The world returned as a piercing ring in her ears and a cold that felt like death itself.
Kato broke the surface of the fjord, gasping, her lungs burning. The icy water was a physical blow, a stunning, paralyzing agony that stole her breath.
Behind her, the night sky was lit by a funeral pyre. The ship, their mission, their entire Stockholm kingdom—all of it was a roaring blossom of fire, sending sparks and smoke into the uncaring darkness.
A massive hand grabbed her coat, hauling her through the churning water. Murat. The big Finn's face was pale with shock, his breathing ragged.
"Ivan is hit bad," he sputtered, towing her towards the rocky shoreline. "I have him."
They scrambled onto the jagged rocks, collapsing in a shivering, soaked heap. Ivan was conscious, but a dark stain was spreading across his jacket, and his face was a mask of pain.
They had failed. Utterly. Catastrophically.
Then, a shape emerged from the black water nearby. It moved with an unnatural calm, without the desperate splashing of a survivor.
It was Pavel.
He climbed onto the shore, water streaming from his clothes. He was unhurt. His face was a sheet of ice, his eyes utterly blank. He didn't shiver. He didn't even seem to feel the cold.
He looked at the wounded Ivan, then at Kato, his expression empty. He was a machine waiting for input.
"Get him up," Kato ordered, her own voice chattering from the cold.
Pavel obeyed instantly. He lifted Ivan as if he weighed nothing and began moving inland, his steps sure and steady in the darkness.
Kato watched him go, a cold dread seeping into her bones that had nothing to do with the freezing water. She had broken him. She had taken her most loyal soldier, her conscience, and turned him into a ghost.
A perfect, horrifying weapon.
They found shelter in an abandoned fisherman's hut, a miserable little shack that barely kept out the wind. Murat managed to start a small, sputtering fire with a piece of flint and some dry moss.
The warmth did nothing to thaw the fear.
"We are dead," Murat muttered, staring into the weak flames. "Nicolai will have us shot. He will hunt us to the ends of the earth for this. For losing his cargo."
"Be quiet," Kato snapped. Her voice was sharp, cutting through his panic like a shard of glass.
She was looking at her own reflection in a cracked, soot-stained windowpane. A pale, hollow-eyed ghost stared back. A queen of ashes.
This was it. The moment her command was tested. She could accept this failure and die a dog's death. Or she could rewrite reality.
"We were not outmaneuvered," she said, her voice low and hard, gaining strength with every word. "We were ambushed."
Murat looked up, confused. "What?"
"It was a setup," she continued, her mind racing, forging the lie into a sharp, believable weapon. "British intelligence knew we were coming. They had soldiers waiting. This wasn't a simple pickup; it was a trap."
She turned from her reflection, her eyes blazing with a cold, desperate fire. She was no longer a victim of events. She was the author.
"The mission was not a failure to retrieve cargo," she declared. "It was a success. We exposed a high-level British counter-espionage operation in a neutral country. The explosion wasn't our mistake. It was my command."
She looked directly at Murat, daring him to challenge her. "I ordered it. To destroy the evidence. To deny them our bodies and our intelligence. To turn their trap into a black eye for their entire operation."
She was turning her greatest failure into a sign of her ruthless competence. It was a monstrous, brilliant gambit.
She found a stub of a pencil and a scrap of paper. "Murat. You will go to the village at dawn. You will find the contact. You will send this message. Word for word."
While they waited, Kato tended to Ivan's wound as best she could, tearing strips from her own shirt for bandages.
Pavel stood guard by the door, a silent, unmoving statue.
Kato finally looked at him, her voice softer now. "Do you regret what happened, Pavel? Blowing up the ship?"
He turned his head slowly, his empty eyes meeting hers. There was no flicker of the man she knew. No pain, no anger, no soul.
"I followed the order," he said, his voice flat and devoid of all emotion.
He held her gaze. "Give me the next one."
A chill went through her that was colder than the fjord. Her weapon was loyal. It was perfect. And it terrified her to her very core.
Murat returned late the next day, his face pale. He held a small, tightly folded piece of paper.
"The reply," he whispered, handing it to Kato with a trembling hand.
She unfolded it. A short string of numbers. She and Murat worked quickly, their heads bent over the flickering firelight, decoding the message from Nicolai.
Every number they translated could be her death sentence.
The first words became clear. Enemy action confirms strategic value of asset.
Kato's breath caught in her throat.
She kept decoding. Loss of cargo is acceptable. Your survival and denial of assets to the enemy is a victory of another kind.
A wave of dizzying relief washed over her. He believed her. The mad gamble had paid off. She had survived.
But the message continued.
British presence compromises Stockholm theater. Your command there is terminated. Your kingdom is forfeit.
The relief curdled into ice. She had won her life but lost her power base. She was a queen without a throne, adrift.
Then came the final lines. The new orders. Non-negotiable.
Abandon Scandinavia. Proceed to Petrograd. New objective is to take command of a chaotic and increasingly independent asset vital to German interests.
The message ended with a single, chilling directive. A new target. A new mission.
Find our agent Koba. He has become too powerful to be left without a leash.
You will be that leash.