The meeting hall of the rail-yard workers' cell roared like a furnace. The air was thick with sweat, tobacco smoke, and the bitter tang of oil and iron. Voices clashed in waves—angry, hopeful, desperate. Men with cracked hands and soot-stained collars argued the future of the revolution, their words fueled by hunger and conviction.
Jake sat among them, the picture of calm focus. He nodded when others spoke, offered quiet, measured thoughts about coordinating with the telegraph operators, and spoke of discipline and unity. To the men in that hall, he was Soso—the steady strategist, the loyal comrade.
But it was all theater. His body sat beneath the gaslight, but his mind was far away—in a dark, frozen corner of the city where something monstrous was about to happen. Every tick of the wall clock landed like a hammer inside his chest. Every burst of applause sounded like a gunshot. He had split himself in two: the man who smiled and reasoned, and the one silently counting down the seconds until blood was spilled.
A hand gripped his shoulder. He nearly flinched.
"You're quiet tonight, Soso," Kamo murmured. "Is everything well?"
"Just listening," Jake said, forcing a thin smile. "It's important to know the will of the workers."
Kamo nodded, though the tightness in his jaw betrayed him. He too was performing—the loyal lieutenant, calm beside his leader. Only they knew what lay behind the curtain of this night. Only they carried the secret that made every breath feel like a lie.
Miles away, the city slept beneath a different kind of silence. In the wasteland by the river, frost gleamed on the skeletons of abandoned factories. Inside a derelict warehouse, four men crouched in the rafters, their breath visible in the dark. Kamo's chosen witnesses—the "memory of the party." Their eyes never left the ice house across the empty lot. Their fingers dug into the wood as they waited.
Inside that ice house, the scene was perfectly staged. Fikus was tied to the central pillar, his face swollen and purple from Kamo's "interrogation." His eyes darted wildly in the dim light. He didn't know the details of the plan, but he knew enough. He could smell death in the air. The ropes at his feet were frayed, cut to suggest an escape attempt. A crust of bread and a half-empty cup of water sat just out of reach. Hope as decoration. The cruelest prop of all.
Back in the meeting hall, Jake stood and spoke about pamphlets and distribution networks. His voice was clear, disciplined. Every sentence was automatic. His mind wasn't on his words—it was listening for a sound that had nothing to do with politics.
Then, it came. Two quick stomps from the outer wall. The signal.
The message had been delivered. The trap was set.
A rush of adrenaline hit him like a flood of ice. The walls seemed to bend, the air thickened. He finished his speech without knowing what he said, then sat, hands steady on his knees while his heart beat like a drum.
Across the city, the waiting stretched thin as wire. Minutes dragged. The men in the rafters began to wonder if the plan had failed. If the Okhrana had ignored the note. If Fikus would survive the night after all.
Then, a carriage appeared at the edge of the street—no lamps, no sound but the crunch of wheels on frost. It stopped a hundred yards from the ice house. Four men stepped out. They didn't speak. Their movements were practiced, silent, lethal. They wore the rough coats of workers, not the uniforms of Tsarist agents.
A false flag.
They approached the door. One man kicked it open—the sound cracked through the night like a pistol shot. The four vanished inside.
From the rafters, the witnesses heard everything.
A strangled cry from Fikus, cut short.
A muffled shout.
The heavy thud of a body collapsing.
Then—one gunshot. Sharp, final, absolute.
A moment later, the men reemerged, moving quickly and without panic. Their job was done. They crossed the lot toward the waiting carriage. As they passed beneath a break in the clouds, moonlight caught one of their faces.
Kamo froze. The blood drained from his face. He knew that face—had shared bread with it, laughed with it, debated with it.
Danilov.
A trusted revolutionary. Orlov's man.
The truth hit like a hammer blow. The assassins weren't Okhrana at all. They were comrades.
The betrayal wasn't distant—it was here, within the party itself, breathing the same air, shaking the same hands.
Kamo's heart pounded with fury and disbelief, but he didn't move. He couldn't. The plan demanded silence. The "memory of the party" would remember everything.
In the flickering dark, the revolution devoured one of its own—and no one in the hall of shouting workers would ever know that, while they spoke of unity and justice, the real war was already being fought in the shadows.