The silence thickened until it felt like a living thing pressing on every chest in the room. All eyes fixed on Jake—some bright with hope, others hard with hunger for blood and glory. Beside him, Kamo sat rigid, muscles twitching with anticipation, ready to leap headlong into Orlov's suicidal plan.
At the far end of the table, Orlov's smile never wavered. It was the smile of a man certain he'd already won.
Jake rose slowly, the scrape of his chair loud enough to make several people flinch. He didn't look at Orlov. He turned to the others instead—faces lit by the oily lantern light, lined with exhaustion, devotion, paranoia. He made himself meet their eyes, one by one.
"Comrade Orlov is right," Jake said, his tone even and steady.
The words rippled through the room like a sigh of release. Shoulders eased. Kamo nodded once, approving. Orlov's grin widened—the trap had closed.
Jake let the pause hang, heavy.
"He is right that we must stop acting like rats," he said. "But he is wrong to think lions win by roaring."
A few heads tilted, uncertain. Orlov's expression flickered, almost imperceptibly.
"A bombing is loud," Jake continued, his voice hardening. "It makes noise, it flashes bright—and then it dies. A moment's triumph, followed by ruin. The state will crush us for it. It will take our best, our bravest, and turn their corpses into a warning."
He leaned forward, his tone sharpening, deliberate. "We trade our queen and our rooks for a handful of their pawns. That's not courage. That's stupidity dressed as sacrifice."
The word stupidity landed like a hammer blow. In a movement built on intellect and ideology, stupidity was the gravest sin of all.
"True boldness," Jake said, straightening, his voice cutting through the smoke, "is not noise. It's precision. It's patience. We don't die for symbols—we win through strategy. Our problem isn't weak hearts. It's blind eyes."
He let his gaze sweep across them, then jabbed a finger down on the scarred tabletop. "They knew about Mikho. About Arsen's coat. About the boy. How? Because we're surrounded by informants. The Okhrana sees everything. Every whisper. Every move. And we keep obliging them. We can't bomb a web. We have to kill the spider."
The words settled in like frost. Fear. Agreement. A grim sense of purpose.
Before Orlov could reclaim the room, Jake struck again, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial murmur that drew everyone closer. "Before we throw bombs, we blind our enemy. Before we roar, we silence their roar. I propose a new kind of action—a campaign of revolutionary counter-intelligence."
He let the phrase breathe. It sounded sharp, strategic. Revolutionary.
"I'll lead it," Jake said, finally meeting Orlov's eyes. "But not with dynamite. With knives in the dark. We hunt informants, not policemen. We turn their spies against them. We make the Okhrana doubt their own shadows."
A murmur spread, charged and fearful. It was something new—something darker and far more seductive.
"We'll make them question every whisper," Jake said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. "We'll make them afraid to trust even each other. When the Okhrana can no longer see or hear, then we strike. That's how we win."
Silence again—but this time it wasn't doubt. It was awe. Every face was turned toward him.
Orlov's smile had vanished. His posture had stiffened. Jake could see the fury hiding behind his composure, the calculation behind the clenched jaw.
In two minutes, the board had flipped.
Jake hadn't just sidestepped Orlov's trap. He'd taken command of the room—offered them something sharper, colder, and infinitely more dangerous.
And for the first time, he saw in Orlov's eyes what he had feared seeing in his own reflection: recognition.