The city bled, and it cheered.
The sound of sporadic gunfire was a new kind of music, a rhythm set by the marching boots of mutinous soldiers. The revolution was winning, and it was glorious, beautiful chaos.
Jake stood on a rooftop with Shliapnikov, overlooking the burning district courthouse. The ashes of the old regime, of a thousand forgotten legal documents and decrees, drifted down on the wind like black snow. The air smelled sharp and bitter, like burning history.
Shliapnikov clapped Jake on the back, a heavy, solid blow of grudging, astonished respect.
"You did it, demon," the old steelworker grunted, a rare smile cracking his soot-stained face. "You actually did it. You gave them the push they needed."
Jake wasn't celebrating. He looked down at the streets, and he didn't see a glorious victory. He saw a fatal weakness.
He pointed to a street corner below, where two different groups of armed workers, one from the steel works and another from a textile mill, were shouting at each other, their rifles raised. They didn't recognize each other's authority. They were seconds away from firing on their own side.
"This isn't a victory," Jake said, his voice hard. "It's a riot with guns. A revolution without information burns itself out in a week."
He turned to Shliapnikov, his eyes intense. "We are blind. And we are about to start shooting at our own shadows."
Back in the roaring heart of the steel works, which had become their unofficial command center, the chaos was threatening to swallow them. Men ran in and out, shouting rumors, reporting firefights, demanding orders.
Shliapnikov was in his element, a bellowing giant trying to direct the storm. Jake ignored the noise.
He found a massive, dust-covered map of Petrograd in a foreman's office and unrolled it across a long table. He gathered the terrified student revolutionaries, Dmitri and Sasha among them. They were useless as fighters, but they were literate and fast.
"You," he said, pointing to one. "You go to the Putilov factory. Find their strike leader. Ask him how many men he has and how many rifles."
He pointed to another. "You. Go to the Finland Station. I want to know every troop train that has arrived or departed in the last six hours."
He started issuing orders, a storm of them. Not to fight. To see.
"Each runner is a nerve ending for the revolution," he explained, his voice cutting through the din. "They report troop movements, food supplies, rumors. Everything."
He handed them a box of colored pins. "We put a pin in the map for every loyalist unit, and a different color for every revolutionary one. We will see the whole city. We will be its brain."
Shliapnikov watched him, his arms crossed, a look of deep skepticism on his face. "This is a child's game with maps and pins, demon. The fight is in the streets."
"The fight is won right here," Jake countered, tapping the map. "Before a single shot is fired."
Their first test came less than an hour later.
A runner, a boy no older than sixteen, burst into the factory, his face white with terror, gasping for breath.
"Colonel Kutepov!" he choked out. "He's gathered a force! Several hundred men, from the training battalions! They have machine guns!"
Panic flared through the room.
"They are marching on the Liteyny Bridge," the boy finished. "They mean to cross the river and retake the Vyborg district!"
Shliapnikov roared into action, shouting for men to grab rifles, to build barricades, to prepare for a last, desperate stand.
"Hold!"
Jake's voice cut through the panic like a whip. Everyone froze, turning to look at him. He stood calmly by the map, which was now dotted with a dozen pins, a crude but accurate picture of a city at war.
"Barricades are a trap," he said, his voice cold and steady. "They will pin us down here, and their machine guns will cut us to pieces. We don't defend."
He paused, a flicker of something dangerous in his eyes. "We attack."
He tapped a blue pin on the map, far to the south of the bridge. "The Preobrazhensky Regiment. They mutinied an hour after the Volinsky. They are with us, but they are sitting in their barracks, waiting for orders."
He looked at Shliapnikov. "Kutepov thinks he is attacking a disorganized mob. He doesn't know there is a loyal revolutionary army sitting right behind him."
He grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled a quick, clear message.
"We send one runner," he said, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. "We tell the Preobrazhensky to move now. To hit Kutepov from the rear while he is focused on the bridge. We don't just stop him. We encircle him. We annihilate him."
A stunned silence filled the room.
Shliapnikov stared at Jake, then at the map. It was an audacious, impossibly risky plan. It went against every instinct of a defensive street-fighter, every lesson he had ever learned about holding ground.
But the map... the map showed it could work. The cold, terrifying logic of the pins was undeniable. He had to choose between his gut and the demon's prophecy.
Jake handed the piece of paper to the fastest runner in the room.
He was no longer a demon who threw gold. He was a general. And he had just given his first order in a war Lenin didn't even know he was fighting.