The attack began with a whisper.
Not a bang, not a roar, but the soft, scraping sound of a dozen boat hulls against a stone quay. Jake swung his legs over the side, his boots landing silently on the slick cobblestones. The air was cold, thick with the smell of the Neva's dark water and a tension you could taste.
Behind him, Stepan and fifty of Kronstadt's best sailors slipped from the boats, becoming shadows in the narrow side canal. They were ghosts armed with rifles and a terrible new fire.
The plan was Jake's own creation, a piece of 21st-century special ops doctrine dropped into 1917. Total stealth. Infiltrate. Seize the objective. Vanish before the enemy even knew what happened.
They moved like wraiths through the back alleys, Jake's memory of the Admiralty's layout a perfect map in his mind. He knew every turn, every blind corner, every service entrance.
They reached their target: a small, unassuming door used by kitchen staff. Two officer cadets stood guard, their collars pulled up against the cold, sharing a cigarette. Their youth was a punch to Jake's gut. They couldn't be older than nineteen.
The plan was simple. Two of Stepan's biggest men would take them out, silent and fast.
But plans, Jake knew, were just a list of things waiting to go wrong.
A young sailor, his hands slick with cold sweat and adrenaline, fumbled his rifle. It slipped from his grasp, clattering onto the cobblestones with a sound that seemed to echo through the entire city.
It wasn't loud. But it was enough.
One of the cadets spun around, his eyes wide. His rifle came up on pure instinct.
A single, panicked shot cracked through the night, the sound impossibly loud in the silence. The bullet whined past Jake's ear and smashed into the brick wall behind him.
The alarm was raised.
The stealth plan was dead.
Bells began to ring inside the massive building, a frantic, clanging alarm that was answered by distant shouts. Lights flickered on in the upper windows.
Shliapnikov, the political commissar, materialized at Jake's side. His face was a grim mask in the darkness, all pretense of Party oversight gone. He was a soldier in a fight that had just gone sideways.
"The plan is smoke, General," he said, the title a heavy, challenging weight. "What now?"
It was a test. Stripped of his prophecy and his miracles, could the Golden Demon command a real battle?
Panic was a luxury Jake couldn't afford. He didn't hesitate. His mind raced, processing, adapting, recalculating.
"Forget stealth," he snapped, his voice a low, hard command. "We're the hammer now."
He grabbed Stepan's thick arm, his eyes blazing with a new, feral intensity. "Stepan! Take twenty men. Go to the front. The main gate."
Stepan's eyes widened. "A frontal assault? We'll be cut to pieces."
"It's a diversion," Jake countered, his words sharp and fast. "Use the fire. All of it. Make them think the whole damned fleet is storming their doorstep. I want you to light them up like the Tsar's winter palace on Christmas."
He locked eyes with the giant sailor. "Draw every rifle to you."
A slow, terrifying grin spread across Stepan's face. "A bonfire, Koba. You got it."
He and his men melted back into the darkness.
For a moment, there was only the sound of the ringing bells. Then the night erupted.
A series of shattering crashes echoed from the front of the building, followed by a deep, collective WHOOSH that lit up the sky. A hellish orange glow washed over the rooftops, painting the clouds in shades of fire.
From their position, Jake could see the grand, classical facade of the Admiralty, its perfect, orderly lines consumed by writhing sheets of clinging flame. He heard the screams, thin and high-pitched, even from this distance.
The sight made his stomach clench. His creation. His Demon's Fire. It was so much more horrifyingly effective than he had even imagined. This was the price of his power.
As he predicted, the garrison inside panicked. He could hear the chaos: officers shouting contradictory orders, men running, their boots pounding on marble floors, all converging on the firestorm at the front entrance.
"Now," Jake hissed to his remaining men. "They left the side door open for us."
He didn't lead them back to the service entrance. He pointed to a large, ornate window on the ground floor, its dark glass reflecting the distant fires.
"They'll be watching the doors. They won't be watching the windows."
Shliapnikov didn't question him. He stepped forward and, with a grunt, smashed the butt of his rifle through the heavy glass. The sound of shattering was lost in the greater chaos.
One by one, they poured through the jagged opening, landing in a grand, map-lined corridor.
The Night of Broken Glass had begun.
The interior was madness. Alarms blared. Papers, caught in the draft from the broken window, blew through the hallway like frantic ghosts.
They were met by a handful of officers running towards the main entrance, their faces pale in the emergency light. The fight was brutal, intimate, and ugly. The crack of rifles was deafening indoors. A sailor went down, clutching his gut. An officer fell, his pristine white uniform instantly stained crimson.
A young cadet, no older than the ones outside, leaped from a darkened doorway. His face was a mask of terrified fury, his bayonet leveled directly at Jake's chest.
Time seemed to slow down. Jake saw the boy's desperate eyes, the glint of the steel. He tried to bring his own rifle up, but he was too slow.
A shot exploded right next to his ear, the concussion making his head ring.
The cadet was thrown backwards as if hit by an invisible fist, a dark hole appearing on his tunic. He collapsed in a heap, his charge ending before it began.
Jake stared, his heart pounding. Shliapnikov stood over the body, his rifle smoking, his heavy face grim and unreadable. He gave Jake a curt, single nod.
In that one, violent moment, he wasn't Lenin's spy. He wasn't a political commissar.
He was a soldier, following his general.
"This way!" Jake yelled, shaking off the shock. He pushed deeper into the building, his sense of the layout unerring.
Their target was the heart of the beast: the central telegraph office. The communications hub for the entire Provisional Government and its armies.
They fought their way through two more corridors, the sounds of Stepan's glorious bonfire growing more distant. They were a scalpel, cutting deep while the enemy was distracted by the hammer.
They reached a set of heavy oak doors. "This is it!" Jake yelled over the din.
He didn't waste time on the handle. He kicked the door hard, just beside the lock. The wood splintered, and the door flew open.
Inside, it wasn't the two tired telegraph operators he'd expected.
A dozen of the elite Pavlovsky cadets—the very reinforcements Protopov had warned him about—were waiting. They had turned the room into a fortress of overturned desks and heavy filing cabinets.
A dozen rifle barrels were leveled directly at Jake's heart.
A dozen trigger fingers were tightening.