The morning after was silent.
The cellar, once alive with tension and gunfire and the rush of survival, now sat still. The air was heavy and unmoving. The crate of dynamite squatted in the center of the room like something alive—its presence too loud for anyone to speak over. It wasn't a prize. It was a curse. A monument to the man who had died for it.
Pavel sat at a makeshift table, a bottle of cheap vodka in one hand, a tin cup in the other. He wasn't drinking for comfort. He was performing a ritual. Pour. Drink. Pour again. Each motion deliberate, steady, like the tolling of a bell. Dmitri's absence filled the room like smoke. The others spoke in low voices, their eyes flicking between the crate, Pavel, and Jake. They were waiting—for direction, for purpose, for someone to make sense of what they'd done.
Jake watched Pavel for a long moment. The teacher he used to be whispered that he should offer comfort. Say something human. But that part of him was fading fast. He understood what Pavel really needed wasn't sympathy. It was purpose.
He walked over and sat opposite him. Neither spoke. After a moment, Pavel poured himself another shot, then slid the bottle across the table. It was a test.
Jake poured his own and met Pavel's one good eye. "He didn't die for nothing," he said quietly. His voice was steady, stripped of softness. "He bought us the greatest weapon we've ever had." He nodded toward the crate. "With that, we can hold the whole city hostage. And the men who made this happen—the ones who sent us into that trap—they'll pay. I'll make sure of it."
He raised his glass. "To Dmitri."
Pavel stared at him for a long moment. What he saw wasn't pity. It was focus. Cold and useful. Something that promised vengeance. Slowly, he lifted his own cup. "To Dmitri."
They drank. The bond between them, cracked by loss, was reforged through anger.
When the bottle was empty, Jake turned to his next task—the most dangerous one. He cleared a space on a crate, laid out a few sheets of coarse paper, and picked up his pen. He had to write his report to Roman Malinovsky. A letter to the traitor. A lie for the master of lies.
He sat for a long time, staring at the blank page. This wasn't simple deception. It was chess. He had to explain the destruction, the arrests, the fire—everything—without revealing that he knew what the Okhrana was truly doing.
He asked himself the question that mattered most: What does a traitor want to hear?
Not perfection. A perfect success looks suspicious. A near-disaster feels real. It flatters their intelligence. It makes them think they're still in control.
So that's the story he wrote.
He described chaos. He said the Mensheviks had panicked, already destroying their own materials when his men arrived. That the fire was their doing—a desperate act to burn evidence before capture. His men had fought through the flames, recovering what little survived. A handful of pamphlets. A few half-burnt lists. Enough to prove victory, but not enough to seem convenient.
And the crate. The most dangerous lie of all.
He couldn't pretend it didn't exist. He had to make it vanish in plain sight. So he wrote that there was no crate. That it had been a rumor—bad intelligence. A whisper planted by a rival faction within the Mensheviks, meant to mislead the Party or test loyalty inside their own ranks.
It was perfect. Not just denial, but misdirection. He wasn't only hiding the truth—he was feeding them a poison of his own, one that would rot their trust from within. Let them start doubting their own sources. Let them turn on each other.
He wrote fast, the words flowing with cold precision. The page filled with lies so tight and consistent they felt like truth.
Kamo watched from the corner, silent. He didn't understand every twist of the deception, but he understood what he was seeing. The man who had once preached about revolution and morality was gone. What sat at that table was something else—something sharper. A craftsman of falsehoods, forging reality with ink and nerve.
"You write lies as easily as other men breathe," Kamo said quietly. His voice was rough, mournful.
Jake didn't look up. His pen kept moving. "The air is poisoned, Kamo," he said evenly. "Sometimes you have to learn to breathe poison to survive."
Kamo said nothing. The logic was too clean, too cold. He turned and walked away, each heavy step echoing through the cellar. The space between them had become something permanent.
Jake finished the report. He read it once, a faint smile flickering at the corner of his mouth. It was perfect—believable, protective, and lethal in the right hands. He folded the pages, dripped wax onto the seal, and pressed it closed with a button from his coat.
"Misha," he said. "The new drop point. You know the route. You'll see no one. You'll be seen by no one. Go."
Misha nodded, took the sealed report, and slipped out into the morning fog.
Jake stood alone. The cellar was quiet again, the air heavy with smoke and the faint scent of burned ink. Kamo's words still echoed in his mind.
He had lied to the devil and lived. He had twisted poison into power. And the worst part was how good it felt.
Now, all he could do was wait for the devil's reply.