The world on the bridge had shrunk to a single point. Koba's pistol cut a black line through the snow-filled air, linking his will to Comrade Stern's chest. The noise of the firefight — the shouting, the shots, the ricochets — faded into something distant, like a storm across the sea.
Jake's mind was chaos. Don't shoot him! He's one of us! He's the Party! To fire was to cross a line that could never be uncrossed. It wasn't just treason; it was the final end of everything he had once believed in.
But Koba's mind was quiet. Cold. Focused. To him, it wasn't a moral crisis — it was geometry. A problem of angles, positions, and outcomes. If he surrendered, Stern would kill him for betrayal. If he fired, the Germans would do it for the same reason. Between the Party and the Empire, there was no space to breathe.
He needed another way.
The decision came from instinct, not thought.
He fired, but not at Stern.
The pistol cracked once — a clean, sharp sound amid the chaos. The bullet screamed past Stern's head and buried itself in the iron above him, spraying rust and frozen paint across the man's face.
Stern dropped, rolling behind the stone balustrade for cover. The message was clear enough: Stay down.
The battlefield snapped back into motion. The Russians were firing wildly from the customs house, their commander dead. Pavel answered in steady bursts, each shot deliberate. The Germans were shouting, trying to hold their ground.
Koba's focus narrowed. The Germans didn't care about him or Kato. They wanted one thing.
"Malinovsky!" he shouted in German. "Get Malinovsky!"
The agents understood. One fired to cover; the other sprinted forward, grabbing the hooded man and dragging him back toward the German side. The plan — if it could be called that — was working.
Koba seized Kato's hand. "Come on!" he yelled, pulling her into motion. He and Pavel moved as one, firing to suppress, not kill. The Okhrana's return fire began to fade — their commander dead, their target gone, their morale broken. Step by step, Koba's group pushed off the bridge and onto German soil.
They had made it.
Adrenaline surged like ice water in Koba's veins. Pavel was reloading. Kato's hand trembled in his. The Germans had their prize. They had survived.
Then the rifles came up.
A dozen German soldiers stepped from the shadows of nearby buildings, their Mausers aimed, their bolts sliding forward with clicks that sounded like locks on a tomb. They were not allies anymore.
Through them walked Oberst Walter Nicolai, uniformed now, his boots cutting sharp prints in the slush. His eyes swept over the bridge — the smoke, the fallen colonel, the retreating Russians — then locked onto Koba.
"Who was that man?" Nicolai asked, voice low and precise. "The one who shouted your name. A comrade? Or something else?" His gaze hardened. "Tell me, Herr Schmidt — are you playing us?"
The question hung like frost between them. Nicolai thought he'd been used. A revolutionary feud disguised as an intelligence mission. A lie within a lie.
Koba's body ached. His arm throbbed. His thoughts flickered through exhaustion and pain. Surrounded, outnumbered, he had seconds to save himself.
He met Nicolai's eyes. The lie formed as he spoke it.
"He was from a rival faction," Koba said. "Lenin's faction."
Nicolai's expression shifted — a trace of recognition. They had files, of course. They always did.
"They're idealists," Koba continued, voice steady. "They still believe war between Germany and Russia can be avoided. They found out about our operation and sent him to stop me."
He drew a slow breath and finished it.
"They live in dreams. You and I don't. We live in the real world. The war is coming, and when it does, you'll need more than rifles. You'll need people like me — men inside Russia. Men who can turn hunger into revolt. Workers into soldiers. Soldiers into revolution."
He stood there, the wind tugging at his coat, Kato at his side. The bridge behind him was a ruin of smoke and bodies. Ahead was a cold German stare and a future made entirely of lies.
Koba had burned everything that tied him to his past. What he offered now was all that remained — himself.