The folded scrap in Kamo's hand was no bigger than a thumbnail, yet Jake felt its weight like a live grenade. It was a fragment of chaos, a wild variable tossed into the gears of a machine he had built with surgical precision. His perfect lie had just sprouted a terrible truth.
"Let me see it," Jake said, voice taut.
Kamo passed it over. The paper was cheap, damp from fog. Jake unfolded it carefully. Inside was a single mark—a circle crossed through by a line. An Okhrana signal. The same kind of symbol he'd invented out of nowhere, meant only to add realism to Fikus's confession. And here it was. Real.
His stomach turned. The odds were impossible.
"This is good, Soso," Kamo whispered, his excitement crackling through the cold air. "It proves the confession was real! You broke that tavern rat so hard he told us a truth he didn't even know he knew!"
Jake didn't respond. His mind was spinning too fast for words.
Kamo pressed on. "Think about it. We can watch this place. Catch whoever's using it. Expose a real Okhrana cell! You'll be a hero across the whole Caucasus. Even Lenin will hear about this!"
It made sense—at least to Kamo. He was a man of direct action. He saw opportunity, not risk. But Jake saw the cracks forming already.
If they acted on this, everything could collapse. His plan to control Orlov was built on a single, fragile illusion: a lie balanced so neatly it had begun to feel like truth. This real drop-box shattered that symmetry. If they investigated and found nothing, it would weaken the story. If they found something, but it didn't connect to Orlov, the confession would unravel completely. A single wrong discovery could undo weeks of work.
The safe move was to destroy it—to pretend it didn't exist. He could tell Kamo that Levan was mistaken, that it was some child's chalk mark or a piece of garbage. He could protect the plan.
But another, colder thought slid in. The part of him that had once pulled triggers. The part learning to think like Stalin.
A second snake in the room was more dangerous than the first. You didn't ignore it—you studied it. You found out how deep its den went. Real control wasn't about sticking to a plan. It was about owning every variable.
He had to know.
"No," Jake said at last, the word hard and final.
Kamo blinked. "No? Soso, this is a gift from the gods of revolution!"
"A gift horse," Jake said quietly, "whose mouth is full of sharp teeth." He met Kamo's eyes. "If Levan found it, others can too. What if the Okhrana wanted it found? What if it's bait?"
Kamo hesitated. His grin faltered. Jake leaned in. "We can't send anyone else. Too many already know the confession. If one of ours is seen near that wall, everything we built burns. Orlov, the Committee, all of it."
The logic sank in slowly. Kamo's shoulders dropped.
"This is too delicate," Jake said. "If we watch it, it's just us. You and me. No one else."
The decision settled between them, heavy and cold. Jake knew he was doubling their danger—opening a second front while still fighting the first. It wasn't one game of chess anymore. It was two, played blindfolded, with death waiting at both boards.
They began the next night.
They took turns watching from the window of an abandoned tenement overlooking the narrow alley. The hours crawled. The room stank of mildew and stale air. Outside, the loose brick sat untouched, mocking them.
The first night passed. Nothing.
The second. Still nothing.
By the third night, Jake was questioning everything. Maybe he'd made the wrong call. Maybe Kamo had been right—it was trash, not a thread of fate.
Then, close to midnight, movement.
A lone figure emerged from the far end of the street, keeping to the shadows. The steps were hurried but careful, the gait untrained—nervous, not professional. A worker, not a spy.
Jake and Kamo ducked low. The man reached the wall, checked both sides, and slid a folded paper behind the brick. Then he vanished as quickly as he'd come.
"Did you see his face?" Kamo whispered.
"No," Jake said. "Too dark."
Five long minutes passed before they dared move. Then they slipped down, silent as ghosts. The air outside cut like knives. Jake pried the brick loose. Another folded note waited in the hollow.
This one carried a new mark—different symbol, same hand. A signal acknowledging the first.
Back in their hideout, they watched again.
An hour later, another man appeared. Not sneaking this time. Walking like he belonged to the street. He stopped by the wall, pretended to light a cigarette, and in the same motion, retrieved the message.
Under the weak glow of a gas lamp, he lifted his head for half a second. That was all it took.
Kamo squinted. "Don't know him. Some stranger."
But Jake's breath caught in his throat. His pulse roared in his ears.
He knew that face. He had seen it a hundred times—on the glossy pages of history books, in the grainy photographs of men who smiled while signing death warrants. Genrikh Yagoda.
In the future Jake came from, Yagoda would rise to become head of Stalin's secret police—the NKVD. He would oversee purges, torture, and executions before being devoured by the very system he built.
But here, in 1906, he was young. A comrade. A shadow already moving through history.
Kamo looked at him, puzzled. "Soso? Who is he?"
Jake couldn't answer. He just stared at the spot where Yagoda had vanished, his heart sinking under the weight of what he understood.
The web wasn't just wide—it was endless.
He wasn't fighting the Okhrana anymore.
He was staring at the first flicker of his own future terror.