The armored train screamed through the night.
Iron wheels hammered against the frozen tracks. Clack-clack. Clack-clack. It sounded like a countdown.
Jake sat in the private carriage. A bottle of Georgian brandy sat open on the table. It was half empty.
He wasn't drunk. The adrenaline was burning through the alcohol faster than he could drink it.
Nadya sat opposite him. She was wrapped in a thick wool blanket. Her face was pale in the flickering electric light.
"You are shaking, Koba," she said softly.
Jake looked at his hands. She was right. A fine tremor ran through his fingers.
"It is the cold," Jake lied. "The heater is broken."
Nadya stood up. She walked over to him. She didn't ask about the heater. She didn't ask about the destination.
She simply wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his head against her chest.
"You are carrying the world," she whispered into his hair. "Put it down for a moment."
Jake closed his eyes. He smelled her soap. Lavender. It smelled like peace.
He wanted to stay there. He wanted to freeze time in this carriage, before they reached the Urals. Before he saw the catastrophe.
But the train whistle blew. A long, mournful shriek.
"We are here," Jake said.
He pulled away from her. He put his mask back on. The mask of Stalin.
"Stay in the carriage, Nadya," he ordered. "It is not safe outside."
"But Koba—"
"This is an order," he snapped. Then, softer: "Please. For me."
She nodded, biting her lip. "Come back."
Jake grabbed his heavy military coat. He stepped out into the biting wind.
The siding was buried in snow.
Floodlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the razor wire. This was Site Zero. The Secret City.
It didn't look like a city. It looked like a graveyard.
Men in heavy rubber suits waddled through the slush. They were carrying crates lead-lined with grey metal.
The Finn was waiting on the platform. He looked older than he had a month ago. His face was gaunt, his eyes hollow.
"How bad?" Jake asked. The wind snatched the words from his mouth.
"Bad," The Finn spat. "The reactor vessel cracked. A steam explosion. Radioactive vapor vented into the main lab."
"Casualties?"
"Three dead instantly. Ipatieff didn't make it to the infirmary. Twelve others have burns. The invisible kind."
Jake felt a sick lurch in his stomach.
Ipatieff was the brain. He was the only one who understood the separation chemistry.
"Take me to Heisenberg," Jake said.
"He is in isolation," The Finn warned. "The doctors say—"
"I don't care what the doctors say. Move."
They walked towards the concrete bunker. A Geiger counter on the Finn's belt clicked.
Click... click... click-click.
The sound of death.
The infirmary smelled of bleach and ozone.
Werner Heisenberg sat on the edge of a cot. His hands were bandaged. His face was smeared with iodine.
He looked up as Jake entered. There was no arrogance in his blue eyes today. Only terror.
"You tried to kill me," Heisenberg whispered.
"I gave you everything you asked for," Jake said coldly. "Money. Labor. Uranium."
"You gave me peasants!" Heisenberg shouted, standing up. "You gave me blacksmiths to build a spaceship! The seals failed. The metallurgy was flawed. We are trying to do 1940s science with 1920s steel!"
Jake grabbed the German by the collar of his hospital gown. He shoved him back onto the cot.
"Fix it," Jake hissed.
"I cannot!" Heisenberg sobbed. "Ipatieff had the formula for the heavy water ratios. It was in his head! It's gone!"
Jake stared at the scientist.
The timeline had snapped. In real history, Heisenberg failed because he lacked resources. Here, he had failed because he had too many, too soon.
"You are useless to me," Jake said.
He turned to the Finn.
"Lock him up. If he doesn't work, he doesn't eat."
"And the project?" The Finn asked.
" stalled," Jake admitted. "We are blind."
He walked out of the room. He couldn't breathe. The air felt thick, contaminated.
He needed air.
Jake stood outside the bunker, leaning against the cold concrete wall.
He gasped for breath. The panic attack was clawing at his throat.
He had failed. The bomb was delayed by years. The Germans were building rockets. The Americans were watching.
He had tried to force history onto a track it wasn't ready for, and the train had derailed.
"You look like a man trying to read a map in the dark."
The voice was quiet. Cultured.
Jake spun around.
Menzhinsky stood there. The Cheka head was wearing a long black leather trench coat. He was smoking a cigarette, unbothered by the radioactive wind.
"I told you to secure the perimeter," Jake growled.
"The perimeter is secure," Menzhinsky said. He took a drag. "The threat is internal."
He walked closer. He stopped three paces away. Respectful, but not fearful.
"You are panicking, Comrade Stalin," Menzhinsky observed. "It is unlike you. Usually, you know exactly what comes next."
Jake stiffened. "The situation has changed."
"Has it?" Menzhinsky tilted his head. "Or has the script changed?"
Jake's hand drifted toward his holster.
Menzhinsky raised a hand. A placating gesture.
"I am not your enemy, Koba. I am your mechanic. I fix things."
Menzhinsky pointed with his cigarette toward the smoking vent of the ruined lab.
"You are trying to build the German bomb," Menzhinsky said. "You brought a German scientist. You use German methods. Heavy water. Precision."
"It is the best way," Jake defended.
"Is it?" Menzhinsky asked. "Or is it just the way you know?"
Jake froze.
"The Germans are precision," Menzhinsky continued. "They are watches. We are not watches, Comrade. We are a sledgehammer."
Menzhinsky dropped the cigarette. He crushed it with his boot.
"Why are you trying to copy a future that hasn't happened yet? Why not use what we have now?"
Jake stared at the crushed cigarette.
We are a sledgehammer.
Menzhinsky was right. Jake had been trying to replicate the Manhattan Project. Or the Nazi project. He was trying to be elegant.
But the Soviet Union wasn't elegant. It was vast. It was brutal. It had unlimited resources and zero regard for safety.
He didn't need a perfect reactor. He needed a big one.
"Graphite," Jake whispered.
The Americans used graphite to moderate their reactors. It was dirtier. It was dangerous. But it was easier to manufacture than heavy water.
And the Soviets had mountains of graphite.
"We don't need Heisenberg," Jake realized. "He is too careful. He is too... German."
He looked at Menzhinsky.
"You are right," Jake said. "I was reading the wrong script."
Menzhinsky smiled. It was a thin, reptilian smile.
"I am glad to be of service."
Jake stormed back into the command center.
The Finn jumped up. "Koba?"
"Get me a phone," Jake ordered. "Get me the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad."
"Who are we calling?"
"Igor Kurchatov," Jake said.
The Finn frowned. " The junior researcher? He is a nobody. He is twenty-two years old."
"He is young," Jake said. "He is hungry. And he doesn't know what is impossible yet."
In Jake's timeline, Kurchatov wouldn't lead the atomic project for another fifteen years. He was a child.
But Jake was done waiting for history to mature.
"Fire Heisenberg," Jake said. "Send him to the gulag. I don't want his precision anymore."
He grabbed a piece of paper. He began to draw. Not a complex schematic, but a rough, ugly block.
"We are switching to graphite modulation," Jake announced. "We are going to build a pile the size of a cathedral. We will use brute force."
"It will be unstable," The Finn warned. "If it goes wrong, it will wipe out the Urals."
"Then we will build it deep," Jake said. "Dig a hole. A mile deep."
He looked at the map on the wall. He ripped down the timeline he had pinned there—the one with the dates of the 1940s.
He crumbled it up and threw it in the trash.
"The future is gone," Jake said. The panic in his chest was gone, replaced by a cold, hard resolve.
He wasn't a historian anymore. He wasn't a time traveler trying to preserve a sequence of events.
He was the architect of a new world. A darker, faster world.
"Get Kurchatov," Jake repeated. "Tell him the Motherland needs a sledgehammer."
Menzhinsky stood in the doorway, watching. He tapped his pocket, where the carbon copy lay hidden.
He nodded once.
The Prophet had stopped reading. Now, he was writing.
Jake walked back to the train.
The wind was still howling, but the sound of the Geiger counter had faded.
He climbed into the carriage.
Nadya was awake. She looked up, her eyes wide with worry.
"Is it fixed?" she asked.
Jake sat down. He poured himself a brandy. His hand was steady.
"No," Jake said. "It is broken. So we are building something else."
He looked at his wife. He reached out and touched her cheek. Her skin was warm.
"I am going to change everything, Nadya," he said softly. "The history books... they won't make sense anymore."
"I don't care about history books," Nadya said, covering his hand with hers. "I only care about us."
Jake smiled. It was a sad smile.
He knew that by changing history, he was entering the unknown. He couldn't predict the stock market anymore. He couldn't predict the war.
He was flying blind.
But as the train lurched forward, heading back to Moscow, Jake felt a strange sense of freedom.
The script was burned.
Now, the real game began.