The launch site was a concrete scar on the Crimean coast.
Rain lashed the metal gantry. The V-2 rocket stood vertical, a white obelisk against the storm clouds.
But the nose cone was different. It wasn't pointed. It was bulbous, glass-reinforced, and terrifyingly organic.
Inside the capsule, Volkov couldn't move. He couldn't scream.
His vocal cords had been cut. "To prevent vibration interfering with the sensors," Turing had said.
Volkov was strapped into a custom-molded chair. The helmet was bolted to his skull. Wires ran from his temples directly into the flight computer.
In front of him, a periscope screen glowed green.
Target Acquisition Mode: Standby.
He was trapped in a coffin. But he wasn't dead. He was the most advanced guidance system on Earth.
"Pilot check," Turing's voice crackled in his earpiece. "Blink twice for yes."
Volkov blinked twice. Tears leaked from his eyes, mixing with the sweat and the antiseptic gel.
"Good boy," Turing said. "Launch in T-minus two minutes."
Volkov tried to struggle. But his arms were paralyzed by the chemical cocktail they had injected. Only his eyes moved. Only his brain worked.
He remembered his wife. His daughter. The smell of frying onions in their Moscow apartment.
"Forget them," a voice in his head whispered. It wasn't God. It was the drug.
Focus. Hunt. Kill.
The countdown began.
"Ten... Nine..."
The fuel pumps whined. The rocket groaned as the turbopumps spun up to speed.
"Ignition."
Fire erupted beneath him. The G-force hit him like a hammer.
He didn't black out. The drugs kept him awake. They kept him hyper-aware.
The rocket lifted. The ground fell away. The rain turned into mist.
He was flying.
For a second, the pilot in him took over. The joy of ascent. The power.
Then the radio crackled.
"Guidance control transferring to Pilot," Turing said. "Find the heat. Find the ship."
The screen flickered.
Below him, through the clouds, the Black Sea was a sheet of dark glass.
And in the center, a white speck. A heat signature burning bright red on his display.
The USS Indianapolis.
Target.
The hunger hit him. Not for food. For impact. For the end of the pain.
Volkov looked at the red dot. He banked his eyes left. The rocket banked left.
He was the missile.
"I am coming," he thought.
The Bridge of the USS Indianapolis.
Captain McVay lowered his binoculars.
"Radar contact!" the operator shouted. "Fast mover! Coming out of the clouds! Bearing zero-four-zero!"
"Plane?" McVay asked.
"Too fast, sir! Speed... Mach 3! It's falling!"
McVay looked up. He saw the white trail against the grey sky.
"Hard to starboard!" McVay screamed. "All ahead full!"
The cruiser groaned as it turned. The propellers churned the water.
But the white trail turned with them.
McVay froze. Ballistic missiles didn't turn. Physics didn't allow it.
"It's tracking us," the helmsman whispered.
The missile corrected its dive. It wasn't aiming for the water. It was aiming for the smokestack.
"Impact in five seconds!"
McVay grabbed the railing.
"Brace!"
He saw the nose cone. For a split second, he thought he saw something behind the glass porthole. A face. An eye.
Then the world turned white.
The explosion broke the ship's back.
The V-2 hit amidships, punching through the armored deck like paper. The warhead detonated in the boiler room.
The Indianapolis didn't sink. It disintegrated.
A fireball rose a thousand feet into the air. Steam, oil, and steel rained down for a mile.
Volkov didn't feel the impact. He felt a moment of pure, blinding light.
Then silence.
The pain was gone. The wires were gone. He was free.
The Kremlin. The War Room.
The radio static was deafening.
Then, a voice.
"Target destroyed. Confirmed visual from coastal observation. The ship is gone."
Silence.
No one cheered. The Generals looked at the floor. Menzhinsky lit a cigarette, his hand shaking slightly.
They knew what they had done. This wasn't war. This was assassination by science.
Jake stood up. He walked to the map of the Black Sea. He removed the blue pin marked US Navy.
"It works," Jake said. His voice was hollow.
"We just killed a thousand American sailors," Zhukov said quietly. "With a suicide pilot."
"We showed them the price of the blockade," Jake said. "We showed them that nowhere is safe."
He turned to the room.
"Prepare the press release. Claim it was a naval mine. A stray from the Great War."
"They won't believe it," Molotov said. "They saw the trail."
"I don't need them to believe it," Jake said. "I need them to fear it."
He walked out.
He needed to wash his hands. He scrubbed them in the bathroom sink until the skin was raw and red.
But the feeling of grease remained.
The White House. Night.
Hoover wasn't sitting. He was pacing like a caged tiger.
"A mine?" Hoover shouted. "They claim it was a mine?"
"Radar confirms a ballistic trajectory," Admiral Stark said. "It was a V-2. But... it maneuvered, sir. It chased the ship."
Hoover stopped.
"Guided?"
"Yes. But not by radio. We didn't detect any control signals."
Hoover looked at the photo of the burning ocean.
"Internal guidance," Hoover whispered. "Self-contained."
He remembered the reports. The medical waste. The 'recruitment' from the camps.
"My God," Hoover said. "He's putting people inside them."
The room went silent. The horror of the realization settled on them like dust.
"What do we do, Mr. President?"
Hoover looked at the phone. The direct line to the Kremlin.
He could call. He could threaten.
But threats didn't work on a madman.
"We build more," Hoover said. his voice cold. "We build thousands. And we don't use people. We use the German."
He turned to his aide.
"Get Von Braun everything he needs. Blank check. If Stalin wants a war of monsters, we will build a bigger monster."
"And the Indianapolis?"
"Bury the truth," Hoover ordered. "Tell the press it was a boiler explosion. Accident. We cannot let the public know that the Soviets can snipe our ships from space."
He sat down. He looked old.
The Cold War had just turned freezing.
The Secret City. The Laboratory.
Turing was celebrating.
He had opened a bottle of champagne. He was dancing around the empty operating table.
"It works!" Turing sang. "The interface holds! The latency is zero!"
The technicians watched him. They were terrified.
Turing stopped. He looked at the empty helmet still connected to the wires.
"But one is not enough," Turing muttered. "One is a sniper. We need a swarm."
He turned to the head nurse.
"How many candidates in the holding cells?"
"Twelve, sir."
"Not enough," Turing said. "We need hundreds. We need a shield."
He grabbed the phone.
"Get me Beria. I need access to the Gulag database. Look for pilots. Snipers. Musicians."
"Musicians, sir?"
"Dexterity!" Turing shouted. "Fine motor control! A violinist makes a perfect guidance processor!"
He laughed. A high, brittle sound.
"We are going to make the sky sing!"
Leningrad. The Dacha.
Nadya sat in the dark. The windows were boarded up. The air was stale.
She heard the news on the radio. Tragic Accident in Black Sea. US Cruiser Sinks.
She knew.
She didn't know how, or why, but she knew Jake did it. She felt the ripple in the world.
She looked at the candle burning on the table.
She had failed to escape. She had failed to signal.
But she wasn't dead.
She reached under the floorboard. She pulled out a small, sharp object.
A piece of metal she had pried from the bedframe. A shiv.
She tested the point against her thumb. It drew a drop of blood.
"You want to keep me in a box, Koba," she whispered.
She stood up. She walked to the door.
She listened to the guard's footsteps. Thump. Thump. Pause.
He stopped at her door every ten minutes.
She looked at the shiv.
It wasn't for the guard. She couldn't kill a man.
It was for the lock.
She knelt down. She inserted the metal sliver. She wiggled it.
She had been watching Taranov for years. She knew how the tumblers worked.
Click.
The lock turned.
She didn't open the door. Not yet.
She waited.
She needed a distraction.
She looked at the heavy velvet curtains. She looked at the candle.
"Fire," she whispered. "It started with fire. It ends with fire."
She took the candle. She held it to the hem of the drapes.
The fabric caught instantly. The flame licked up the wall, hungry and bright.
Smoke began to fill the room.
Nadya backed away. She covered her mouth with a wet cloth.
She waited for the alarm. She waited for the chaos.
When the guards rushed in to save the Dictator's wife, they wouldn't find a victim. They would find a ghost.
The fire alarm began to wail.
Nadya smiled.
"Come and get me."