warmth, of a simple human connection that he had systematically purged from his life. It was a searing reminder of the man he used to be, of the soul he was in the process of murdering in himself. Her fingers laced with his, a small, trusting gesture that felt like a judgment.
"You don't have to carry all of this alone, Soso," she whispered, her eyes full of a love and concern he knew he did not deserve. "Whatever is happening, whatever this terrible business is… let me be here. Let me share the burden. Like before."
He looked into her eyes, and for a terrifying second, the line between Jake Vance and Joseph Stalin blurred into nothing. He was just a man, holding the hand of a woman he cared for, a woman who believed he was someone else, while in a room half a mile away, he was turning another human being into a sacrificial lamb for a cause he wasn't even sure he still believed in. He was standing on a knife's edge between two irreconcilable realities.
And as he stood there, paralyzed, a cold, reptilian part of his brain, the strategist that never slept, whispered an unbidden, terrible thought into the storm of his emotions.
Stolypin doesn't know she exists.
The thought was immediate, intrusive, and horrifying.
She is not in any of the Okhrana files on Soso. She left before my rise to power. She is a variable he cannot account for. A complete unknown.
A wave of self-loathing so powerful it made him feel sick washed over him. He was looking at the face of the one person who reminded him of his lost humanity, and his mind, his new, monstrous mind, was already assessing her strategic value. Was he so far gone that he could look at Kato and see, even for a second, just another piece on the chessboard?