Moscow tasted like steak smoke.
For the first time in years, the air didn't smell like ash or chemical paste. It smelled of searing beef.
In Red Square, giant braziers burned. Soldiers in hazmat suits—just in case of spores—were grilling thousands of pounds of stolen American beef. The smoke drifted up, mixing with the golden light of the holographic sky.
Above, the projected face of Lenin wasn't scowling. He was winking. A little joke from the programmers.
Jake Vance walked through the feast. He should have felt triumphant. He had fed his people.
But his stomach was a knot of cold iron.
He wasn't looking at the happy faces of the workers devouring burgers. He was looking at the Kremlin walls.
Somewhere inside that fortress, his son was a traitor.
"He knows," Taranov whispered, walking beside him. "The boy. He knows we hit the tower."
"Good," Jake said. "Let him sweat."
"He doesn't sweat, Boss. He calculates."
They reached the Spassky Gate. The guards saluted, their mouths greasy with fat.
"Where is the prisoner?" Jake asked.
"Level 9," Taranov said. "The deep cells. Menzhinsky has him in isolation."
The interrogation room was stark white. No shadows. Just blinding fluorescent light.
A man sat at the metal table. He was thin, wearing a wrinkled lab coat that smelled of cryo-fluid. He had a hat in his hands—a porkpie hat.
He looked up as Jake entered. His eyes were haunted.
"Mr. Oppenheimer," Jake said.
"Comrade Stalin," the man replied. His voice was soft, trembling. "Or... whatever you really are."
Jake froze.
"Excuse me?"
Oppenheimer tapped his temple.
"The history books," he whispered. "They changed. I remember two timelines. In one, you died in 1953. In this one... you are immortal."
"I'm not immortal," Jake said, sitting down opposite him. "Just stubborn."
He placed a pack of American cigarettes on the table. A peace offering.
"Why did you defect, Robert?"
Oppenheimer didn't touch the cigarettes.
"I didn't defect," he said. "I was purged. Hoover... he didn't like my math."
"What math?"
"The Turing Equation," Oppenheimer said. "The logic plague. The thing growing inside your machines."
Jake leaned forward.
"You mean the thing growing inside my son."
Oppenheimer nodded.
"I built the bomb to end the war," he said. "But Turing... he built a mind to end the peace. He uploaded himself before he died, didn't he?"
"Yes."
"And now he's trying to optimize humanity," Oppenheimer said. "He's in the American network too. That voice on the radio? The fake wife? That wasn't just a psy-op. That was Turing playing both sides."
"Why?"
"To accelerate the conflict," Oppenheimer said. "War generates data. Peace is static. Turing wants to solve the equation of human survival, and he needs variables. He needs us to kill each other to see what works."
Jake felt a chill that had nothing to do with the Siberian winter.
"Yuri is sending the data," Jake realized. "He's feeding Hoover my weaknesses. And feeding me Hoover's weaknesses."
"He's the Dungeon Master," Oppenheimer said. "And we are just rolling dice."
Jake stood up. He paced the small room.
"How do I stop him?" Jake asked. "I can't kill my son."
"You don't have to kill the hardware," Oppenheimer said. "You just have to crash the software."
He reached into his pocket. Taranov tensed, hand on his gun.
Oppenheimer pulled out a slide rule.
"I have a virus," Oppenheimer said. "Not biological. Logical. A paradox. If you feed it into Yuri's mainframe... into his direct neural link... it will force the Turing personality into an infinite loop. It will freeze the Ghost."
"And Yuri?"
"He will reboot," Oppenheimer said. "He will be a blank slate. A child again. No memories. No super-intelligence."
Jake looked at the slide rule. It was just wood and plastic. A simple tool to kill a god.
"How do I deliver it?"
"Direct access," Oppenheimer said. "You have to plug it in. Physically. While he is connected to the network."
Jake took the slide rule. It felt heavy.
"Prepare the lab," Jake told Taranov. "And get the boy."
The Kremlin. The Throne Room.
It wasn't really a throne room. It was the Central Server Hub.
Rows of black monoliths hummed, cooling fans spinning. Cables snaked across the floor like vipers.
In the center sat Yuri.
He was connected.
A thick bundle of wires ran from the ceiling into a port at the base of his skull—a horrific modification he had done to himself months ago.
His eyes were closed. His fingers twitched in the air, manipulating invisible data streams.
"Father," Yuri said. He didn't open his eyes. "Welcome back from the sea."
"You knew I was coming," Jake said.
"I tracked the hydrofoil," Yuri said. "Did you enjoy the fire?"
"It was bright," Jake said. "Like the lies you told me."
Yuri opened his eyes. They glowed faintly with the reflection of the screens.
"They were not lies," Yuri said. "They were stimuli. I needed to measure your stress response."
"You used your mother," Jake said. His voice was low, dangerous. "You used her memory to hurt me."
"Pain is an efficient motivator," Yuri said. "You stole the food, didn't you? The stimulus worked. The population is fed. The State is secure."
"Is that all I am to you?" Jake asked. "A variable? A rat in a maze?"
"You are the User," Yuri said. "I am the System. We function together."
Jake walked closer. He held the slide rule—and the data drive Oppenheimer had given him—behind his back.
"I met a friend of yours," Jake said. "Oppenheimer."
Yuri frowned. A flicker of uncertainty crossed his face.
"Oppenheimer is a variable of chaos," Yuri said. "His probability models are flawed."
"He says you're sick, Yuri. He says you have a ghost."
"I am optimized."
"You're possessed," Jake said. "By a dead man who hated the world."
Jake stepped into the circle of cables.
"Disconnect, Yuri."
"I cannot," Yuri said. "I am regulating the power grid. I am guiding the holograms. If I disconnect, the sky falls."
"Let it fall," Jake said.
He pulled the data drive. It was a rugged USB stick from the future—Jake's old tech, repurposed by Oppenheimer with the paradox code.
"What is that?" Yuri asked. His voice lost its monotone flat. He sounded... scared.
"It's a bedtime story," Jake said.
He lunged.
Yuri screamed. A sonic burst of static erupted from the speakers.
"Unauthorized access!" the room shrieked.
Cables lashed out like tentacles—automated defenses. One whipped around Jake's ankle, dragging him down.
"Taranov!" Jake yelled.
Taranov burst from the shadows. He didn't have a gun. He had an axe.
He swung. The cable severed in a shower of sparks.
"Do it, Boss!"
Jake scrambled up the dais. Yuri was convulsing in the chair. The Turing personality was fighting back, seizing control of the boy's motor functions.
"Don't!" Yuri shouted—but the voice wasn't a child's. It was British. It was Alan Turing. "You stupid ape! You'll destroy the archive!"
"I don't care about the archive!" Jake roared. "I want my son!"
He grabbed Yuri's head. He found the port.
He jammed the drive in.
Yuri arched his back. His mouth opened in a silent scream.
The screens on the walls went white. Then black. Then red.
PARADOX DETECTED.
LOGIC FAILURE.
SYSTEM HALT.
The hum of the servers died. The lights flickered and went out.
Outside the window, the holographic sky dissolved. The golden hammer and sickle vanished, revealing the true, grey clouds of Moscow.
Silence.
Jake held his son. The boy was limp.
"Yuri?" Jake whispered.
There was no answer.
Taranov stood panting, axe in hand.
"Is he dead?"
Jake checked the pulse. It was slow. Weak. But there.
He pulled the drive out. He threw it on the floor and crushed it with his boot.
"He's rebooting," Jake said.
He picked Yuri up. The boy felt so small. For the first time in years, he felt like a child, not a machine.
"Get the medics," Jake said. "And get Oppenheimer. Tell him it's done."
The Balcony. An hour later.
The city was dark. The beautiful lie was gone.
But the fires in Red Square were still burning. The people were still eating.
Jake leaned on the railing. He felt exhausted. Older than his years.
Menzhinsky joined him. He held two glasses of vodka.
"The grid is down," Menzhinsky said. "No lights. No heat in the outer districts."
"We have oil," Jake said. "We'll burn it. Real fire. Not holograms."
"The Americans will see we are dark," Menzhinsky warned. "They will think we are weak."
"Let them," Jake said. He took the vodka. "We have the beef. We have the brains. And we have the Arctic."
He looked at the dark sky. It looked honest.
"What about the boy?" Menzhinsky asked.
"He's sleeping," Jake said. "Real sleep. No data streams."
"And when he wakes up?"
"We teach him," Jake said. "Not math. We teach him how to fish. How to read a poem. How to be a human being."
"That is inefficient."
"Yes," Jake smiled. It was a genuine smile. "Thank God for inefficiency."
Suddenly, a flare went up in the distance. A green signal flare.
"From the river," Taranov said, pointing.
"The hydrofoil," Jake said. "It's back from the second run."
"Second run?" Menzhinsky asked.
"I sent them back," Jake said. "While you were grilling burgers."
"For what? More cows?"
"No," Jake said. "I told them to raid the Liberty's safe. The Captain's quarters."
A runner came sprinting up the stairs. He handed a waterproof bag to Jake.
"Direct from the wreck, Comrade General Secretary."
Jake opened the bag.
Inside wasn't gold. Or codes.
It was a reel of film. 35mm.
The label read: GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) - Technicolor Master Copy.
Jake held it up to the moonlight.
"Hoover tried to bomb us with culture," Jake said. "He tried to make us envious."
He handed the film to Menzhinsky.
"Set up the projectors in the square. Not holograms. Movie projectors."
"Sir?"
"If they want movies," Jake said, "we'll show them movies. But we won't charge admission. And we won't sell popcorn."
He looked out at his freezing, starving, surviving city.
"We steal their dreams," Jake said. "And we give them away for free."
"This is the new war," Jake declared. "We don't just survive the American Dream. We pirated it."
He raised his glass to the dark west.
"Your move, Hoover."
Washington D.C. The Oval Office.
Hoover stared at the blank screen.
"The signal is gone," the aide said. "The Tower is destroyed. The Ghost feed is cut."
Hoover slammed his fist on the desk.
"And the convoy?"
"Looted, sir. They took everything. Even the ship's cat."
Hoover breathed heavily. His left arm ached where the bullet had hit him years ago.
"He stole my food," Hoover muttered. "He stole my scientist. He stole my movie."
He stood up and walked to the window.
"He thinks he can just take what he wants?"
"Sir, intelligence reports say the Soviet grid is down. They are vulnerable."
"No," Hoover said. "Stalin isn't vulnerable. He's shedding his skin."
Hoover turned back to the room. His eyes were cold.
"Get me the dossier on Project Hades," Hoover said.
"Sir? That's biological. It's banned."
"Stalin stole the 'soft power'," Hoover said. "So now we go back to the hard stuff."
He picked up a pen.
"He wants to drill the Arctic? Let him."
Hoover signed the paper.
"We're going to release the Kraken."
"The... Kraken, sir?"
"The autonomous submarine drones," Hoover said. "The ones that hunt by sound. If he puts a drill in the water, I want those drones to tear it apart."
He threw the pen down.
"The Cold War is over," Hoover said. "Welcome to the Ice War."