Leaving Tbilisi felt like shedding a skin.
The cart rattled through the narrow streets, its wheels wrapped in rags to muffle the sound. Behind him lay months of shadows—safe houses, whispered passwords, and the constant dread of discovery. Ahead was only darkness and distance.
For the first time since waking up in this life, Jake wasn't Soso.
He was Vissarion Lomidze, tea merchant. Nobody. A ghost on the move.
His journey was no ordinary travel. It was a crawl through the hidden arteries of the revolution.
For a week he was smuggled from one contact to another like contraband—sleeping in dirt-floored cellars that smelled of potatoes and damp, traveling by night under carts or through black forests known only to old smugglers.
He saw what the revolution looked like up close.
Not ideas or theories, but faces—tired peasants who shared their bread, students whose eyes burned with impossible hope, workers who whispered about justice while hiding him from the Tsar's patrols.
In Tbilisi, revolution had been a game of strategy. Here, it was blood, sweat, and faith.
He had been its mind. Now, for the first time, he was touching its heart.
Two weeks later, he reached Berlin.
The shock was instant. The city roared like a living machine—electric lights, trains, and iron everywhere. Tbilisi suddenly felt like a forgotten village.
Berlin was a crossroads for exiles and dreamers, each one scheming a different future. Jake's instructions led him to a smoky café in a working-class district, where the air was thick with cheap tobacco and the sound of Russian being spoken too loudly.
He ordered a coffee and laid a small book of Georgian poetry on the table.
It was the signal.
A man sat down across from him a few minutes later. Young, thin, pale. A pointed goatee. Eyes sharp enough to cut glass.
"Comrade from the Caucasus," the man said in flawless Russian. "I have your final documents."
His name was Felix. Nothing more.
They waited as the forger worked in the back. Felix questioned him relentlessly—about Georgia, the Mensheviks, the morale of the workers. Each question was a test, his tone cool and surgical.
Jake played the part of Stalin perfectly: hard, disciplined, pragmatic. "Sentimentality," he said, "is the luxury of people who don't expect to die."
Felix's mouth twitched. Not a smile, but something close. "You think like a Chekist," he said. "You understand the sword of the revolution must stay clean."
The words hung between them like a secret handshake.
When the papers were ready, Felix stood. "We'll meet again, Comrade Stalin," he said. Not a wish—an inevitability.
Jake froze for a heartbeat. Felix Dzerzhinsky.
He knew the name. The man who would one day create the Cheka—the secret police that would rule Russia through fear.
He had just met his mirror.
The final leg was the most dangerous: the crossing from Calais to Dover.
The ports crawled with agents from every nation, but the Tsar's spies were the ones that mattered.
Jake stood in line at customs, his forged papers in hand, every breath deliberate.
His new name read: Vissarion Lomidze, merchant of Georgian tea.
The officer glanced at the photo, then at Jake. His expression was bored, but his eyes were sharp. "Business, is it, Mr. Lomidze?"
Jake forced a smile. "The finest Georgian tea for the finest British teacups," he said in his thick accent, just clumsy enough to seem real.
The man grunted, stamped the passport, and waved him through.
Jake walked onto the ferry, legs trembling. He didn't breathe again until the shoreline of France was a fading line in the mist.
He had done it.
He was free.
London was another shock—a gray colossus of smoke, fog, and empire.
Everything here screamed power. The wide streets, the marble facades, the endless rhythm of industry. It was a city that ruled the world by habit.
Yet it was the East End, grimy and alive, that felt more familiar. The smell of coal and sweat reminded him of Tbilisi.
He followed the directions to a narrow pub called The Crown and Anchor. The air inside was thick with beer and frying fish. Dockworkers shouted at each other over the noise.
He approached the bar. "A dark one," he said evenly. "For a long journey."
The bartender, a mountain of a man with a stained apron, gave a slow nod. "Private meeting in the back," he said, jerking his thumb toward a closed door. "They're expectin' you."
Jake lifted his pint, moved through the haze, and opened the door.
The room was small and thick with smoke. A handful of men sat around a wooden table, arguing in Russian. Papers littered every surface.
At the head sat a man with a high forehead, narrow eyes, and a precise beard. His words cut like blades, and when he saw Jake enter, he fell silent.
Every gaze in the room turned toward the newcomer.
The man at the head studied him for a long moment before speaking.
"So," Vladimir Lenin said, voice clear and sharp. "You are the man of steel from the Caucasus."
He gestured to an empty chair.
"Sit, Comrade Stalin. We have much to discuss."