The change was instant. One heartbeat the safe house was tense but controlled. The next it was moving at full sprint. Sirens rose in the distance—thin at first, then swelling. The net was closing.
Kamo didn't wait for orders. He welcomed the crisis like air after drowning.
"Sandro, archives—burn it all! Mikheil, weapons—carry what we can, smash the rest! Davri, back ways—clear them now!"
Men snapped into motion. Years of training took over. Paper flared in the iron stove. Smoke stung the eyes. Lists, reports, maps—gone in mouthfuls of fire. Each soft thud of ash felt like cutting off a limb to save the body.
Jake didn't look at any of it. He had one task.
He pushed into the small room. Kato stood frozen, hands clasped tight, eyes wide. She'd heard the shouts. She smelled the smoke. She knew.
"What's happening?" she whispered.
No time to soften it. No room for lies. The mask dropped. Husband off. Commander on.
"We're leaving," he said, voice flat. "Now. The house is blown. You're in danger. Coat."
The tone hit her harder than the words. This wasn't the man she'd chased across a continent. This was a stranger made of angles and ice. She fumbled for her coat.
He didn't wait. Two long strides. A firm grip on her arm. Not cruel—just impersonal.
"This way. Stay close. Don't speak."
They moved through smoke and noise. Men shattered rifle stocks on stone. The stove roared like a furnace at a wake. Jake led her through the kitchen, down a narrow hall, to a reinforced back door. He shoved it open.
Cold air. A filthy cobblestone alley. Sirens closer now. Shouts carried on the wind. A dog barked itself hoarse somewhere in the dark.
The grandmaster was gone. The fugitive took his place. His mind mapped shadows, corners, blind turns. Routes clicked past like beads on a string. He pulled Kato with him, never loosening his grip. She stumbled on uneven stones but kept up, breath coming in sharp, scared bursts.
They stopped in the shadow of a dead stable, blocks from the house. A farmer's cart waited, harness on a tired horse. The driver's hat brim hid his face.
This was the ride. It should've left at dawn. It would leave now, under sirens.
"Soso, what is going on?" Kato asked. Her voice cracked. She searched his face for the man she knew. "Please. Tell me."
He couldn't. He wouldn't. I raised a ghost. I won and still lost. I lit a city on fire and put you in its path. None of that would protect her. Truth would stain her. He chose the only shield he trusted—distance.
"Party business," he said, voice like ice. He kept his gaze just past her shoulder. "Tbilisi is no longer safe. The driver is loyal. He'll take you to Borjomi. He has instructions."
The cold landed harder than a blow. Whatever ember of hope she had left guttered. This didn't sound like a promise. It sounded like a dismissal.
"Is this it?" she whispered. "Is this what you've become?"
He had no answer that wasn't a lie or a confession. He opened the cart door and helped her up. Her hand was cold.
"Do not try to contact me," he said. "I'll contact you. When it's over."
He shut the door. The sound echoed down the alley. The driver clicked his tongue. The cart groaned forward and slipped into the dark.
Jake stood alone. The city's chaos rolled over him like a tide.
He'd saved her. The weak point was out of the blast radius. Shaumian would likely walk free. On paper, the night was a win.
It tasted like ash.
Stolypin had stolen the story and turned it into a weapon. The Tbilisi network—months of work—was scattered and running. And Kato had seen what he was now. Not a man carrying a burden. A shell that moved and commanded and cut.
He stared into the empty alley where the cart had vanished.
He had never been stronger. He had bent reality. He had matched the sharpest mind in the empire.
And he had never felt more alone.
Days blurred after the escape—measured less by clocks than by losses.
The room stank of damp plaster, sweat, and fear. Days had passed since the raids began—days that felt like years. The silence between reports was worse than gunfire. Every hour brought news of another comrade gone, another address burned.
This safe house wasn't a base. It was a hole—small, dirty, temporary. A place to hide, not to plan.
For Jake, it was déjà vu. He was no longer the grand strategist moving pieces across a board. He was a fugitive again, trapped in the aftermath of his own brilliance. The table before him was covered in scraps of paper—each one a death notice disguised as intelligence.
The print shop on Varketili Street—gone. Three comrades taken.
The tannery cache—compromised. The Zotov brothers tortured.
The rail yard cell—silent for two days.
He had freed Shaumian. He had won. And in winning, he had lost everything else. Stolypin had turned his perfect play into a weapon and smashed Tbilisi flat with it. The taste of victory was bitter as ash.
The door creaked. Kamo entered, broad-shouldered but hollow-eyed. His confidence, once unshakable, had been replaced by fatigue.
"More reports," he said, dropping a handful of coded scraps onto the table. "At least a dozen dead. Twice that in hiding. The Okhrana owns the streets."
Jake didn't look up. "We'll rebuild. We've done it before."
"It's not the same, Soso." Kamo's voice was quiet, reluctant. "The men are… grumbling."
Jake's gaze lifted, cold and sharp. "Grumbling?"
Kamo exhaled, the words tasting like betrayal. "They say the plan was too clever. That it was the work of an academic, not a fighter. That we lost the city to save one man—and now the Okhrana parades that same man as proof of our failure."
The words hit harder than any bullet. It wasn't just doubt—it was loss of faith.
Jake kept his face still. "Fear makes men talk," he said. "Once we strike back, they'll remember who leads them."
Kamo nodded, but his eyes lingered with unease. The iron certainty that had always defined him was cracked.
When he left, the silence swallowed the room again. Jake stared at the papers, but his mind was elsewhere—miles away, in the mountains, in the small cottage where Kato waited. Or perhaps didn't.
He had told himself his mission was for history—to fix what went wrong. But now that justification felt hollow. What he wanted, truly, was her. To build a world where he could stand beside her again—not as the cold creature he'd become, but as a man. That thought made him vulnerable. It also made him dangerous.
A knock broke his trance. A courier slipped inside, barely more than a boy. He dropped a bundle of oilcloth-wrapped newspapers on the table and vanished without a word.
Kamo returned as Jake unwrapped them. The papers were from St. Petersburg—days old, but priceless. They began reading.
Stolypin's press conference dominated every front page. A large photo of Pyotr Dolidze stared back at them—dressed in a borrowed suit, eyes soft and haunted. A reformed hero. A saint.
"'BOLSHEVIK TERROR EXPOSED!'" Kamo read bitterly. "'THEY TRIED TO KILL ME FOR DISAGREEING!'"
The articles were full of lies—lies crafted so well they felt like truth. Pyotr spoke of Soso's cruelty, Kamo's assassins, the Party's bloodlust. Every word twisted Jake's operation into a confession.
Then, buried in the third page, a small note.
"Bolshevik agitator Stepan Shaumian released. Charges dropped due to insufficient evidence."
That was it. No headlines. No photo. Just a line.
Kamo dropped the paper. "So he's free. But now he's branded as a murderer. And that puppet of yours is the empire's hero." He looked up. "What was it all for, Soso?"
Jake didn't respond. His eyes were distant, cold. Stolypin had won the narrative war. The truth was irrelevant now. If they spoke, they'd sound like liars. If they acted, they'd look like monsters.
He couldn't fight propaganda with propaganda. He had to break it.
"Kamo," Jake said finally, voice calm but charged with something new. "Forget the network for now. I need information."
Kamo frowned. "On what?"
Jake's eyes glinted with a dangerous light. "Pyotr Dolidze. Everything. Who he was before all this. Where he drank. Who he loved. Family, friends, anyone."
Kamo blinked. "His family? Soso, he's theirs now. The Okhrana owns him. Why—"
Jake cut him off with a look that froze the air. It wasn't the gaze of a leader. It was something sharper, colder.
"Because a ghost," Jake said softly, "can't have a family."