The smell of cordite didn't leave the closet. It hung in the air, heavy and metallic, mixing with the copper scent of blood.
Jake sat on the edge of the desk. His hands were gripping the wood so hard his knuckles were white.
He wasn't shaking. Stalin didn't shake. But inside, Jake Vance was screaming.
He had just killed a man. Not a White General. Not a corrupt bureaucrat. He had killed a barista from Chicago. A guy who probably liked video games and craft beer. A guy who was just like him.
The door opened. Taranov stepped in.
The giant didn't look at the bloodstain on the floor. He held a bucket and a rag.
"The body is in the furnace," Taranov said. His voice was flat. "The ashes will be scattered in the Moscow River tonight."
Jake nodded. He tried to speak, but his throat clicked. He grabbed the bottle of vodka on the desk and took a long pull. It burned, but it didn't wash away the taste of bile.
"And the interrogator?" Jake asked.
"Taken care of," Taranov said. He dropped the rag onto the wet spot on the floor. "Accident with a tram. Very tragic."
Two dead men. One secret.
"Good," Jake whispered.
He looked at the empty chair where Mike had sat. For a second, he saw a flicker. A ghost. Mike, weeping, begging for his life in English.
You're a good guy, right?
Jake closed his eyes.
"Get the car," Jake ordered. "I need to go home."
Vyacheslav Menzhinsky sat in his office at the Lubyanka.
The room was dark, lit only by a green banker's lamp. The building was silent, save for the distant, muffled sounds from the basement cells.
On his desk lay a single sheet of thin, blue carbon paper.
He had read it ten times.
Subject: Unknown American.
Claim: The Union collapses in 1991.
Claim: Stalin is not from Georgia. He is from 'The Future'.
Menzhinsky took a drag of his cigarette. The smoke curled up into the darkness.
Any other Chekist would have burned this. They would have called it the ravings of a lunatic.
But Menzhinsky was not any other Chekist. He was a man who survived by noticing details.
He opened his desk drawer. He pulled out a file marked Industrialization Projections: 1928.
He compared the numbers.
Stalin had ordered the construction of the Magnitogorsk steel plant three years ahead of schedule. He had ordered specific alloys for tank armor that Soviet scientists hadn't even invented yet.
Stalin always knew. He knew which generals would betray him. He knew where the gold was hidden. He knew the weather before the meteorologists.
"A prophet," Menzhinsky whispered.
He looked back at the carbon paper.
He says the timeline is wrong. He says we are all ghosts.
Menzhinsky felt a chill that had nothing to do with the drafty window.
If Stalin knew the future, that explained his genius. But if the future was the collapse of the Soviet state...
Then Stalin wasn't building a paradise. He was building a bunker.
Menzhinsky folded the carbon paper carefully. He placed it inside the lining of his cigarette case.
He wouldn't strike yet. He was a spider. He would wait. He would watch.
And he would see if the "Man of Steel" bled like the rest of them.
The Kremlin apartment was warm.
Jake walked in quietly. He took off his boots by the door.
He felt like an intruder in his own life.
He walked into the bedroom. Nadya was asleep. The moonlight filtered through the curtains, painting her face in silver. She looked young. Too young.
She was twenty-three. In his timeline, she would be dead by thirty-one. Suicide. Driven to despair by his cruelty.
Jake sat on the edge of the bed. He watched her chest rise and fall.
"I did it for you," he whispered to the sleeping woman. "I did it so the tanks don't roll into Moscow."
It was a lie. He knew it was a lie. He did it because he was terrified of losing power.
Nadya stirred. Her eyes fluttered open.
"Koba?" she murmured, her voice thick with sleep.
"Go back to sleep, Nadya," he said softly.
She reached out a hand. She touched his arm.
"You smell like smoke," she said.
Jake froze.
"I was working," he said. "The pipe."
She frowned, her eyes adjusting to the dark. Her gaze dropped to his sleeve.
"What is that?"
Jake looked down.
On the white cuff of his tunic, there was a single, dark red speck.
Mike's blood.
Jake pulled his arm away quickly, hiding it behind his back.
"Ink," Jake said. His heart hammered against his ribs. "Red ink. For the corrections on the Five-Year Plan."
Nadya looked at him. She looked at his eyes. She saw something there—fear? Guilt?
But she was a good Bolshevik wife. She learned not to ask questions that had sharp edges.
"Come to bed," she whispered. "You work too hard."
Jake stood up.
"I have to wash," he said. "I'll be there soon."
He retreated to the bathroom. He turned on the faucet full blast.
He scrubbed the cuff. The water turned pink, then clear.
He looked in the mirror.
The face staring back was pockmarked. The mustache was thick. The eyes were yellow and tiger-like.
It was Stalin's face.
But the panic behind the eyes was all Jake.
"You are losing it," he told his reflection. "Pull it together."
The next morning. The Politburo meeting.
The room was filled with smoke and the smell of stale tea. Molotov was droning on about grain requisition figures in Ukraine.
Jake sat at the head of the table. He was doodling wolves on a notepad.
He hadn't slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard the gunshot.
"Comrade General Secretary?"
Jake looked up. Menzhinsky was standing. The head of the Cheka looked pale, sickly, but his eyes were sharp.
"Report," Jake grunted.
"The incident in Gorky," Menzhinsky said. His voice was smooth, like oil on water. "The saboteur."
The room went quiet. Sabotage was a dangerous word.
"Handled," Jake said. "Move on."
"Of course," Menzhinsky said. He didn't sit down. "However, there was a curious detail in the initial report. Before the... liquidation."
Jake stopped doodling. He didn't look up.
"Detail?" Jake asked.
"The saboteur kept shouting about 'microchips'," Menzhinsky said. He paused, letting the strange word hang in the air. "And something called 'The Internet'."
Molotov frowned. "What is an Internet?"
"Gibberish," Jake said. He forced his voice to be bored. "The ravings of a madman influenced by Western decadence."
He looked up at Menzhinsky.
Menzhinsky was smiling. A tiny, barely perceptive smile.
"I assumed as much," Menzhinsky said. "Though it is strange. He spoke of these things with such conviction. He claimed they were... tools of the future."
He was baiting him.
Jake felt a cold drop of sweat slide down his spine. Menzhinsky was testing him. He wanted to see if the words meant anything to Stalin.
If Jake reacted—if he showed recognition—Menzhinsky would know.
Jake let out a harsh laugh.
"Tools of the future?" Jake mocked. "The future is steel, Comrade Menzhinsky. The future is coal. Not fairy tales."
He slammed his hand on the table.
"Did he build a machine? Did he produce a weapon?"
"No, Comrade Stalin," Menzhinsky said softly.
"Then he was useless," Jake said. "And dead men do not build socialism. Sit down."
Menzhinsky bowed his head. "As you say."
He sat.
But as he shuffled his papers, Jake saw it. Menzhinsky didn't look chastised. He looked validated.
He knows, Jake thought. The realization hit him like a physical blow. He doesn't know what I am. But he knows I'm a liar.
The office was empty.
Jake dismissed the secretaries. He locked the door.
He went to his safe. He spun the dial.
Inside were the real maps. The ones with the dates from his history books.
1929: Stock Market Crash.
1933: Hitler takes power.
1939: Invasion of Poland.
1941: Operation Barbarossa.
He needed to check the timeline. He needed to reassure himself that he was still in control.
He pulled out the ledger for German industrial output. The Finn had smuggled it in yesterday.
Jake ran his finger down the column.
German Steel Production, 1925: 14 million tons.
Jake froze.
He closed his eyes. He remembered his PhD thesis. He remembered the number.
In real history, German steel production in 1925 was 12 million tons.
It was higher. Two million tons higher.
"Why?" Jake whispered.
He grabbed the intelligence reports.
Report: heavy investment from American banks. Fear of Soviet rapid industrialization prompting Western loans to Germany.
Jake dropped the paper.
It was the Butterfly Effect.
Because Jake was building factories too fast, the West was getting scared. They were pumping money into Germany to create a buffer.
He was accidentally making Germany stronger.
He was making Hitler stronger.
Jake looked at the map of Europe. The borders seemed to shift before his eyes.
"I fixed the famine," he whispered. "But I broke the war."
He looked at the empty chair in the corner of the office.
For a second, he saw Mike again. The bloodied barista was grinning at him.
You can't save them, Jake, the ghost whispered. The timeline always corrects itself.
Jake grabbed the heavy brass inkwell from his desk. He hurled it at the chair.
It smashed into the wall, spraying black ink across the wallpaper like shrapnel.
The chair was empty.
Jake stood in the silence, breathing hard.
He was the most powerful man on earth. He had an army. He had the secret police. He had the future in his head.
But for the first time since he woke up in 1924, Jake Vance didn't know what was going to happen next.
And Menzhinsky was watching.