The cold bit into his face like a blade. For a heartbeat, Jake was ready to leap—ready to trade this nightmare for silence. One motion, and the horror would end.
Then the door exploded.
Wood cracked. The noise was brutal, alive. Jake flinched hard, losing his balance on the sill.
A man burst through the doorway—a bear of a figure with a wild beard and eyes that burned with panic. Snow clung to his coat. His breath steamed in the air. The smell of cold, sweat, and smoke rushed in with him.
"Soso!" he shouted in Russian, his voice a storm. "By the devil, what are you doing? Dreaming by the window? Get down!"
Jake froze, stunned. The word hit him like a slap. Soso. The nickname. His brain scrambled to connect the dots—grainy textbook photos, half-remembered notes.
Simon Ter-Petrosian. Kamo. Stalin's old comrade. Revolutionary. Bank robber. Maniac with dynamite.
Kamo didn't see a man trying to end his life. He saw a comrade wasting precious seconds. He crossed the room in three strides, grabbed Jake by the back of his shirt, and yanked him from the window with frightening strength.
Jake stumbled, hitting the floor hard. His grand moral plan shattered instantly.
"The Okhrana!" Kamo bellowed. His breath smelled of garlic and fear. "They're on the street! They took Mikho!"
Okhrana. The Tsar's secret police. Jake felt his stomach turn. He knew the name from history lectures—torture cells, exile camps, Siberian snow.
He tried to respond, but the words caught in his throat. His Russian was too clean, too slow. Kamo's speech was a blur of slang and fury.
"M-Mikho?" he managed.
"Yes, Mikho!" Kamo shook him again, wild with frustration. "They dragged him into the street not ten minutes ago! We have to move!"
Jake's body trembled—but not entirely from fear. Something deep inside him, something not his, stirred. A sharp, cold anger rose from the bones of the man he inhabited. His muscles coiled, ready to strike back, to assert control. For one terrifying moment, he wanted to hit Kamo.
He caught his own hand mid-motion, forcing the trembling fingers open. Sweat ran cold down his spine. He wasn't alone in this body. He was fighting something inside it—something violent, something used to power.
"What... was he carrying?" he asked, his voice tight, dragging reason back like a lifeline.
Kamo froze for a moment. Suspicion flickered in his eyes. "What was he carrying?" he repeated, quieter now, dangerous. "He was carrying everything."
Jake's breath caught. "Everything?"
"The lists. Our names. The dockworkers helping us. And worse." Kamo stepped closer. "The location of the new press. The one we spent months hiding. If they break him, it's over. All of us. You know what they'll do to him in the citadel, Soso. They'll peel him like an onion until there's nothing left."
Jake's chest tightened. The abstract horror of Stalin's legacy vanished beneath something smaller, sharper, real. This wasn't a lecture anymore. Dozens of people—living, breathing—were about to die because of what he did or didn't do in the next few minutes.
Outside, whistles cut through the night. Shouts echoed up from the street. The trap was closing.
Kamo's eyes darted toward the door. Then, without a word, he pulled something from his coat—a heavy revolver—and pressed it into Jake's hand.
The cold metal felt impossibly heavy. A Nagant M1895. The future executioner's gun.
Jake stared at it, throat tight. His fingers curled around the grip. An hour ago, he was a tired history teacher marking essays. Now he was holding history's most loaded weapon.
Kamo's voice dropped low. "They'll have him in the citadel within the hour. He's strong, but no man can stand that kind of pain forever. You are the senior man here, Soso." His eyes burned. "What do we do? Run and warn the others? Or something else?"
Jake didn't answer. The world seemed to shrink until it was just him, Kamo, and the revolver. The weight of it pulled at his hand—and at his conscience. His grand, tragic escape plan now felt like a childish fantasy. He couldn't die and leave this behind.
Not when so many others might die instead.