The slate tiles were daggers of ice, even through the thin soles of the worn-out boots. Jake lay flat on his stomach on the rooftop, the rough surface pressing into him, the biting wind a constant, physical assault. Below him, the street was a canyon of shadows, a stage waiting for its tragedy. He was a fraud playing at god, a ghost in a sniper's nest, and the only thing colder than the Nagant revolver pressed against his cheek was the knot of dread in his stomach.
A sour, coppery taste coated his tongue—the taste of pure, unadulterated fear. Bile rose in his throat, and he had to swallow it down, his body rebelling against the cold-blooded act his mind had set in motion. He was a history teacher. He got nervous speaking in front of the school board. Now he was perched on a roof, preparing to commit murder.
He risked a glance over the low parapet. Down below, swallowed by the inky blackness of an alleyway, was a deeper patch of shadow that he knew was Kamo. The man was utterly still, radiating a lethal calm that Jake found both monstrous and, to his shame, slightly enviable. Kamo wasn't fighting his conscience. He didn't have one to fight. He was a predator, settled in for the hunt, perfectly at home in the violence Jake was merely visiting. He was a part of the darkness itself.
Minutes stretched into an eternity, each tick of Jake's frantic pulse a drumbeat counting down to damnation. The wind whistled through the gaps in the rooftops, a low, mournful sound. He was freezing, shaking uncontrollably, and he prayed that when the time came, his hands would be steady enough to perform the terrible task he'd assigned himself.
Then, a figure appeared at the far end of the street.
It was Giorgi.
From his high vantage point, the boy looked impossibly small, a lonely figure swallowed by the oppressive stone architecture of the old city. He walked with a forced, jaunty stride, a child trying to wear the boots of a man, his head held high. Jake could imagine the revolutionary fire in the boy's heart, the pride at being chosen for such an important mission. He was a line of poetry in a butcher's ledger.
Jake's stomach churned violently. This was his doing. He had taken that boy's innocent fervor and twisted it into a lure. He was watching a lamb, which he himself had led, walk toward the slaughter. A voice screamed in his head—Stop this! Yell! Warn him!—but he choked it down. He forced his eyes to stay open, to watch. This was his sin. He would not have the coward's comfort of looking away.
Giorgi drew closer to the designated building, his footsteps echoing unnervingly in the silence.
And then they came.
Like sharks gliding out of the deep, four men detached themselves from the doorways and deep shadows. They didn't run; they moved with a quiet, fluid purpose that was far more terrifying. They wore the dark coats and flat caps of dockworkers, but they moved with the coordinated grace of wolves circling their prey. They didn't draw weapons. Their intention was a silent, professional capture.
They formed a loose semi-circle around Giorgi, cutting off his path. The boy stopped dead. His brave posture collapsed, his face, even from this distance, becoming a pale mask of confusion, then dawning, absolute terror.
This was the moment. The signal. Jake's throat was dry as dust. He was supposed to whistle. A simple breath of air to unleash hell.
He hesitated. For one, long, agonizing second that stretched time to its breaking point, he couldn't do it. His humanity, the Jake Vance he thought he was crushing, fought back with a final, desperate surge.
Down below, Kamo's head shifted slightly in the darkness, a minute, questioning movement that screamed with impatience.
Jake forced the air from his lungs. The sound that came out wasn't the sharp, clear whistle he intended. It was a low, breathy, pathetic noise, like the cry of a dying bird.
But it was enough.
The world exploded.
It wasn't the clean pop-pop-pop of movies. It was a deafening, concussive roar as Kamo and Pyotr opened fire from the alley. Muzzle flashes lit the street in hellish, strobing bursts of orange, the sound of the Nagants like cannons going off in the enclosed space, echoing and re-echoing off the stone walls.
Two of the agents crumpled instantly, their dark coats unable to stop the heavy, tumbling rounds. The other two reacted with shocked speed, drawing their own pistols and returning fire wildly into the alley's darkness. Bullets sparked off the walls, whining through the air.
Jake's moment had come. He leveled the heavy revolver, his hands shaking so badly the sights blurred. He centered the barrel on the back of one of the remaining agents, squeezed his eyes half-shut, and pulled the trigger.
The recoil was a vicious, physical blow, slamming his shoulder and jarring his teeth. The shot went wide, not even close. The bullet screamed off the cobblestones a good five feet to the left of his target, a pathetic, impotent gesture. He was horrified by his own incompetence.
But Kamo was not incompetent. He burst from the alley's cover, a whirlwind of brutal efficiency. He moved low and fast. Boom. The third agent fell. Boom. The fourth agent staggered back, clutching his chest, before collapsing onto the stones.
For a split second, there was a ringing, profound silence, broken only by the boy's terrified whimpering. The ambush had worked. Four bodies lay twisted on the ground.
But then—
A window on the second story of the building across from Jake shattered outwards. A fifth man, the overwatch he had predicted, leaned out, his face a grim mask of fury. He had a different angle. He was out of Kamo's line of sight.
He leveled his pistol, not at the revolutionaries in the alley, but at the easiest, most defenseless target. At the terrified boy, Giorgi, who was frozen like a cornered animal in the middle of the street.
The sound of a single, final gunshot cracked through the night, echoing down the empty alley.
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