Jake stared at the soot mark in the vent.
ALIVE.
The letters were crude. Written with a trembling finger.
"Nadya," he whispered.
He reached in. The soot was dry. Old.
"Boss?" Taranov appeared at the nursery door, gun drawn. "What is it?"
"She was here," Jake said. He stood up, wiping the black dust on his pants. "Before she escaped. She crawled through this duct."
"We know that, Boss. She went to the garage."
"No," Jake said. He pointed to the mark. "This is fresh. Or it looks fresh."
Taranov peered into the shaft. He rubbed the mark. It smudged.
"It's dry, Boss. It could have been there for weeks. From the night of the fire."
Jake grabbed Taranov's collar.
"Are you sure?" Jake hissed. "Did you check the ducts? Every inch?"
"We flushed them with tear gas," Taranov said calmly. "If she was in there, she would have come out coughing. Or died."
Jake released him. He looked at Yuri, who was sleeping fitfully.
"She's dead," Jake said, forcing himself to believe it. "She froze in the woods. This is just... a ghost."
He turned away from the vent.
"Seal it," Jake ordered. "Weld it shut. I don't want rats. I don't want drafts. And I don't want messages from the dead."
The Secret City. The Guidance Lab.
Turing was working on a new prototype.
It wasn't a sphere. It was a flat, rectangular box.
"Project V-1 Countermeasure," Turing muttered.
He was dissecting a bat. A live one.
The creature screeched as he pinned its wings.
"Echolocation," Turing explained to his horrified assistant. "The Americans are building dumb bombs. No heat signature. No radio. But they have mass. They displace air."
He pointed to the bat's ear.
"This is the radar. Organic sonar. It sees sound."
"You want to put bat ears on a missile?"
"I want to put bat brains in the interceptors," Turing corrected. "A shield that hunts by screaming."
He picked up a scalpel.
"The Swarm needs ears."
The Border. Poland.
The German artillery barrage was relentless.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Shells pounded the empty fields where the biological mines waited.
Hitler wasn't risking tanks anymore. He was using brute force. High explosives to churn the earth, to detonate the mines before his troops stepped on them.
In a deep bunker, a Soviet "Sleeper" unit woke up.
It wasn't a mine. It was a listening post.
Unit 734. Formerly a piano tuner named Alexei.
He was encased in a steel drum, buried ten meters down. His ears were wired to geophones.
He heard the shells. He felt the vibrations.
He didn't feel fear. His frontal lobe was gone. He only felt data.
Pattern recognized: 150mm Howitzer. Distance: 4 kilometers. Azimuth: 270.
The impulse traveled from his auditory cortex to the transmitter.
A signal shot up the wire to the rear echelon.
The Soviet Rear. Artillery Command.
The printer chattered.
Coordinates received. Fire mission.
The commander looked at the paper.
"Counter-battery fire," he shouted. "Load the gas!"
The crews rushed to the heavy guns. They didn't load high explosives. They loaded shells marked with a green stripe.
Chlorine.
"Fire!"
The guns roared.
The German Lines.
Hans, the replacement commander, watched the bombardment.
"We are clearing a path," he said confidently. "The mines are popping like corn."
Then he heard the whistle. Incoming.
"Cover!"
The shells landed. They didn't explode with a crack. They popped with a dull thud.
Yellow clouds hissed out.
"Gas!" Hans screamed. "Masks!"
He fumbled for his canister. His fingers were clumsy with cold.
He got the mask on. He breathed heavy, filtered air.
But the men in the trench weren't so lucky.
Screams filled the air. Men clawed at their throats. They foamed at the mouth.
Hans watched them die. He watched their lungs turn to liquid.
"Monsters," he wept into his mask.
But then, the yellow cloud shifted. The wind changed.
It drifted back toward the Soviet lines.
The Kremlin.
Menzhinsky entered without knocking.
"The wind turned," he said grimly. "The gas is hitting our forward positions."
Jake didn't look up from his desk.
"Do they have masks?"
"The officers do. The conscripts... no."
Jake closed his eyes.
"Acceptable losses," Jake said.
"They are dying by the thousands, Comrade. Our own men."
"They are stopping the Germans," Jake said. "If the Germans break through, millions die."
He picked up a pen.
"Order the reserve divisions to move up. Through the gas."
"Sir?"
"If they run fast enough, they might make it," Jake said. "If they stop, they die. It's motivation."
Menzhinsky looked at him with horror.
"You are executing the army to save the army."
"I am winning the war," Jake snapped. "Get out."
Menzhinsky left.
Jake looked at his hands. They were clean.
But he felt the grease. The blood.
He opened the drawer. He took out the bottle of pills Turing had given him.
Pervitin. Amphetamines.
"To keep the mind sharp," Turing had said.
Jake popped two pills. He swallowed them dry.
The fatigue vanished. The guilt vanished.
Only the clarity remained. The cold, crystal logic of survival.
Washington D.C. The War Department.
Hoover looked at the aerial photos of the gas attack.
"He's using WWI tactics," Hoover said. "Desperation."
"It's effective," General Groves said. "The German advance has stalled again."
"Good," Hoover said. "Let them kill each other in the mud."
He turned to the scientist standing in the corner.
"Dr. Oppenheimer. Is it ready?"
Oppenheimer looked like a ghost. Thin. Haunted.
"The Gadget is ready," Oppenheimer whispered. "The Trinity test confirmed the yield. 20 kilotons."
"And the delivery?"
"Von Braun has the V-1 cruise missiles ready," Groves said. "But the payload... the bomb is too heavy for a V-1."
"Then make it lighter," Hoover said.
"We can't," Oppenheimer said. "Physics has limits."
Hoover stared at them.
"Then we don't use a missile," Hoover said. "We use a truck."
"A truck?"
"Smuggle it in," Hoover said. "Through Turkey. Through the porous border. Drive it right into the oil fields of Baku."
"If we detonate a nuke in the oil fields..."
"We cut off Stalin's fuel," Hoover smiled. "His tanks stop. His planes stop. His economy dies."
"And the civilians?" Oppenheimer asked.
"Collateral damage," Hoover said. "War is hell, Doctor. Try not to get burned."
The Secret City. The "Zoo".
It wasn't a zoo for animals. It was a barracks for the "Specials."
The children recruited from Leningrad. The ones with sharp eyes.
They sat in a classroom. But instead of books, they had flight simulators.
Turing walked among them.
"Faster, Sasha," Turing scolded the boy from the Metro. "You are drifting."
Sasha gripped the joystick. He was sweating.
On the screen, a digital crosshair tracked a moving dot.
"I'm tired," Sasha said.
"Tired is dead," Turing said. "Do you want to go back to the cold?"
"No."
"Then fly."
Turing watched the boy's hands. Perfect coordination.
He didn't need to cut Sasha's brain out. Not yet.
The interface helmet sat on the desk.
"Soon," Turing whispered. "We will plug you in directly. No joystick. Just thought."
Sasha looked at the helmet. It looked like a crown of thorns made of copper.
"Will it hurt?" Sasha asked.
"Only for a second," Turing lied. "Then you will be a superhero."
Sasha smiled. He wanted to be a hero.
Turing patted his head.
He was grooming a generation of kamikazes.
The Kremlin. Night.
The Pervitin was wearing off. The crash was coming.
Jake sat in the dark.
He heard the scratching again.
Scratch. Scratch.
He threw his glass at the wall. It shattered.
"Shut up!" Jake screamed.
The scratching stopped.
Then, a voice. Faint. Metallic. Coming from the vent he had ordered sealed.
"Koba..."
It wasn't Nadya. It was a recording? A hallucination?
"Koba... the ice is cold..."
Jake ran to the vent. He tore the new welding apart with his bare hands, ignoring the burns.
"Nadya?"
He put his ear to the duct.
Silence.
Then, laughter. Yuri's laughter.
But Yuri was asleep in the next room.
"Who is doing this?" Jake shouted. "Menzhinsky! Is this you?"
No answer.
He realized then.
It wasn't Menzhinsky. It wasn't Nadya.
It was his mind.
The isolation. The drugs. The guilt.
He was cracking.
He sat on the floor, cradling his burnt hands.
He needed a victory. A final one. To end the noise.
He looked at the map. At Berlin. At Washington.
"One strike," Jake whispered. "Decapitation."
If he killed the leaders, the war would stop.
He picked up the red phone.
"Turing."
"Yes, Boss?"
"The deep sleepers," Jake said. "The ones in the US. The ones in Germany."
"The biological agents?"
"Wake them up," Jake said. "Tonight."
"Sir, they are unstable. If we activate them, they have hours to live before organ failure."
"That's enough time," Jake said.
"Target?"
"Hoover," Jake said. "And Hitler."
"Simultaneously?"
"Yes," Jake said. "Two bullets. Two monsters. And then peace."
"It shall be done."
Jake hung up.
He leaned back against the wall.
He closed his eyes.
"I'm coming, Nadya," he whispered. "I'm going to finish it. And then I'll find you in the snow."
The scratching started again. Louder this time.
But Jake didn't scream. He just listened.
It sounded like applause.