The roar in the Soviet hall was a physical thing, a living beast hungry for blood.
Jake stood on the stage, the red file still in his hand. He had just lit the fuse of the October Revolution, and the explosion was happening all around him. Delegates were on their feet, screaming the names of the traitors. Soldiers were chanting for their arrest, their voices a thunderous, unified demand for justice.
The old world was dying, right here, right now, in this smoke-filled, gilded room. This was the point of no return.
Through the chaos, two figures pushed their way towards the stage. Lenin and Trotsky. Their faces were grim, their eyes burning with an intensity that matched the room.
There was no time for private arguments. No time for political maneuvering. Lenin, the ultimate pragmatist, saw the roaring tide of history in front of him. He knew, in his bones, that he had to ride it or be drowned.
He climbed onto the stage, raising his hands for a semblance of quiet.
"Comrade Koba is right!" he shouted, his powerful voice cutting through the din, seizing the narrative, bending the moment to his will. "There can be no more talk! No more patience! The traitors who sell the blood of the people must be swept away!"
He turned to Jake, his eyes a furious, brilliant mixture of rage and grudging necessity. "The Military Revolutionary Committee, the sword of the Soviet, is now in session!" he declared to the hall.
Then he looked directly at Jake, his voice dropping but losing none of its iron. "And you, Comrade, will direct its forces."
It wasn't a request. It wasn't an offer. It was a coronation and a leash, forged in the same fiery breath.
They retreated to a small, wood-paneled side room that instantly became the revolution's war room. The air was electric, thick with the smell of sweat and impending violence.
Trotsky was already trying to assert control, pacing the room, talking grand strategy, gesturing wildly at a map on the wall. "We must issue a proclamation! A statement of principles to the proletariat!"
Jake cut him off, his voice flat and cold. "Principles don't stop bullets."
He walked to the map, his movements sharp, confident. He was no longer an outsider. He was the center of gravity in the room. "We don't need speeches. We need a nervous system. We need to cut the head off the snake before it even knows we're in the room."
He began to issue a rapid-fire series of commands, his finger jabbing at key points on the map of Petrograd.
"Shliapnikov! Take your men. You seize the bridges. All of them. Nothing gets in or out of the city center without my permission."
"Stepan!" he barked at the giant Kronstadt sailor who had followed him like a loyal dog. "You and your boys take the central post office and the telephone exchange. I want their lines dead by midnight."
He pointed to another Red Guard commander. "The railway stations. Seal them. No one escapes."
He was decapitating the city, isolating the government, just as he had done at the Admiralty. He was waging a 21st-century war of information and logistics in 1917.
Just as he finished, the door burst open. A breathless runner, a kid from the printing press, stumbled in, his eyes wide with panic.
"The Winter Palace!" he gasped. "Kerensky… he's calling in the Cossacks! A whole division! They're forming up on the Palace Square right now!"
A chill went through the room. The Provisional Government was making its final, desperate move. They were calling in the boogeymen. The one military force in Russia that was still legendarily loyal, legendarily brutal, and had a century-long history of crushing revolutions in blood and steel.
This wasn't a political cleanup anymore. It was a race to a civil war that would start in the next hour.
A young sailor, his face pale beneath his bravado, looked at Jake. "Comrade Koba… the Cossacks… we have to fight them?"
The fear in his voice was real and infectious. Cossacks weren't just soldiers. They were a symbol of the Tsar's bloody, merciless oppression.
Jake looked at the faces in the war room, at the mixture of revolutionary fire and naked, human fear. His 21st-century mind screamed at him. This is murder. You are about to send these boys to be slaughtered.
His 20th-century reality knew there was no other choice. It was survival.
"We don't have to fight them," Jake said, his voice cold and hard as iron. "We have to break them."
He knew they couldn't win a straight fight. The Red Guards were brave, but they were barely trained factory workers with rifles. The Cossacks were professional soldiers, born in the saddle.
He needed a different kind of weapon.
"Trotsky," he said, turning to his stunned rival. "Your speeches are useless now. But your printing presses… I need them. Now."
He grabbed a scrap of paper and a pencil. He scrawled a few short, brutal sentences. It wasn't a political tract filled with Marxist theory. It was a direct, emotional dagger aimed at the heart.
COSSACK BROTHERS!
THE BANKERS IN THE PALACE PAY YOU IN COINS, BUT THEY SELL YOUR LAND TO FOREIGNERS!
WE HAVE THE PROOF!
WHY DO YOU SPILL RUSSIAN BLOOD FOR TRAITORS?
He shoved the paper into Trotsky's hand. "Print ten thousand of these. Get them to the front lines. Now."
Then he walked from the room, pushing through the chaos of the palace until he reached the grand balcony overlooking the square. A massive crowd, thousands of workers and soldiers, had gathered outside, a human sea waiting for a sign.
Jake raised his hand. A roar went up. He gave the final order.
"The hour has struck!" he yelled, his voice carrying over the crowd. "The traitors in the Winter Palace have declared war on the people of Petrograd! We will answer!"
The roar became a tsunami of sound. The Red Guards, their fresh red armbands stark against their dark coats, began to move. Organized units, flowing out from the square into the dark streets, their purpose clear.
From his high vantage point, Jake watched them go. They looked like a river of blood, a red tide he had just unleashed, flowing silently and inexorably towards the heart of the city.
Lenin appeared beside him on the balcony, a small, dark figure against the backdrop of the night. He, too, watched the city turn into a warzone.
"You have unleashed a storm, Koba," Lenin said, his voice a low, fascinated rumble. "An incredible, beautiful storm. But can you control it?"
Jake didn't take his eyes off the river of red armbands, the human tide flowing towards the distant, panicked sound of the first rifle shots.
"Control it?" Jake replied, the cold November wind whipping at his face. "No."
"I just have to aim it."