The door opened.
Pavel, Murat, and Ivan stepped back into the apartment, their faces drawn and uncertain. They had wandered Zurich's clean, quiet streets for what felt like hours — men out of place in a world of clocks and polished glass — while their fate was being decided upstairs.
Now, the air felt different. The storm had passed, but its echo still clung to the room.
Koba sat exactly where they had left him. The ledger and his manuscript still lay on the table, side by side, like trophies from a war no one else had seen. His face was pale, unreadable. The silence around him was heavy, dangerous — the silence of something newly armed.
Pavel's heart hammered. He couldn't stand it anymore.
"What did he say, Ioseb?" he asked quietly. "About Kato?"
The use of her name — of his name — slipped out before he could stop it. A plea, not from a soldier to a commander, but from one man to another.
Koba looked up slowly. His eyes focused as if from far away. He didn't repeat Lenin's cold logic. He didn't tell them that the Party had reduced her to an asset. What they needed was hope, not truth.
"The Party will handle it," he said evenly. "It's now a high-priority operation. Their best agents are already moving. They'll locate her. Assess the situation. Plan the extraction."
The words were clean, strong — a victory.
Murat and Ivan exchanged relieved looks. In their minds, the problem was solved. The Party was powerful, unstoppable. Their leader had delivered.
But Pavel saw through it. He saw the hollow space behind Koba's calm. He saw the silent grief in his eyes — a grief so deep it had frozen solid. He understood: Kato hadn't been saved. She had been nationalized. Her life now belonged to the revolution.
He gave a slow, wordless nod.
Koba stood, the chair scraping softly against the floor. The moment for mourning was gone.
"Our mission has changed," he said, his voice sharp again. "We're no longer fugitives. We're the founders of a new intelligence directorate — the Party's eyes and ears for the coming war."
He looked at each of them in turn. "Our base will be Vienna. Our first objective: a high-value target. A rival revolutionary named Trotsky."
The names meant little, but the meaning was clear. They had ascended — from criminals to operatives, from survivors to soldiers of history.
"Murat," Koba said, turning to him, "you'll lead counter-surveillance. You'll watch without being seen. Ivan — enforcement. Keep us safe. Pavel…" He paused, meeting his gaze. "You're my second. My right hand. The fist to my mind."
He was giving them order. Purpose. A hierarchy forged out of chaos. And with that, he bound them tighter than ever.
That night, Koba didn't sleep.
The others did — finally. Exhaustion took them. But he sat alone in the dark, the Zurich moon spilling through the window in thin silver lines.
The cold strategist inside him, the one who had stared down Lenin, was silent now. And into that silence came Jake Vance — the man trapped beneath the monster.
He had done it. He had met Lenin — the man who would one day rule a sixth of the earth. He had predicted the Great War and watched the world shift around his words. He was no longer a victim of time. He was its architect.
And the price was his soul.
Kato was gone. Not dead, not alive — just gone, absorbed into the machinery of revolution. The memory that had once made him human was now currency in Lenin's ledger. He had become a creature of power — a prophet of death, a man who could debate the deaths of millions without flinching.
He had saved the world from one monster. And in doing so, had become something far worse.
He was no longer sure where Jake ended and Koba began.
The next morning, as they prepared for the train to Vienna, Koba requested a private word with Yagoda.
The younger man entered briskly, deferential, his earlier arrogance gone. "The Chairman was… impressed, Comrade Koba," he said with an eager smile. "He told me you have a mind like a calculating machine — but forged from Damascus steel."
Koba said nothing. His eyes were cold, hollow. Compliments meant nothing.
"The operation in Kiev," he said quietly. "I want a message sent to the field commander."
Yagoda nodded quickly. "Of course. What are your instructions?"
Koba's voice was calm. Measured. Terrifying.
"The capture of Ekaterina Svanidze was a catastrophic failure of our intelligence network," he said. "A failure caused by one agent's incompetence. The man who led her into the bomb plot, whose carelessness put her in the Okhrana's hands."
He didn't say the name. He didn't have to. Yagoda already knew.
Koba leaned in slightly. His tone dropped to a whisper of ice.
"Failures like that spread. They weaken everything. To preserve discipline, there must be consequences."
He paused.
"You will instruct the Kiev team to find Yasha," he said. "And you will instruct them to eliminate him. Quietly. Efficiently. No reports. No noise."
Yagoda froze. Then his expression shifted — shock, comprehension, fear. He understood this wasn't Party policy. This was vengeance wearing the Party's face.
Koba didn't blink.
His grief hadn't broken him. It had simply hardened into another weapon. Another lever of control.
He wasn't just predicting history anymore.
He was making it.
One order.
One death.
One step closer to the monster the world would one day know.