Dawn did not arrive so much as relent. Gray light seeped through the stable's filth-streaked windows and made the room look tired. Outside, the city smoked. The port fires had been put out; the charred ruins still smoldered. A lone fire bell clanged somewhere in the distance.
Inside, the air smelled of horse, hay, and cooling blood. Koba, Pavel, Murat, and Ivan worked quietly, taking the uniforms off the three Russian soldiers they had killed. The night's brutality was finished; now came the close, ugly work.
Jake Vance's head filled with noise he could not share. This was not the remote, clinical violence he had read about in history books. It was hands-on, immediate. He had to touch the bodies. He had to strip them. He had to make the dead into something he could wear.
Koba — the other man inside him — was steady. He moved like someone doing practical, necessary work. He unpinned chevrons, memorized the placement of regimental patches, checked pockets. A half-eaten apple. A letter from Tver. A cheap tin Saint George. He catalogued these things like data points, not memories. They were material for a disguise.
Anya ran the final preparations. She did not sew and did not polish boots; she taught appearances. She paced around them, correcting posture and small gestures until every motion felt like habit rather than performance.
"No," she cut Ivan off as he wrestled with the gaiters. "Buckles on the outside. Again."
Koba, now in the sergeant's coat, looked different. The uniform gave him a shape the room respected. Anya watched him, sharp and unforgiving.
"Your salute," she ordered. "From the temple. Snap it — bored. A real soldier does not perform. He dismisses."
He snapped the salute. It was too obvious.
"You look like a student pretending," she said. "Be weary. Be small with your motion. A sergeant is tired of everything."
Her role had changed. She was not a fan now; she was his drill sergeant. Survival depended on precision.
"You will use ranks only," she told them. "Koba — Sergeant Orlov. The rest — privates. No talking unless spoken to. No smoking on the platform. No slouching. Semyonovsky Regiment. Discipline. If you are sloppy, your face will never be the problem."
As they finished checks and loaded weapons, Koba and Anya shared a look that carried everything they would not say aloud.
"You should come," Koba said. It sounded like logistics, not pleading. "You think sharp. That matters."
Anya paused. Something flickered across her face and then was gone.
"No," she said. "We need four soldiers. A woman is a flaw in the cover story. Timur needs someone here who thinks. Without me, his new power falls apart. I will use the chaos you make to build strength where I stand. When you return, you'll have ports and harbors. For now, go."
No theatrics, no soft goodbyes. They divided tasks like commanders apportioning troops.
In his office, Prime Minister Stolypin turned the small silver Chechen button in his palm. It was heavy and cold. The hunt for the fugitive had failed at catching the man. The chase for his network had to begin.
"Forget the ghost," he told Colonel Sazonov. He set the button on the desk. "Find Timur's associates. Every enforcer, every merchant who pays protection, every corrupt cop. Raid the teahouses. Dismantle the safe houses. Squeeze the city until it gives us a name."
Sazonov's fatigue sharpened into purpose. This was the sort of work he liked. He would not chase shadows. He would take apart the machine that let the ghost slip through.
The four in uniform moved through St. Petersburg's gray morning like real soldiers. Their coats were neat. Their shoulders were straight. Koba walked with a tired swagger; Pavel and the two Chechens stepped behind him, rifles carried correctly, faces neutral.
They cut a tidy figure. They were murderers in stolen cloth, but the world read the uniform, not the hands beneath it.
The Finland Station loomed ahead. It had been sealed tight since the trouble began. Military police in dark green formed a line. Plainclothes Okhrana stood where they could watch faces and luggage. The station was a choke point; every passerby was under a dozen eyes.
Koba felt his chest tighten. He could feel Jake under the skin, a human pulse insisting on being noticed, on measuring what they were doing against what he once was. This was the point of no return. They were walking into the most watched place in the empire with false names and false lives.
Their train left in an hour. Between them and the carriage were hundreds of people who might ask the kind of questions that killed men on sight.
They approached the platform and kept to their role. Koba drilled his posture into the bones of his body. He flattened his face into the tired, officious mask of Sergeant Orlov. He checked the rifle strap, let his jaw relax into the right expression.
Every step was a risk. A single hesitation, a single misread glance, and the entire plan would collapse.
The platform smelled of coal and steam. A soldier nearby adjusted his belt the way Koba had practiced. A conductor barked an order. An Okhrana man paused under a lamp, noticing faces with the slow, patient hunger of a trapper.
Koba kept moving. He kept the soldier's small tic at the temple. He kept his eyes in the right place. The city around them blurred into necessary background noise: carts, porters, coughing passengers.
But the doubt—Jake's doubt—banged against the edges of his mind. He saw the apple from the dead soldier in a pocket and tasted the cold of teeth that had bit it. He felt the weight of the button in Stolypin's hand as if it were a stone in his own palm.
The train would not wait forever. The hour narrowed. The number of eyes increased.
They were close enough now to feel the heat from the locomotive. The whistle blew somewhere down the tracks, a thin, urgent cry.
Koba tightened his grip. He stepped toward the ticket barrier and, for the first time since the stable, allowed a pulse of something like fear to pass through him. The guard in front of him lifted an eyebrow.
"Papers," the guard said.