The world had shrunk to a muddy clearing that smelled of blood and wet earth. The air felt heavy—like the war itself had weight. In front of Koba lay the mission: cold, precise, and necessary. Behind him knelt Pavel, mud-streaked and silent, his defiance saying more than any speech could.
Sergeant Klaus, hand on his pistol, stepped forward.
"I'm not asking, Herr Schmidt. That's an order. We're leaving. My men aren't Red Cross nurses."
Jake's conscience screamed inside Koba's head: You can't leave them. They're dying.
The cold strategist inside him shot back: Ipatieff. The mission. Every second counts.
Then another voice rose—a colder, calculating one. The Kingdom-Builder. It didn't care about right or wrong, only results.
Koba turned to Klaus. His voice came out steady, controlled.
"You're right, Sergeant. We are wasting time."
Klaus nodded. "Finally. Then let's move."
"But you're wrong about what this is." Koba's tone shifted, drawing the men's attention. "This isn't a burden. It's an opportunity."
Klaus snorted. "An opportunity? It's a ditch full of corpses. Their army's finished. They're worthless."
"You see bodies," Koba said. "I see intelligence." He pointed to a bloodied officer. "That one knows his regiment's morale. The signals man—fallback codes. And that doctor…" He pointed to the exhausted medic. "He's worth more than a dozen prisoners. We're not leaving him. Or the others."
The words hit like an electric shock. Suddenly, Koba wasn't just a foreign advisor. He was command itself.
He ripped a chunk of chalky plaster from a ruined church wall and tossed half to Pavel.
"Pavel, Murat—you're on black tags," he ordered. "Mark anyone with a gut or head wound. Anyone too far gone. No bandages, no words. They're already dead."
Pavel froze, staring at the chalk in horror. This wasn't mercy. It was machinery—death run like a factory. The Germans, however, understood it instantly. Efficiency.
"Ivan!" Koba barked. "You and the rest—green tags. Minor wounds, men who can walk. Water them, move them by the wall. They're our new workforce."
He turned to the Russian doctor. "You're with me. We handle red and yellow tags—the ones who can be saved. Show me who's still worth the effort."
And just like that, chaos became order. Koba wasn't saving people; he was sorting them. The first battlefield triage—born not of compassion, but control.
He knelt by a man bleeding out from a torn leg. The doctor pressed down uselessly with a filthy rag.
"No," Koba said. "You're killing him."
He grabbed a dead soldier's belt, wrapped it high on the thigh, twisted it tight with a pistol barrel.
"Tourniquet. Stop the flow at the source."
The doctor stared, speechless. He'd just watched a miracle made from leather and logic.
Pavel, still trembling, marked his first man. A boy—barely seventeen—with a gut wound. The boy's eyes met his, pleading. Pavel's chalk touched the boy's forehead. His moral stand had turned into something else entirely—a colder way of deciding who lived and died.
Within thirty minutes, the clearing was unrecognizable. The dead and dying were sorted. The walking wounded corralled. The critical stabilized under Koba's direction. From chaos, he'd built a system. From despair, control.
When it was over, Koba stood, wiping blood and mud from his hands.
"Pavel," he said evenly. "You've done well. You'll stay here. You're in command."
Pavel blinked. "What?"
"Secure the assets," Koba continued. "Sergeant Klaus will leave four men. Interrogate the officers. Bring them to our command post. My mission isn't finished."
He had turned rebellion into loyalty, mercy into efficiency, and compassion into strategy. He had saved lives—and built a weapon out of it.
Koba faced his remaining men and the German sergeant.
"We're going for our prize," he said.
And without another word, he walked out of the clearing, leaving Pavel standing amid his strange, grim kingdom.