The room Pavel offered them was little more than a closet—no windows, no light, and the stale smell of spilled beer and old sweat. Sawdust crunched under their boots. The air was thick and sour. Yet, for the moment, it was the safest place in the empire.
Pavel set down a bottle of vodka and a dented bowl of greasy stew. "Two days," he said flatly. His one good eye swept over them. "After that, you're gone. The Okhrana raids this district every few weeks. You bring a fire I don't need."
"We're grateful," Kamo said quietly.
Pavel wasn't listening. "You help me, I help you," he said simply. "The owner of the Putilov factory owes us. He cut wages, filled his own pockets. The payroll wagon comes in two days. We're taking it."
He grinned, teeth yellow and broken. "We can fight. We can bleed. But we're messy. The last time, the street was red and we lost two good men. I want it clean this time."
His gaze shifted to Jake—pale, wounded, but alert. He saw the intelligence in those eyes, the focus that set him apart. Then he looked at Kamo—the muscle, the weapon.
"You," he said, pointing at Jake, "look like a man who plans. And you," he said to Kamo, "look like one who kills. You'll help us. In return for your stay."
It wasn't a request.
Jake exchanged a glance with Kamo. They were guests—but also prisoners. To refuse meant the street. To accept meant survival.
"We'll help," Jake said evenly. His voice gave nothing away. His mind was already working.
The next morning, they met in the storage room, the air thick with the stench of sweat and cheap tobacco. Pavel and his lieutenants spread a stained napkin on the floor, using bottle caps as markers for guards and routes.
Their plan was exactly what Jake expected—blunt, loud, suicidal.
Block the road. Attack head-on. Kill the guards. Grab the cash. Run.
It was madness disguised as courage.
Pavel looked up, waiting for approval. "Well? What does the clever one think?"
Jake took a slow breath. Despite the pain in his arm and the disgust twisting his stomach, the strategist in him stirred. He couldn't help himself.
"I think you'll all be dead in five minutes," he said softly. The room went still. "You're thinking like brawlers. Think like soldiers."
He reached down and began to rearrange their crude map. "The wagon is strongest here—at the gate. That's why you lose. You hit it here." He moved the bottle caps. "It stops at the district bank first. Three minutes. Two guards inside. Two outside. That's your window."
He began to speak faster, his voice steady, his mind alive.
"You'll need a diversion. A fire here—" he pointed at a nearby tenement "—enough to draw the police patrol away. Ten minutes before the wagon arrives." He assigned tasks, timed their movements, built layers of escape routes.
When he was finished, the crude brawl had become a machine—a living, breathing operation. Brutal. Efficient. Perfect.
The gangsters stared at him as if he'd conjured magic from smoke. This quiet, wounded man saw war where they saw chaos.
And as Jake explained, something in him shifted. The thrill returned—the clarity, the clean logic, the control. The pain in his arm faded. The guilt faded. He was building again, commanding again.
The teacher inside him whispered in horror: Is this what I've become? Just a more articulate thief?
But another voice—colder, older—answered. You are a leader. You bring order to chaos. That's all that matters.
The line between revolutionary and criminal blurred until it vanished.
He handed a small wrapped package to a wiry young thug named Misha. "You'll start the fire. Then you'll run north, past Smolny. Behind the monastery garden wall, there's a loose brick. Leave this there."
Inside the bundle was a coded message—a plea for contact, a lifeline thrown into the void.
When the plan was done, Pavel clapped Jake's shoulder. "With you two, we can't fail. You'll get your share."
Jake nodded. The gangsters grinned. Kamo quietly cleaned his rifle.
This was his army now—men of blood and smoke, loyal to coin and survival.
He told himself this was temporary. A means to rebuild. To return to the mission.
But as he watched these killers hang on his every word, he wondered if the truth was simpler. Maybe this—this control, this mastery, this power—was what he had wanted all along.
Jake Vance, the idealist, the man who'd tried to save the world from monsters, was fading.
And what remained was learning to enjoy the darkness.