The roar of the crowd was a physical force, a wave of sound that beat against Jake's chest.
"Koba! Koba! Koba!"
Stepan's question hung in the air, a lit fuse in a powder keg. "Who burns first?"
A thousand savage voices, a thousand pairs of eyes, all fixed on him. They weren't asking for a plan. They were demanding a target. This wasn't loyalty anymore. It was worship.
Jake felt a terrifying vertigo, the ground shifting beneath his feet. His legend, the tool he had so carefully crafted, had become a rampaging beast. And they had just handed him the leash.
He could feel Lenin's stare, a drill of pure hatred boring into his back. He knew what Lenin was thinking. He will unleash them. He will prove he is the monster I always knew he was.
The mob was ready to burn Petrograd for him. To slaughter the Provisional Government in their beds. To drown the revolution in a senseless tide of blood.
But a commander doesn't follow his army. He leads it.
Jake raised a single hand. Slowly, the roar subsided, the chanting dying down to a low, expectant hum.
"We don't burn for revenge!" he shouted, his voice cutting through the tense air, raw and powerful.
He pointed across the grey water, not at the Winter Palace, the symbol of Tsarist power, but at the tall, golden spire of the Admiralty building.
"We burn their heart! Their communications center! Their chain of command!"
He swept his gaze across the sea of faces, his eyes locking with theirs. "We don't burn men. We burn their ability to fight! We take their eyes and their ears, and we leave them blind and deaf in the dark!"
It was a smart, tactical choice. A strategic strike, not a massacre.
For a moment, there was silence. Then, a single sailor roared his approval. It was followed by another, and another, until the entire yard erupted again, this time with a focused, disciplined fury. Their bloodlust now had a target. A purpose.
Jake had passed the first test. He had turned a mob into an army.
The cheering was a distant, muted rumble, a ghost of the power he now wielded.
They were in a small, cold office inside the fortress. It was just Jake, Lenin, and Trotsky. The air was thick with a silence that felt more violent than any shout.
Lenin paced the cramped room like a caged tiger. He didn't yell. His fury was a compressed, silent thing, far more dangerous than any outburst.
"You have created a cult," he said, his voice like chipping stone. He stopped and pinned Jake with a venomous glare. "You have made yourself an idol. A golden demon for them to worship."
He took a step closer, his small frame radiating immense menace. "The Party is the revolution, Koba. Not one man. Never one man."
Trotsky pounced, sensing his moment. He was the prosecutor, ready to deliver the killing blow.
"This is Bonapartism!" he spat, the accusation sharp and academic. "He seeks to become a military dictator, riding a wave of populist fervor! It is the classic path of the counter-revolutionary!"
He turned his sharp, intelligent gaze on Jake. "You will hand over the complete formula for this 'Demon's Fire' to the Central Committee's Military Commission. Immediately."
He paused, letting the demand sink in before delivering the real ultimatum. "And your so-called 'loyalists,' the street fighters and sailors who chant your name, will be placed under my direct military command."
It was their play. A clean, brutal attempt to strip him of his weapon and his army in a single move. To defang the demon and put it in their cage.
Jake didn't flinch. He didn't rise to the bait. Arguing ideology with these men was a fool's game. He would use the one thing Lenin respected above all else: pragmatism.
"The formula is in my head," Jake said, his voice flat and calm.
He let his eyes drift towards the window, towards the sound of his new army. "And the men out there? They don't follow a committee. They follow the man who gave them a weapon to fight back."
He leaned forward, his gaze locking directly onto Lenin's, bypassing Trotsky completely. "You want to win this revolution? Or do you want to debate it until we're all hanging from lampposts?"
He let the question hang in the air. "You need a general, not another committee chairman. I will lead the assault on the Admiralty. I will take it for the Party."
He didn't give Lenin a chance to refuse. "But I will do it my way."
Lenin was trapped. Jake could hear it in the strained silence. If he tried to sideline Jake now, the thousands of sailors outside would mutiny. Kronstadt would be lost. The revolution might die right here, in this cold little room, choked by pride.
Finally, Lenin gave a short, clipped nod. The movement was stiff with resentment.
"Very well… General," he said. The title was a poisoned dart, dripping with sarcasm. "You will lead the assault."
But he wasn't finished. His eyes were cold chips of ice. "Comrade Shliapnikov will accompany you. As the Party's political commissar. To ensure your military objectives align with the political will of the revolution."
They both knew what that meant. A spy. A warden. A gun to Jake's back to make sure he didn't turn his new army on the Party itself.
It was a deal with the devil. And both men were just waiting for the other to show his true face.
Just as the venomous truce settled, the office door burst open.
One of Jake's runners, a young factory worker named Misha, stumbled in, breathless and pale. He ignored Lenin and Trotsky, shoving a crumpled, dirty note into Jake's hand.
It was from Protopopov. His mole.
Jake's eyes scanned the hurried scrawl. The message was short, and it made his blood run cold.
Provisional Government panicked by Kronstadt. Moving Pavlovsky and Preobrazhensky cadets to reinforce Admiralty. Best men. Most loyal. Arriving tonight.
The strategic timeline had just collapsed. What was a plan for tomorrow had just become a desperate, do-or-die race for the next few hours.
Jake crumpled the note in his fist. The sound was like a gunshot in the silent room.
He looked up, first at Trotsky's smug face, then at Lenin's cold, calculating one. A dangerous fire lit in his eyes. He wasn't their subordinate anymore. He was a commander on the eve of battle.
"Your new general has his first battle," he said, his voice low and hard. "And it starts now."
He tossed the crumpled note onto the desk between them.
"We attack tonight. Before those reinforcements can dig in and turn the Admiralty into a fortress we can't crack."
The fragile truce was shattered before it even began. The debate was over. Jake had just dragged the entire revolution, kicking and screaming, into a fight he could not afford to lose.