The notebook's leather cover began to curl and blacken, the smell of burning hide cutting through the cellar like a living thing. Kamo held it over the lantern flame, his face set in that brutal calm Jake had come to recognize—the calm of a man convinced that violence, in any form, could be holy.
For Kamo, this was purification. For Jake, it was disaster.
He had seconds.
His body tensed to lunge, but reason held him back. Kamo was stronger, faster, and utterly sure of his righteousness. If Jake tried to grab the book, Kamo would crush him—or worse, suspect him of betrayal. There was no winning a fight of bodies. Only a fight of minds.
"Stop."
The word sliced through the damp air. It wasn't a plea. It was an order.
Kamo froze, the book hovering over the flame. A lick of fire kissed the edge, curling it black. He turned slowly, eyes narrowing. "What did you say, Soso?"
"I said stop." Jake stepped forward, the lantern light throwing long shadows across his face. He met Kamo's stare head-on. "You're thinking like a soldier, not a strategist. You're about to do exactly what they want you to do."
Kamo frowned, his grip tightening on the notebook. "What I want is to destroy this poison before it spreads."
"And what they want," Jake countered, voice low and deliberate, "is for their poison to disappear without a trace." He paused, watching Kamo's expression shift. "Let's assume you're right—that it's a lie, a trick from the Okhrana to make us tear each other apart. Good. Then why would we help them hide the evidence of their own plot?"
Kamo's brows furrowed. The book drifted an inch farther from the flame.
"This isn't poison," Jake continued, seizing the moment. "It's the recipe for the poison. A map of how they think. We don't burn it—we study it. We use it."
The air thickened as Kamo considered his words. The edge of the notebook smoked but did not burn. Slowly, he lowered it.
"Use it how?" he asked at last. "By accusing a hero of betrayal? You'd bring the walls down on our own heads."
Jake shook his head. "No accusations. No speeches. We say nothing." His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "We watch him. Quietly. We observe who he meets, what he says, what he hides. If he's innocent, we protect him. If he's not, we'll see the proof with our own eyes—and then we'll know the Okhrana's real game."
He took another step forward, lowering his tone until even Pyotr had to lean in to hear. "Think about it, Kamo. They expect panic. They expect us to destroy ourselves. So we won't. We'll play the long game. We'll pretend their trick worked. We'll let the 'traitor' live—long enough to expose the Tsar's own machine."
The logic was a weapon, honed from Kamo's own paranoia and sharpened into something irresistible.
Kamo's eyes flicked between Jake and the half-scorched notebook. At last, he exhaled, a sound halfway between a growl and a sigh. "This is a dangerous game, Soso."
Jake met his gaze. "This is a dangerous war."
Kamo hesitated another beat, then snapped the notebook shut and slipped it inside his coat. "Fine," he said. "We do it your way. We watch. We wait." He jabbed a finger toward Jake. "But this stays between us. If one word of it leaks—true or false—it'll tear everything apart. No one else knows. Not Pyotr. No one."
"Agreed," Jake said.
Something unspoken passed between them then—a new alliance born out of mutual secrecy and mutual guilt. It was darker than trust, heavier than loyalty.
The silence stretched until the cellar door creaked open. A thin man stumbled in, panting, his ink-stained fingers clutching his coat.
"Comrades," he gasped, lowering his voice to a hurried whisper. "An urgent summons—from Comrade Orlov."
The name struck like a blow.
Kamo straightened. Jake's stomach turned to ice.
"The raids," the runner continued. "The loss of Mikho. Comrade Orlov says the leadership must meet immediately. The old print shop. One hour."
The man left as suddenly as he had appeared, leaving the door to swing shut behind him.
For a long moment, no one spoke. The sound of the harbor wind seeped in through the cracks in the wall, carrying the low wail of a ship's horn.
Jake looked at Kamo. Kamo looked back.
The game they had just imagined was no longer a theory. The man in the ledger—the lion of the revolution, the future ghost of a purge—had summoned them.
They weren't observers anymore. They were walking straight into the lion's den.
The summons lingered in the cellar air—heavy, inevitable. One hour. That was all they had before they'd stand face-to-face with a man who, in one world, was a hero of the revolution, and in another, a traitor written into history.
Kamo was already moving. "We'll circle the print shop first," he muttered, voice sharp with purpose. "Check for tails. Pyotr, find Arsen—"
"Wait," Jake said.
Kamo stopped mid-stride, glaring. "Wait? Soso, the clock is running."
"I have to go back first."
"Back where?" Kamo barked. "There is no back. That place is finished."
"To Kato's," Jake said quietly. "I need to see her."
Kamo stared at him as if he'd lost his mind. "You need to see your wife? Now? We're walking into a meeting that could decide the future of the movement, and you want to waste time on sentiment?"
For Kamo, affection was a liability. Attachment was how people got killed. But for Jake, it was the only thing left that tethered him to something human.
"I'm not asking for permission," he said, his voice hardening. "I'm the senior man here. You'll wait. We go together."
The air between them crackled. Kamo's jaw clenched, but he finally gave a curt nod. "Five minutes," he said. "Then we go. With or without you."
Jake's eyes flicked to the corner. Giorgi sat on a crate under a threadbare blanket, his wounded arm wrapped in stained bandages. The medic worked silently, but the boy didn't flinch. He didn't move at all. His eyes stared past everything, glassy and hollow.
Jake stepped closer, but the boy recoiled, curling into himself like an animal that had learned what hands could do. The sight hit harder than any bullet. The spark he'd once seen in Giorgi's face—the fire of belief—was gone. Snuffed out by a night Jake had scripted.
He wanted to say something, anything, but no words could wash the blood away. He turned and left the cellar, the boy's silence chasing him up the steps.
The city outside was half-asleep, veiled in mist and the faint gray of pre-dawn. The fog swallowed the streets, muffling his footsteps. Each corner felt haunted, every shadow alive with echoes of what he'd done. The adrenaline had faded hours ago, leaving behind an ache in his chest and the phantom smell of gunpowder in his nose.
He reached the apartment building and climbed the stairs. Each step sounded like a tolling bell.
When he opened the door, she was there.
Kato sat in the chair where he'd left her, rigid, sleepless. The single candle on the table had burned low, its wax spilling in pale drips like melted bone. Her rosary was wound so tightly around her fingers that the beads had left dark indentations in her skin.
She didn't speak at first. Her eyes lifted slowly to his face, searching for something familiar.
"Is it done?" she asked at last. Her voice was quiet, flat—too calm.
He nodded once. The word yes lodged somewhere in his throat.
"The boy," she said softly. "Giorgi?"
"He's alive," Jake answered. It was true, in the most clinical sense. The body lived. The spirit did not.
Kato rose, each movement deliberate. She didn't go to him. She stopped just short, close enough that he could feel her warmth. When she finally met his eyes, he felt exposed—like she could see straight through the blood on his soul.
"Your eyes," she whispered. "They're different."
Her voice trembled, but not with anger. With sorrow. She reached up, her hand hovering inches from his face, then stopped. "The man who left this room… he was afraid. I saw it in him. But now—" She shook her head. "Now, there's nothing. No fear. No mercy. Just… nothing."
She stepped back, the distance between them growing. It wasn't hatred in her gaze—it was fear. Quiet, hopeless fear.
Her words landed like a hammer. Jake felt something collapse inside him. This was what he'd fought for—to protect her, to save her from this world—and all he'd done was turn himself into something she couldn't bear to look at.
The door swung open behind him.
Kamo filled the doorway, expression carved from stone. His presence swallowed the room, replacing the fragile humanity with the hard, inevitable weight of reality.
"It's time," he said. "The meeting's begun."
He glanced once between them—Jake's hollow stare, Kato's frightened one—and dismissed it all with a grunt. "We move."
And just like that, the small, broken world of the apartment disappeared behind Jake as he followed Kamo out into the cold. There was no space left for grief, or love, or redemption. Only the next decision, the next betrayal, the next step toward history's waiting jaws.