The fire did its work.
The barricades, once a symbol of defiance, were now just heaps of black, smoldering ash. The Women's Battalion, their will not just broken but incinerated by the terrifying, unnatural flames of Jake's creation, had thrown down their weapons. Some had fled, screaming, into the depths of the palace. Others had simply collapsed to their knees, sobbing, their fight extinguished.
The Winter Palace had fallen. The revolution was over. They had won.
But the roar of the victorious Red Guards, the thousands of voices chanting his name, sounded hollow and distant in Jake's ears. All he could hear was the echo of the women's screams as the fire had leapt towards them. A sound he knew would haunt him for the rest of his unnatural life.
He walked out from his command post and onto the square. The sea of Red Guards parted for him, a wave receding from a jagged rock. Their faces, lit by the smoldering fires, were a mixture of awe, reverence, and a deep, primal fear.
They shouted his name. "Koba! Koba! The Demon!"
A few of the Kronstadt sailors, their faces wild with victory, tried to lift him onto their shoulders, to parade their general before his army.
Jake pushed them away, his movements sharp and angry. His face was a hard, unreadable mask of granite. He felt no triumph. No glory. Only a deep, soul-crushing weight, as if the entire, bloody history of the 20th century had just settled onto his shoulders.
He turned his back on his adoring army and walked towards the palace.
Inside was chaos. Drunken soldiers and sailors, finally let loose upon the symbol of their oppression, were running wild. They were tearing down priceless tapestries, using their rifle butts to smash ornate vases, and sliding across the polished parquet floors in their muddy boots.
Jake walked through it all like a ghost, the madness parting before him. He had a singular, morbid purpose.
He moved through the grand halls and gilded corridors, his 21st-century memory a perfect map. He found his way to the Tsar's private wing, a section the looters hadn't yet reached. He opened a heavy, polished door and stepped into Nicholas II's personal study.
The room was an island of perfect, unnerving calm in the heart of the storm. It was as if the owner had just stepped out for a moment. A half-finished game of solitaire was laid out on the massive oak desk. A pipe rested in an ashtray, its embers long dead.
On the marble mantelpiece, framed in silver, was a family photograph.
The Tsar, looking awkward and gentle in his formal uniform. The Tsarina Alexandra, her face proud and severe. And their five children, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and the small, sickly heir, Alexei. They were all smiling, a perfect family frozen in a perfect moment, just before their world, and the entire world, had ended.
Jake Vance, the history nerd from 2025, looked at the photograph, and he didn't see a tyrant. He saw a family. He saw the faces of the children whose tragic story he knew by heart.
He knew their fate. A damp cellar in a provincial town. A volley of clumsy gunfire. The horror of bayonets.
The knowledge was a physical sickness that twisted in his gut. He had done this. His revolution. His victory. He had just signed their death warrant.
"A useful symbol."
Jake spun around. Lenin and Trotsky were standing in the doorway, observing the room.
"The tomb of a dead empire," Lenin continued, his voice cold and analytical. He had no time for sentiment. "We will turn this into a museum for the people."
Trotsky was ecstatic, his eyes alight with revolutionary fervor. "We'll show the world the opulence they lived in while the people starved! Every golden toilet! Every jeweled egg!"
Jake turned to face them, his own face grim. "What happens to them?" he asked, his voice low. "The family."
Trotsky scoffed, a dismissive, arrogant sound. "They are symbols of the counter-revolution. Relics of a dead age. They will be dealt with accordingly."
Lenin was more direct, his words as sharp and clean as a surgeon's knife. "They are a rallying point for our enemies. The White armies will fight to the last man to place a Romanov back on the throne. A living monarch, even a deposed one, is a danger to the stability of the state."
He met Jake's gaze, his eyes devoid of any emotion. "They must be… removed from the board."
The cold, euphemistic finality of it made Jake's blood run cold. This was it. The first, fundamental moral line that he knew, with every fiber of his 21st-century being, that he could not cross. He could burn soldiers. He could blackmail generals. He could unleash a revolution.
But he could not stand by and let them murder these children.
He didn't argue. He knew he couldn't win. To them, it was a simple, logical, political calculation. To him, it was a monstrous crime.
But in that moment, staring at the smiling faces in the photograph, a new, secret purpose was forged in the fire of his guilt.
He had built a kingdom of power to protect the people he loved. What if he could use that power to do one, truly good thing? To prevent the one crime that history would never forgive?
It was an insane, impossible idea. A direct betrayal of the revolution he had just led. A mission that could get him executed by the very men he had just put in power.
And he knew, with absolute certainty, that he had to do it.
He needed an asset. Someone completely outside the Party's control. Someone loyal only to him, or to money. Someone who could operate in the deepest shadows.
He found Shliapnikov in the palace ballroom, trying to stop the sailors from using the priceless furniture for a bonfire. The big man's face was a mask of weary frustration.
"I need a man," Jake said, his voice low and urgent, pulling Shliapnikov away from the chaos.
"We have thousands of good men, Comrade," Shliapnikov said, wiping sweat from his brow.
"No," Jake said. "Not a Bolshevik. Not a soldier. I need a thief. A ghost. The best smuggler in Petrograd. Someone who knows the rat lines. Someone who can make people disappear."
Shliapnikov's weary expression shifted to one of deep confusion. He looked at Jake, his loyalty warring with his bewilderment. But his loyalty won. It always would.
"I know a man," he said slowly. "They call him 'The Finn.' Moves anything, anyone, if the price is right. But, Comrade… what for?"
Jake looked back down the long, grand corridor, towards the closed door of the Tsar's private study.
"I'm securing a package," he said, his voice a dead, emotionless whisper. "A priceless historical asset the revolution can't afford to lose."