The message arrived like a thrown knife.
It was delivered by a young ideologue with sharp cheekbones and a sharper tone, one of Trotsky's boys. He didn't look at Jake as a comrade, but as a problem to be managed.
"Comrade Lenin expects you at the Kronstadt naval base," the man said, his voice dripping with condescension. "At once."
He paused for effect, letting the order hang in the air of the commandeered palace office.
"You are to come alone."
The word echoed in the sudden silence. Alone.
It wasn't an invitation. It was a summons. A leash.
Jake felt a cold, hard knot form in his gut. After everything—the mutiny he'd engineered, the intelligence network he'd built, the spy he'd planted in the enemy's heart—they still saw him as a tool to be commanded. A dog to be brought to heel.
His face remained a mask of stone. "Tell Comrade Lenin I will be there."
The messenger gave a curt, satisfied nod and turned on his heel, his job done.
Shliapnikov, who had been watching from the doorway, stepped into the room. The big man's face was a grim landscape of concern.
"This is a trap, Koba," he rumbled. "They mean to humiliate you. To put you on trial before the sailors and break your legend before it grows too strong."
Jake walked to the window, staring out at the chaotic streets of Petrograd. Smoke still rose from a dozen different fires.
"I know what it is," Jake said, his voice quiet.
"Then don't go. Let Lenin face them himself. Let's see how far his 'scientific certainty' gets him with men who only respect blood and iron."
A bitter smile touched Jake's lips. "If I refuse, I prove their point. They'll brand me a coward, an undisciplined adventurer. I'd lose the street soldiers within a day."
He turned back to face Shliapnikov, his eyes burning with a cold fire. "No. I have to go."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
"But I will not go to be judged by them. I'm going to give them a reason to follow me."
Shliapnikov frowned. "With what? More promises? Another prophecy? They're tired of words, Koba."
"I know," Jake said. "That's why I'm not bringing words."
"I'm bringing them a weapon."
An hour later, they were in the Vyborg district, the industrial heart of the revolution. The air was thick with the smell of coal smoke and desperation. Jake led Shliapnikov to a derelict ironworks, a cavernous brick building abandoned years ago.
Inside, a dozen of Jake's most trusted street fighters were already at work, moving with a quiet, nervous energy. They had followed his strange orders without question.
Crates of empty vodka and beer bottles were stacked high. Barrels of gasoline, siphoned from the Tsar's own motor pool, sat beside them. Rags were piled in a corner.
Shliapnikov looked at the pathetic collection of junk with open confusion. "What is this, Koba? Are we planning on getting the Provisional Government drunk?"
Jake ignored him. He picked up an empty bottle, feeling the rough glass in his 21st-century hand. A hand that had typed on keyboards and held coffee mugs was about to create a weapon of pure, unadulterated terror.
"Oil," Jake said, not looking at Shliapnikov. "Get me motor oil. Thick and black."
A runner was dispatched.
As Jake began to direct the men, a cold dissonance washed over him. He saw a flash in his mind—a history documentary on the Winter War. Finnish soldiers, ghosts in the snow, hurling bottles just like these at Soviet tanks.
Then another flash. A newsreel from a different war. Burning streets, screaming men covered in a fire that wouldn't go out.
He was bringing that horror into this world, decades ahead of schedule. He was becoming the very monster he'd feared, justifying it with the cold logic of survival.
To save them, I have to arm them. To build a better world, I have to give them better ways to burn the old one down.
His movements became sharp, precise. He was compartmentalizing, burying the man from the future under the cold calculus of the demon they called Koba.
When the oil arrived, he demonstrated the process. He mixed a small amount into a bucket of gasoline, turning the thin liquid into a slightly thicker, dirtier fluid.
"The oil makes it stick," he explained, his voice flat. "It makes the fire cling like a hungry dog."
He showed them how to fill the bottles three-quarters full, how to stuff a rag in tightly, leaving a tail. One by one, they created a small arsenal of crude, ugly bombs.
Shliapnikov watched the whole process, his arms crossed, his skepticism growing.
"Koba, this is madness," he finally said, his voice low. "You want to impress the sailors of the Baltic Fleet... with a peasant's rock with a bit of fire on it? They will laugh you out of Kronstadt."
Jake picked up one of the finished bottles. It felt heavy in his hand. Heavy with consequence.
"Let's see who's laughing," he said. "Set up a target."
At the far end of the cavernous warehouse, his men hastily assembled a barricade from old timbers and rusted sheets of metal, meant to simulate a street fortification.
Jake walked twenty paces from it, the bottle held loosely at his side. The warehouse fell silent, his men watching with a mixture of curiosity and doubt. Shliapnikov just looked on with pity.
Jake took a deep breath. He uncapped a small flask of cheap vodka, soaked the rag, and then took a lit cigarette from one of his men.
He touched the glowing tip to the damp cloth.
It ignited with a soft whoosh, the flame dancing in the dim light.
He didn't hesitate. In one smooth, practiced motion learned from a lifetime of throwing baseballs, he spun and hurled the bottle.
It flew in a perfect, fiery arc across the warehouse.
It shattered against the metal sheet with a dull crash.
For a split second, nothing happened.
Then the world became fire.
It wasn't a splash of burning gasoline that quickly died. It was an explosion of thick, gelatinous flame that clung to the wood and metal like a living thing. It spread with an unnatural, horrifying hunger, a sheet of liquid orange that refused to be extinguished.
The heat slammed into them, a physical blow, forcing everyone to take a step back. The fire didn't just burn; it roared, a deep, guttural sound that filled the entire building. The barricade was completely consumed in seconds.
No one spoke. They just stared, their faces bathed in the hellish glow.
Shliapnikov's skepticism had vanished, replaced by pure, slack-jawed awe. He looked from the raging inferno back to Jake, his eyes wide. The reflection of the clinging, writhing flames danced in his pupils.
He wasn't looking at a comrade anymore. He was looking at a sorcerer. A man who had just conjured a new kind of hell.
He finally found his voice, a choked whisper.
"Mother of God..."
He took a step closer to Jake, his eyes never leaving the fire. "With a hundred men with these..." he breathed, the tactical implications hitting him like a freight train, "...we could stop an armored car division. We could burn out every machine gun nest in the city."
His gaze shifted, and for the first time, he looked at Jake with something that wasn't just respect, but a deep and primal fear. This man didn't just predict the future. He forged it in fire.
Shliapnikov's loyalty, once given entirely to Lenin and the abstract idea of the Party, had just found a new, terrifyingly tangible anchor.
"We will call it 'The Demon's Fire,'" he declared, his voice filled with a convert's zeal. "And my men will be the ones to carry it."
Jake nodded slowly, the heat of the fire warm on his face. He had his gift. He had his answer to Lenin's summons.
He held up another finished bottle, the dark liquid swirling within, a promise of chaos and power. He was ready for Kronstadt.
He turned to a still-stunned Shliapnikov.
"Lenin wanted a fist," Jake said, his voice a low, dangerous hum. "We're going to give them a firestorm."