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.