The Cheka guards were nervous. It was in the way they held their rifles, the way their eyes darted into the shadows. They were leading "Sister Anna" and her silent, hulking "porter" down a series of damp, stone staircases, and they did not like it.
The air grew colder with every step, thick with the smell of mildew, despair, and something metallic, like old blood. This was a place people were sent to be forgotten. A place beneath the old Imperial University that didn't officially exist.
Bogdan's transfer order, stamped with Zinoviev's personal seal, felt like a holy relic in this godless place. It was the only reason these guards hadn't simply put a bullet in their heads.
They reached the bottom, a single corridor lit by bare, hissing electric bulbs. The warden of this black site was waiting for them. She was a woman named Comrade Morozova, with a face like a clenched fist and eyes that were cold, dead pits.
She snatched the transfer order from Kato's hand, her eyes scanning it with open contempt. "Zinoviev's secretary is a sentimental fool," she sneered, her voice a low, gravelly thing. "This man is a Class-A threat to the state. He belongs here."
Kato gave her a gentle, beatific smile, the one that had charmed senators and broken spies. "The Party needs every mind to serve the cause, Comrade," she said softly, her voice melodic. "A man's soul can be saved, even if his past is tainted by bourgeois corruption."
Morozova's lip curled. "Save your sermons for the choir, Sister. You have one hour with the prisoner. Then he goes back in his hole. If he tries anything, my men have orders to shoot him. And you."
She gestured to a heavy, iron door at the end of the hall. "He's in there."
The guards unlocked a series of heavy bolts, the sound echoing like thunder in the confined space. The door groaned open.
The cell was a bare, concrete box. A cot. A bucket. Nothing else.
A small, frail, bird-like man with a wild, tangled beard and eyes that seemed too big for his gaunt face looked up from the cot. He blinked in the sudden light, a creature of the dark disturbed from its burrow.
It was Professor Vladimir Ipatieff. He looked more like a mad prophet from the wilderness than Russia's most brilliant chemical physicist. He hadn't seen another human face in what felt like a lifetime.
Kato stepped into the cell, Pavel a silent shadow behind her. She did not ask about his health. She did not offer him comfort.
She spoke to him, not as a nurse, but as a scientist.
"Professor," she began, her voice a calm, academic tone. "I have a question about your pre-war research. Specifically, your hypothesis on the instability of uranium isotopes under conditions of sustained neutron bombardment."
Ipatieff's dull, hopeless eyes, the eyes of a man waiting to die, suddenly flashed with a brilliant, mad fire. His head snapped up.
Someone understood. After all this time, in this hell, someone knew.
"They want my fire," he whispered, his voice a dry, unused rasp. "The fire of the sun. The fire that will burn the world."
His wild eyes flickered from Kato's serene face to the silent, hulking Pavel in the corner. "I will not give it to them. Not to the Tsar's secret police. Not to the Bolshevik butchers."
His voice grew stronger, filled with a fanatic's conviction. "I will die with it locked in my head. I will take it to my grave."
His mind was a fortress. And he had just locked the gates and thrown away the key.
Kato's compassionate, saintly mask didn't slip by a single millimeter. But her eyes went cold. Utterly cold.
She knew, with absolute certainty, that she could not persuade this man. His will was iron.
So she would have to break him.
She turned her head slightly, her gaze meeting Pavel's in the dim light.
"The orderly," she said softly, in Georgian, a language no one else here would understand. "The one at the front desk with the cruel eyes. The one who was rude to us when we entered."
Pavel's expression didn't change. He was a statue.
"Bring me his little finger," she commanded.
Pavel gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. He turned and slipped out of the cell, as silent as smoke.
Ipatieff watched, a flicker of confusion in his mad eyes. "What did you say?"
"I was just asking my porter to fetch something for us," Kato said, her smile warm and reassuring.
A few minutes later, a single, muffled scream echoed from far down the hall. It was cut short.
Pavel returned. He walked into the cell, his face as blank as ever. He held out his right hand.
Wrapped in a clean, white bandage, the kind a nurse would use, was a freshly severed human finger. A dark, wet stain was already soaking through the pristine cloth.
Pavel placed it gently on the small, bare table in the center of the cell.
Kato turned her beatific smile back to the horrified Professor. His eyes were wide, fixed on the gruesome object on the table.
"The Party thinks your knowledge is a weapon, Professor," she said, her voice still the gentle, melodic tone of Sister Anna. "They are mistaken. Your knowledge is just information."
She took a step closer to him, her shadow falling over his frail body. "I am the weapon."
She looked from the severed finger on the table to the Professor's own thin, bony hands, which were now trembling uncontrollably.
"Now," she said, her smile beautiful and terrifying and utterly inhuman. "Are you going to tell me about your work? Or shall we begin assembling a complete set?"