The invasion didn't start with fire. It started with confetti.
The air raid sirens over Leningrad screamed, tearing through the cold morning mist. Searchlights swept the sky, cutting through the golden haze of the Project Aurora holograms.
"Contact!" a spotter shouted from the roof of the Winter Palace. "Multiple bogeys! High altitude!"
Jake Vance raised his binoculars. He expected bombers. He expected nuclear fire.
Instead, he saw balloons.
Thousands of them.
They drifted down from the stratosphere, silver and red, glistening like jellyfish. Suspended beneath each one was a small, bright crate.
"Anti-aircraft batteries!" Taranov barked into his radio. "Fire at will!"
"Wait," Jake said.
The flak cannons opened up anyway. Tracers zipped into the clouds. A balloon burst.
The crate tumbled down, spinning. It hit the cobblestones of Palace Square and shattered.
It didn't explode.
Chocolate bars scattered across the grey stone. Nylon stockings. Jazz records. Glossy magazines with smiling women in bikinis on the covers.
"Cease fire!" Jake ordered.
But it was too late to stop the people.
They poured out of the factories and tenements. Gaunt figures in grey jumpsuits, their faces illuminated by the holographic "Stalin" smiling benevolently in the sky above.
They didn't look at the hologram. They looked at the chocolate.
A riot broke out. Men fought over a Hershey bar. A woman wept, clutching a pair of red high heels to her chest like a holy relic.
"It's a culture bomb," Jake whispered.
He watched a young boy pick up a comic book. The cover showed Captain America punching a green-skinned monster that looked suspiciously like Jake.
"They aren't attacking our bodies," Jake said, gripping the balcony railing until his knuckles turned white. "They are attacking our reality."
The War Room. One hour later.
The table was covered in "contraband."
Jake picked up a portable radio. It was made of cheap blue plastic. It had no dial—it was pre-tuned to a single frequency.
Voice of America.
Jazz music blared from the tiny speaker. A saxophone solo that sounded like pure, liquid freedom.
"Every balloon carried one," Menzhinsky said. He looked disgusted. "We are collecting them, but the people are hiding them. In the walls. In the floorboards."
"It's a virus," Yuri said.
The boy was dissecting a chocolate bar with a scalpel.
"High fructose corn syrup," Yuri noted. "Chemically addictive. It triggers a dopamine response 300% higher than the Grey Paste."
"It's not the sugar, Yuri," Jake said. "It's the packaging."
He pointed to the bright red wrapper.
"It's color. In a world of grey, color is a weapon."
Jake turned off the radio. The silence in the room was heavy.
"Hoover is mocking us," Jake said. "He thinks we are a zoo. He throws peanuts to the animals and watches us fight."
Jake felt a cold rage settle in his gut. It wasn't the political anger of a leader. It was the personal hatred of a man being laughed at.
"We don't just defend anymore," Jake said. "We hit back."
"The K-1 is in position," Taranov said.
"Good," Jake said. "But the food isn't enough. I want to hurt them. I want Hoover to feel the same panic I feel right now."
He looked at the map of the Atlantic.
"Where is the signal coming from?" Jake asked, tapping the plastic radio.
"A transmitter platform," Menzhinsky said. "Built on an oil rig in the North Sea. The 'Liberty Tower'."
"After the K-1 hits the convoy," Jake said, "send the Spetsnaz. I want that tower."
"To destroy it?"
"No," Jake said. "To hijack it. If Hoover wants to broadcast to my people, I'm going to use his own microphone to scream back."
North Atlantic. Sector 4.
The ocean was pitch black.
Six hundred feet below the surface, the K-1 hung in the water like a predator holding its breath.
Captain Ramius watched the sonar scope. The green blip of the USS Liberty was directly overhead.
"Match speed," Ramius whispered. "Zero knots relative."
"Target is heavy," the sonar officer said. "Engine noise is masking us."
"Deploy the leech."
On the dorsal hull of the submarine, a massive hydraulic arm extended. It was tipped with a diamond-toothed circular saw and a magnetic clamp.
The sub rose slowly. Five hundred feet. Three hundred. One hundred.
CLANG.
The K-1 shuddered as the magnetic clamp locked onto the keel of the American freighter.
"We are attached," the pilot said. "We are a parasite."
"Start the drill," Ramius ordered.
The saw spun up. It screamed against the American steel.
Above them, on the Liberty, the crew probably thought it was a boiler malfunction. Or shifting cargo. They didn't know a Soviet submarine was performing open-heart surgery on their ship.
"Hull breach in thirty seconds," the engineer reported.
"Prepare the vacuum," Ramius said.
The saw cut a perfect two-meter circle in the freighter's bottom.
Gravity did the rest.
A deluge of golden grain poured out of the freighter, sucked directly into the K-1's open cargo intake by the pressure differential.
It sounded like hail hitting a tin roof. Tons of wheat. The lifeblood of a harvest.
"Silos one and two full," the engineer shouted over the noise.
"Take it all," Ramius said. "Leave them nothing but air."
Then came the thuds.
Heavier objects falling through the hole.
"Livestock!" the sonar man yelled.
Frozen carcasses of beef dropped into the sub's hold.
Ramius grinned. It was the greatest heist in naval history.
"Silos full at 98%!"
"Disengage!" Ramius shouted. "Seal the intake!"
The magnetic clamps released. The K-1 dropped like a stone, heavy with stolen calories.
Above them, the USS Liberty groaned. Its structural integrity was compromised. It began to list.
"Did they detect us?"
"They are sending SOS signals," the radio operator said. "They think they hit a mine."
"Let them think it," Ramius said. "Set course for the North Sea. We have a radio tower to catch."
Moscow. The Rooftops.
Night had fallen, but the city was never dark. The holographic sky burned with the face of a weeping mother now—a psychological projection designed by Yuri to induce guilt.
Sasha, the boy who had found the comic book, sat on the edge of a chimney.
He had the blue plastic radio pressed to his ear.
He knew it was illegal. He knew the NKVD would send him to the recycling vats if they found it.
But he couldn't stop listening.
The jazz had stopped. Now, a woman was speaking.
Her voice was soft. Sad.
"...the winter is cold, Joseph. The fire has gone out. Why did you leave the door open?"
Sasha frowned. It didn't sound like propaganda. It sounded like a ghost story.
"The snow is covering the tracks, Joseph. I can't find my way back to the Dacha."
Sasha shivered. He didn't know who Joseph was. But the voice made him want to cry.
The Kremlin. Jake's Office.
Jake was pacing. The raid was a success. Ramius was coming home with enough grain to bake bread for a month.
But the "Soft Power" war was still raging.
"We jammed the frequency," Taranov said, fiddling with the dials of the captured radio. "But the signal is strong. It's bleeding through."
Static hissed. Then, the woman's voice cut through the room.
"...the toy soldier is under the floorboard, Joseph. The one with the broken leg."
Jake froze. The glass of vodka in his hand slipped. It shattered on the floor.
He stared at the radio.
"Turn it up," Jake whispered.
"...you promised to fix it. But you only break things."
It was Nadya.
Not a recording. Not a speech.
It was a message. Specifically for him.
"She's dead," Jake said. His voice cracked. "I saw the body. I saw the frozen eyes."
"Deepfake?" Taranov suggested gently. "The Americans have audio synthesis tech."
"How would they know about the soldier?" Jake asked. He fell into his chair. "The toy soldier. Under the floorboard at the Dacha."
He had hidden it there the night she died. No one knew. Not even Menzhinsky.
"Yuri?" Jake asked. "Did Yuri know?"
"The boy wasn't there, Boss."
Jake grabbed the radio. He pressed it to his forehead.
"She's alive," Jake said. The hope was painful, like a knife in his chest. "Hoover has her."
"Or Hoover has a telepath," Taranov said. "Or a ghost."
"I don't care what it is," Jake said. He looked up. His eyes were burning with a terrifying focus.
"Change the orders for the Spetsnaz team."
"Sir?"
"Don't just hijack the tower," Jake said. "Bring me the operator. Bring me the person speaking into the microphone. I want them alive."
He looked at the holographic sky outside. The Weeping Mother looked down at him, judging him.
"You want a war of words, Hoover?" Jake hissed. "I'm going to rip your tongue out."
"Get the jet," Jake ordered. "I'm going to the North Sea myself."
"Boss, that's insane. It's a war zone."
"It's not a war," Jake said, grabbing his pistol. "It's a rescue mission."