The rail-yard meeting ended in thunder. Voices rose in song and vow, men shouting oaths of unity as they poured into the freezing night. Jake walked among them, smiling, nodding, returning clasped hands and shouted farewells. To them, he was Soso—the steady voice in the storm, the man who kept the fire of revolution burning bright.
But inside, he felt hollow. Detached. A ghost walking among the living.
When the noise of the city faded, he and Kamo slipped away, moving through the empty streets toward the edge of town. Neither spoke. Their boots struck the cobblestones in steady rhythm, the only sound in the dark. The tannery loomed ahead, an empty, skeletal building that reeked faintly of rot and old leather.
Inside, four men waited. The witnesses. The "memory of the party." They stood when Jake entered, pale faces half-lit by a slice of moonlight from the cracked window.
Kamo spoke first, his voice shaking with fury. "It was them, Soso. Just as you said—but worse. It was Orlov's man. Danilov. I saw him. All of us did."
Luka, the oldest of the group, stepped forward. "They didn't hesitate," he said quietly. "They went in, one shot, and left. Like butchers." He swallowed hard. "They left him on the floor."
The other two nodded. No one dared look at Jake for long.
He stood still, listening. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm—too calm. "Good."
The word struck the air like a slap. The men stiffened.
Kamo exploded. "Good? Soso, it's a disaster! They're murdering our own! Danilov, sitting beside us one day, killing for them the next! We have proof—four witnesses! We'll go to the Committee. We'll expose Orlov and his whole pack!"
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the group. Rage was easier than thought. They wanted blood and justice in equal measure.
Jake raised his hand. The gesture was small, but the room fell silent.
"No," he said. "You're thinking like a soldier again, Kamo. Like a man who swings his fists and hopes the world will move."
He began to pace, slow and deliberate. Each step echoed in the hollow space.
"If we stand in front of the Committee and accuse him, what happens? Chaos. Orlov denies it. He'll call Danilov a rogue. He'll say we forged this story, that you are my loyal tools, that I want his seat. And the party will believe him—because they always believe the man with more friends."
He stopped. His gaze swept over them, cold and certain. "A public trial is a stage. And Orlov is a performer. No. We end this the only way men like him understand."
The meaning settled on them slowly, heavy as a burial shroud.
"A political trial is for politicians," Jake said softly. "Traitors deserve a revolutionary's justice."
The silence after that was absolute. Even the wind outside seemed to still.
"We won't have a purge shouted from rooftops," he went on. "We will have a cleansing. Quiet. Precise. We now have proof—and we know who we can trust." His eyes swept over them: Kamo, Luka, the others. "This circle. No one else."
He was binding them with the oldest form of loyalty—shared guilt.
"Danilov is first," Jake said. "He's the loose thread. We take him tonight. He will confess who gave the order. His confession will justify what comes next." He paused, his tone flattening into something final. "Then we deal with Orlov. It will be silent. It will be clean. And it will be over."
No one moved. The enormity of it hung in the air like frost.
Kamo's eyes flicked toward him, searching for the man he once followed, the friend he once knew. All he found was the strategist—the shadow wearing Soso's face.
"Any objections?" Jake asked.
There were none. There couldn't be. He had turned their outrage into purpose, their fear into obedience.
One by one, the men nodded. Grim. Silent. Bound.
They were no longer just revolutionaries. They were the instruments of his new will. And as they stood in that dead, echoing tannery, they crossed the line with him—into the place where the revolution would begin devouring itself.