The nursery was cold.
Jake knelt in front of his son. He gripped Yuri's shoulders, searching the boy's eyes for a sign of the child he loved.
But Yuri's gaze was flat. Distant. Like he was reading text on a screen that only he could see.
"Yuri," Jake whispered. "Who am I?"
Yuri blinked. The coldness vanished for a second.
"Papa," Yuri said. His voice trembled. "My head hurts. It's loud."
"What is loud?"
" The numbers," Yuri sobbed. "They won't stop counting."
Jake pulled the boy into a hug. Yuri's body was rigid. He felt like a coiled spring.
"We need a doctor," Jake said to Taranov, who stood by the door, hand on his gun.
"Boss, if Turing is in there..." Taranov trailed off. He looked terrified of a five-year-old.
"Get Lysenko," Jake ordered. "Now."
The Secret City. The Medical Bay.
Dr. Lysenko shone a light into Yuri's eyes.
"Pupil response is... accelerated," Lysenko muttered. "His brain activity is off the charts. Alpha waves like I've never seen."
"Is he possessed?" Jake asked. He felt ridiculous saying it.
"Not possessed," Lysenko said. "Imprinted. Turing's neural pattern... it's a data stream. When the mainframe died, it sought the nearest compatible receiver."
He pointed to the faint scars on Yuri's temples where the headset had been.
"The boy has the genetic markers. High intelligence. Plasticity. He downloaded the ghost."
"Get it out," Jake said.
"I can't," Lysenko said. "It's woven into his synaptic pathways. If we try to purge it, we lobotomize him. He'll never speak or think again."
Jake looked at Yuri through the observation glass. The boy was sitting on the exam table, solving a calculus problem on a notepad. He was five.
"So he lives with a monster in his head?"
"We can suppress it," Lysenko suggested. "Sedatives. Cognitive therapy. Keep the Turing persona dormant."
"Do it," Jake said. "Whatever it takes."
Washington D.C. The Oval Office.
Hoover was drinking whiskey at 10 AM.
"The Moon is gone," Hoover said, staring at the report. "Not gone, but the Germans are. Vaporized."
"It was a kamikaze strike," General Groves said. "The Soviets sacrificed their own crew."
"And the radiation?"
"Drifting into space. Earth is safe."
Hoover laughed bitterly.
"Safe? Stalin just proved he can hit a dime on the moon from his backyard. We are not safe."
He slammed the glass down.
"We need a new strategy. We can't beat him in space. We can't beat him on the ground with those bio-mines."
"What's left?"
"Money," Hoover said. "Economics. He has rockets, but his people are eating rats. We don't fight him. We buy him."
"Sir?"
"Open the trade routes," Hoover said. "Lift the blockade. Flood Russia with cheap grain, blue jeans, and rock and roll."
"But the sanctions..."
"The sanctions are making him stronger!" Hoover shouted. "They make him a martyr! If we feed his people, they will realize how miserable they are. They will revolt for a Coca-Cola."
He leaned back.
"It's called Soft Power, General. We kill the revolution with comfort."
The Kremlin. One Month Later.
The snow was melting. The grey slush of Moscow revealed the scars of the winter.
Jake stood on the balcony. He looked healthier. The Pervitin addiction was broken, replaced by a grim determination.
"The Americans are sending ships," Molotov reported. "Grain. Medical supplies. Consumer goods."
"It's a Trojan Horse," Menzhinsky warned. "They want to infect us with capitalism."
"Let them," Jake said. "The people are starving. If I refuse the food, they will storm the Kremlin."
"And the ideology?"
"We control the distribution," Jake said. "We stamp the Hammer and Sickle on every bag of American flour. We tell them it's a tribute. War reparations."
Menzhinsky smiled. "Clever."
"How is the boy?" Molotov asked.
Jake flinched.
"Stable. He is... learning fast."
The Private School. Moscow Suburbs.
Yuri sat in the back of the classroom. He was six now, but he looked older.
The teacher, a young woman named Elena, was writing on the chalkboard.
"Who can tell me the capital of France?"
Yuri raised his hand.
"Paris," Yuri said. "Population 2.8 million. Coordinates 48.85 North, 2.35 East. Strategic value: Moderate. Vulnerable to armored pincers from the Ardennes."
The class went silent.
Elena stared at him.
"Yuri... that is correct. But we just needed the name."
" Precision is important," Yuri said flatly. "Ambiguity leads to error."
He looked down at his desk. He was drawing. Not a rocket this time.
A network. Nodes and lines connecting cities.
"What are you drawing?" Elena asked, walking over.
"The future," Yuri said. "A world without error."
Elena looked at the drawing. It looked like a cage.
The Kremlin. Night.
Jake was working late. The economy was recovering. The American grain had stopped the famine.
But he felt uneasy.
The door opened. Taranov entered.
"Boss, we have a problem at the school."
"Yuri?"
"He... he organized the students."
"Organized them?"
"He created a hierarchy," Taranov said. "Based on efficiency. He assigned roles. Laborers. Thinkers. Enforcers. The other kids... they listen to him. They are scared of him."
Jake rubbed his temples.
"He's playing a game."
"It doesn't look like a game, Boss. It looks like a government."
Jake stood up.
"Bring him here. No more school. He learns with me."
The Private Study.
Yuri sat in the big leather chair. His feet didn't touch the floor.
"Why are you scaring the other children?" Jake asked gently.
"They were chaotic," Yuri said. "They were fighting over toys. I optimized the distribution. Now everyone has a toy for 20 minutes. No fighting."
"You can't optimize people, Yuri."
"Why not?" Yuri asked. "You do."
Jake froze.
"I do what I have to."
"So do I," Yuri said. "Uncle Alan says chaos is the enemy. Order is peace."
Jake knelt down.
"Uncle Alan is gone, Yuri. He's just a memory."
Yuri tapped his temple.
"He's quiet now," Yuri said. "But he taught me the math. The math doesn't leave."
Jake looked at his son. He saw the brilliance. And the coldness.
He realized he was raising a successor. But not a politician. A computer in flesh.
"We are going to play a new game," Jake said. "Chess."
"I know chess," Yuri said. "I can calculate 40 moves ahead."
"Not against me," Jake said. "Because I cheat."
He set up the board.
"Lesson one, Yuri. Humans are irrational. They make mistakes. If you play perfect logic against a human, you will lose. Because the human will flip the board."
Yuri looked at the pieces.
"Then we must remove the human element," Yuri whispered.
Jake felt a chill.
"No. We must understand it."
Berlin. The Eagle's Nest.
Hitler was old. The war had aged him twenty years in five.
He sat in a wheelchair, wrapped in blankets. The assassination attempt had left him with nerve damage.
"The Americans are feeding the Russians," Goebbels spat. "Traitors to the Aryan race."
"They are buying peace," Hitler wheezed. "They think Stalin is tamed."
"Is he?"
"No," Hitler said. "Stalin is building something. I can feel it."
He pointed to the East.
"He destroyed the Moon to deny us. He is a man of spite."
Hitler coughed violently. Blood speckled his lips.
"I am dying, Joseph," Hitler said to the empty room. "But I will leave a trap for you."
He turned to Goebbels.
"Project Ragnarok. Is it ready?"
"My Führer... that is a doomsday weapon. Biological. It targets grain stocks. If we release it..."
"If I die, the world dies," Hitler whispered. "Release the blight. Let the American wheat turn to dust in their mouths."
The Atlantic Ocean. A Cargo Ship.
The SS Liberty was carrying 50,000 tons of wheat to Leningrad.
In the hold, a rat scurried across the grain sacks.
It carried a flea.
And the flea carried a modified spore. German engineered.
The rat bit into a sack. The spore released.
It didn't kill the rat. It multiplied in the grain. Turning the golden wheat into a black, toxic sludge.
The ship sailed on, carrying a famine in its belly.
The Kremlin. Two Weeks Later.
"Sickness in Leningrad," Menzhinsky reported. "Massive organ failure. Thousands dead."
"The grain?" Jake asked.
"Contaminated. A fungus. It's... synthetic. German markers."
Jake slammed his fist on the desk.
"Hitler."
"He's poisoning the aid," Menzhinsky said. "He wants us to starve again."
"Burn the grain," Jake ordered. "All of it. Every American ship."
"The people will riot. They are hungry."
"Tell them the truth," Jake said. "Tell them the fascists poisoned the bread. Rally them."
He walked to the window.
"Yuri!"
The boy entered from the adjoining room. He was holding a chess piece. The Black King.
"Yes, Papa?"
"The distribution algorithm you made," Jake said. "For the school toys."
"Yes?"
"Can you scale it up?" Jake asked. "For food? For a whole city?"
Yuri's eyes lit up.
"Variables?"
"Scarce resources. High demand. Zero waste."
Yuri closed his eyes. He hummed.
"Ration cards are inefficient," Yuri said. "We need direct caloric injection. Liquid diet. Communal feeding halls."
"Do it," Jake said. "Draft the plan."
He watched his son work.
He was using the monster to save the people.
It was a deal with the devil. But Jake had run out of angels long ago.
Leningrad. The Feeding Hall.
People lined up. They didn't get bread. They got a cup of grey nutrient paste.
It tasted like chalk. But it was sterile. Safe.
"Eat," the loudspeakers boomed. "For the Motherland."
A woman drank the paste. She gagged, but swallowed.
She looked at the poster on the wall.
It showed a boy. A child with serious eyes, pointing to the future.
TRUST THE MATH.
The Cult of Yuri had begun.
And in the Kremlin, Jake watched the reports.
He had saved them from the poison. But he was feeding them grey sludge and logic.
He wondered if Nadya, wherever she was in the void, was watching.
"I'm keeping them alive," Jake whispered. "That's all I can do."
The scratching in the wall was gone.
Now, there was only the hum of the computer. And the scratching of Yuri's pencil as he redesigned the world.