My brothers Keeper, an SI as the twin brother of Stalin (Reworked)

[BuilderOne]

The most frightening part is that, Mika makes sense. In both the alternate timeline and in our timeline. He wants his daughter to be safe, by her father-in-law reputation (our TL) and/or a good husband (this timeline... and I think Yakov is also a reasonable guy OTL as well).

Nice touch on having Yagoda in the scene as well. Would be interesting to follow his fate.

 

[HeKirr]

You know Mika is scary when that damn maniac Yagoda is terrified of being alone with him.

 

[BenMalek]

Habsburg style

 

[Praevalidum]

If the Westermarck Effect is true, and there's been a slow buildup of empirical data saying it is, Yakov and Kato are unlikely to feel any attraction to each other because of reverse sexual imprinting.

If they refuse, I doubt Mika would force them.

 

[Alenco98]

April 7, 1888
Gori
The Russian Empire

I had a rock clenched in my right fist and "Everybody Wants to rule the world" humming cheerfully in my head as I crossed the bridge connecting the east side of Gori to the west. Tears for Fears felt appropriate. Today was, after all, a day someone would feel fear and cry out tears.

"Are you sure about this?"

I glanced back. Joe was trotting to keep up with me, tugging at my shirt like a worried mother hen who had recently discovered existential dread.

"Yes," I said pleasantly, smiling and rolling my shoulders. "Didn't you tell me Eduard hit you? And called Mama a whore?"

"Bu—"

"No buts."

I kept walking. The rock was smooth, dense, perfectly weighted. God had put it on this earth for exactly this purpose, and who was I to argue with divine providence?

"I'm sick of this," I continued, in the same tone a man might use to complain about bad weather or undercooked bread. "Not just Eduard. Lado, Giorgi, Irkali, Levan — all of them. The whole scenic cast of little fuckers."

"Mama said th—"

"Mama said to turn the other cheek, yes." I nodded sagely. "Wonderful woman. Great theology. Not interested."

Joe made a sound of profound exasperation behind me — a sound I had come to know well over the last few years. We approached the field at the edge of town, the unofficial venue for Gori's less formal social engagements, and there they were. Eduard and his loyal supporting cast, arranged in that particular way boys arrange themselves when they believe numbers constitute an argument.

They saw me coming.

Eduard's face shifted through several emotions in rapid succession — confusion, recognition, the dawning awareness that something had gone slightly wrong in his day. "What's this?" he said, with the bravado of a man who has not yet noticed the rock. "Did little Soso come crawling to his br—"

I punched him in the jaw with my right hand.

Clean. Efficient. Personally satisfying.

Then I brought the rock across the left side of his head with the measured enthusiasm of a man who has thought about this moment for some time and intends to do it justice.

Eduard dropped.

What followed was approximately ten seconds of vigorous civic correction — foot applied to torso, repeatedly, with the kind of focused energy one brings to a task one genuinely believes in. I'm told I hummed during it. I cannot confirm this. It sounds like something I would do.

When I stopped, I was barely winded. Eduard was a great deal more winded, which felt appropriate given the power dynamic we were correcting. He started crying now, I spit on him.

I looked at the others. They had the particular stillness of boys who have just watched something recalibrate their understanding of consequences.

"I heard you assholes were talking shit about my mother." I gave Eduard a kick to the head as he started moving again. "Take this piece of shit back to his house. Tell his father, his mother, whoever answers the door — tell them I did this, and tell them exactly why." I let my gaze move slowly across the assembled faces, because theater matters. "And if I hear any of you bitches pulling the same shit again, I will come back, and the conversation will be shorter."

I turned to Joe, who was standing slightly behind me with the expression of a man attending a public execution he did not technically sanction but had also not walked away from.

"Let's go home," I said.

We walked. After a few seconds I glanced back, purely out of academic interest. Eduard was struggling to get on his feet — impressive recovery — he was now crying with the full commitment of a boy who had expected the day to go very differently.

I laughed. Not a polite laugh. A full, genuine, completely unrepentant laugh that I carried with me all the way back across the bridge.

Joe walked beside me in pointed silence.

"You're going to be insufferable about this, aren't you," he said finally.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I said. "I simply resolved a dispute. Diplomatically."

He said nothing.

I kept humming.

---------------------------

June 16, 1921
Nikolayevsky Railway Station
Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

The station smelled of coal smoke, machine oil, and cheap tobacco — the holy trinity of Soviet infrastructure. I stood on the platform with my hands — hand, singular, still a recent grammatical adjustment — behind my back, watching a line of Cheka men haul crates of alcohol into the first of several waiting freight cars. Organized crime, nationalized. The revolution at work.

The destination was Petrograd. From there, a convoy of trucks would carry the cargo to the Estonian border, where a charming collection of falsified paperwork, strategic bribes, artfully applied threats, and a modest amount of blackmail would transform it, on paper at least, into "Estonian goods". From Tallinn it would sail to America, there to be distributed by organized criminals operating under the nominal supervision of my brother-in-law and a radical journalist traveling under another man's name.

I yawned. It was half past seven in the evening. I was supposed to be home.

I was in Moscow, so naturally I was not.

This was, I had come to understand after forty-two years of living in this country — almost forty-three, God help me — a fundamental law of Russian existence. If you wanted something done correctly, you stood there and watched it happen in person. If you left, reality would quietly rearrange itself into something more comfortable for everyone except you. This was not laziness, not malice, not even stupidity, though those were all present in varying quantities. It was something more specific, more cultural, more uniquely infuriating.

Vranyo.

The word deserves a moment of appreciation, because there is no adequate English equivalent, and the English language is poorer for the absence. The closest translation I could manage — forty-plus years of life in Russia having failed to make me fond of it — was this: "my men lie to me, I know they're lying to me, they know I know, and they lie anyway." Not from malice. Not really. More from a deeply embedded social instinct that the comfortable version of reality is more useful than the accurate one, and that everyone present will do them the courtesy of pretending otherwise.

The first time I encountered it after waking up in this body, I had assumed it was an individual character flaw. The second time, a pattern. By the hundredth time, I had arrived at something approaching academic resignation, which is the closest thing to peace a man with my temperament can manage.

It was everywhere. The army. The party. Procurement. Daily life. The factories that reported record production while the steel was discarded due to being low quality. The farm that met its quota on paper while the workers hadn't been paid in six weeks. The officer who assured me the barracks were secure while the barracks were, at that precise moment, on fire. A whole civilization organized around the mutual performance of convenient fictions, maintained by everyone simultaneously, challenged by no one, and silently understood by all parties to be fiction.

No wonder we lost the Cold War, I thought — then caught myself using we, which meant I had internalized the national identity completely. Wonderful. The new Soviet man, born in 1878, died in 2025, reborn in the rubble of the Russian Empire, fully assimilated. Za zdarovye.

This was also, in no small part, why I did what I did. The patrols. The surprise inspections. The interrogations I conducted personally rather than delegating. The battles I led from the front. People assumed it was ideology, or ruthlessness, some cultivated mythology of personal terror, the desire that I wanted to die. They weren't wrong, especially about the part where I wanted to die. But at the practical level — the logistical, administrative, keep-the-actual-trains-running level — the honest answer was simpler: if I wasn't physically present, someone would lie to me, and then something would go wrong, and then someone would lie to me about that too, and the whole enterprise would collapse in a fog of comfortable fictions while everyone nodded and assured me things were progressing satisfactorily.

I had tried to work around it. I promoted people who were honest, or at least more honest than their colleagues, or at least honest enough to tell me the truth when I made it sufficiently clear that the alternative was worse. I cross-referenced everything. I cultivated the reputation of a man who already knew the answer before he asked the question, because half the time the reputation was load-bearing.

And yes, fine, I had deployed vranyo myself, when the occasion demanded it. I was not proud of this. I was also not surprised by it. A man shapes himself to his environment or he doesn't survive, and I had chosen survival, repeatedly and at significant personal cost, so intellectual consistency on this particular point felt like a luxury.

I stared at the crates and thought, for perhaps the ten thousandth time, about that passage from a novel — not one that had been written yet, from a life I could no longer fully access — where the narrator stands in a street in the capital of his country and asks: In what moment had Peru fucked itself up? In what moment had he fucked himself up?

I had never been able to answer the Russian version of that question. At what precise moment had this country bent itself into this particular shape? 1613? 1861? The Mongols? Ivan the Terrible, who was terrible in ways that went well beyond the nickname? I could construct arguments for all of them. I could also construct arguments that the shape was simply native, that Russia had been exactly this since before anyone was recording it, and that the Romanovs and the Bolsheviks and whoever came after were less causes than symptoms.

I had even less clarity about the personal version.

At what moment did I fuck myself up?

The day I died? Unfortunately that wasn't it. The actual answer — the one about choices and compromises and the particular path from "I'll just keep my brother from getting himself killed" to "I am a senior official of a secret police organization watching contraband alcohol being loaded onto state railway infrastructure at half past seven on a Tuesday" — that answer remained, as ever, frustratingly unavailable. Maybe it was gradual, or maybe it was one specific answer. I'd never know, and I'd die never knowing.

I looked at Yagoda, who was standing beside me with the posture of a man trying very hard to appear calm in the presence of something he has correctly identified as dangerous. I understood. I would have been anxious too, if I were a functionary of modest reputation standing next to someone with mine. That was the reputation's function. I hadn't designed it this way, however, I was, in this specific moment, grateful for said design.

"How much longer until this train is loaded?" I asked. "I'm exhausted."

"It shouldn't take too long, Comrade Jugashvili," he said, in that particular careful tone that exists in the space between an answer and a non-answer.

I looked at him. "Not too long." I repeated the phrase back to him with the flat affect of a man cataloging its inadequacies. "How cute. Yagoda, don't bullshit me. We have several trains. This is the first one. We have, conservatively, several hundred crates remaining. So when you say "not too long*/" — what measure of time are we operating in? Hours? Days? Months? The lifetime of the current government?"

He opened his mouth.

"Before you answer," I said pleasantly, "let me remind you of something. First day Stalin introduced you to me. Do you remember what I told you? What I said was the one rule I expected from everyone who works for and with me?"

He winced. Not dramatically — he was a controlled man, Yagoda — but the wince was there if you knew how to look.

"That an ugly truth is better than a sweet lie," he said.

"Exactly." I nodded. "Beautiful phrase. I mean every word of it. So. I'll say it again. How long?"

He exhaled. A small, resigned sound. "We'll be here all night," he said. "Several trains to go."

"There we are." I spread my remaining hand in a gesture of mild benediction. "Was that so fucking difficult?"

"Comrade Jugashvili—"

"Genuinely curious. Why the hedge first? Why give me "not too long" when you knew perfectly well it was going to be "all night"? What did you expect to achieve?"

He had the slightly pained expression of a man being asked to explain water. "The truth is...... difficult," he said.

"To most people, yes." I conceded this freely. "I am not most people. I have a documented and extensively field-tested intolerance for being told comfortable bullshit. My methods of expressing this intolerance are, I am told, quite memorable." I tilted my head. "So when you run the calculation — "sweet lie versus ugly truth, which option produces better outcomes in close proximity to comrade Jugashvili" — where does the math land for you, exactly?"

"...Point taken, sir," he said.

"Good." I looked back at the freight car. The men were still loading. The night was going to be very long. "Send someone for dinner. Something warm, I don't care what. Have a cot or a chair or something brought down — I'm not leaving until this train is finished, and I refuse to stand all night on principle. Feel free to get one for yourself. We'll be sleeping in shifts."

"Yes, sir." He departed with the bearing of a man who was deeply grateful to have somewhere else to be.

I watched him go.

I watched my men continue loading crates of Soviet alcohol destined for American criminals, in service of a bootlegging operation designed by the director of the national secret police to fund the reconstruction of a country he had helped destroy, under the personal oversight of a man who had been reincarnated from a different century and still hadn't figured out how to open an envelope one-handed.

God, I thought, I fucking hate Russia.

I closed my eyes and sighed. And I missed Maria. And Elsa.

------

June 17, 1921
The Kremlin
Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

I looked at the clock on my study wall. Five in the evening. I looked down at my desk.

The paperwork remaining was not insignificant. It was also, I had decided sometime around three in the afternoon, no longer my problem for today.

This was what delegation was for. So that a man who had spent the previous night standing on a railway platform watching crates of bootleg vodka being loaded onto freight cars could, at some point, go to bed. I was exercising this right. I felt no guilt about it whatsoever, which was itself a sign of personal growth.

I stood, yawned with my entire body, and opened the study door. Patruchev was waiting in the corridor with the practiced readiness of a man who had accepted that his commanding officer's schedule was more suggestion than structure.

"Tell Comrade Bokii to handle the remaining paperwork," I said, handing over the notes I'd written on how each item should be resolved. "I've left instructions. If he has questions, he can answer them himself — that's what deputies are for."

"Yes, sir." Patruchev saluted.

I left him to it.

The walk back to my room was quiet, which I appreciated. I had chosen to work remote today — having today's paperwork delivered here rather than going in — a concession to the fact that I had slept approximately four hours and my capacity for maintaining the performance of professional functionality was operating at reduced capacity. I could have taken a full day off. In theory. In the same theoretical universe where the sun rises in the west and Soviet subordinates file accurate reports without supervision.

Gleb Bokii, my temporary deputy while Yagoda was managing the first shipment, was easier to work with than Yagoda in the specific sense that he lied to me somewhat less frequently. Whether this was a product of his character or simply the result of some sort of divine intervention, I hadn't determined. Either way I'd take it. Progress is progress. The man only deployed vranyo on perhaps eighty percent of his interactions with me, which by the standards of the institution I ran was practically disarming honesty.

But even that required supervision. Even a man who lies to you less than most will lie to you when the stakes are high enough and you're not watching. This was not a character judgment — it was a structural reality of operating inside a civilization that had organized itself around the comfortable management of inconvenient facts. You didn't fix it by finding better men. You fixed it by making the cost of lying to you worst than the cost of speaking the truth, and then you verified anyway, because you can't trust anyone in this country.

I collapsed onto my bed with the undignified relief of a man who has been vertical for too long.

I did not dream. This was, increasingly, a mercy.

My dreams these days were a rotating inventory of things I would have preferred not to revisit — bodies arranged with the particular geometry of mass execution, Maria's face in configurations that ranged from memory to accusation, Elsa's expression in the moment she read the letter, the ice between Petrograd and Kronstadt rendered in the specific hallucinatory detail that fever and blood loss had burned into whatever part of the brain handles unwanted archives. My subconscious had apparently decided to curate the complete collection rather than edit for comfort, which I found both artistically ambitious and deeply inconvenient.

I woke to lamplight.

Someone had come in and turned the lamps on while I slept, which meant I had been out long enough for the daylight to fail. I checked the clock. Eleven in the evening. Six hours. Longer than expected, shorter than ideal. My stomach announced itself with the kind of rumble that made abstract concepts like diplomatic policy feel significantly less urgent than bread.

I got up, ran a hand through my hair, decided this was sufficient grooming for a midnight kitchen raid, and left the room.

The Kremlin's corridors at this hour had a particular quality — quiet in a way that institutional buildings are quiet when they're never fully empty, the silence of a place where things are always happening somewhere, just not here, not right now. I turned left, then right, heading toward the nearest kitchen. I wasn't planning to wake anyone. Bread and milk. Possibly cheese if the cheese was accessible. Then back to bed and the curated trauma exhibition.

I turned the corner.

Stalin was standing in the corridor.

He was, of course, awake. Stalin's relationship with sleep had always been more adversarial than restorative. He was dressed, coat buttoned, which meant he had either not been to bed yet or had been to bed and decided against it, both of which were equally plausible.

"Hi, Joe," I said. I yawned. "Sorry. Just woke up."

He looked at me with the particular expression he reserved for people who had done something he already knew about and was waiting to discuss. Not anger. Assessment. The ledger face.

"I heard you were at the station last night," he said. "Overseeing the shipment yourself."

"I'm guessing Yagoda informed you."

He said nothing. Which was, of course, an answer.

I had known about Stalin's parallel reporting channels through my subordinates since roughly the first week of the Lubyanka appointment. He had recommended Yagoda. He had recommended Bokii. He had made a point of expressing confidence in several other members of my immediate operational circle, which was his version of personnel placement — not direct assignment, just strategic enthusiasm. I had accepted this without comment because the arrangement was both entirely predictable and, on balance, useful. Men who reported to both of us were men who had to maintain consistency across both reports, which made them less likely to lie to me and more likely to lie to him about things that didn't concern him, which was a configuration I could work with.

"Come on," I said, shrugging. "I wasn't born yesterday. You recommended practically everyone in my inner circle. Yagoda, Bokii — I could keep going."

He continued to look at me in silence, which was his version of confirming without confirming.

"You have a habit of speaking too much," he said.

"Someone has to. You're the serious one. I'm the one who actually talks." I considered this. "Almost like we're one soul distributed across two bodies. The soul in question being damaged, but still."

He rolled his eyes. This was, by his standards, an expression of warmth.

"You speak nonsense," he said.

"I speak continuously, which some people confuse with nonsense." I leaned against the wall. "We're twins, Joe. We came into the world together. Given what I know about how cruel destiny is, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if we left together too."

"Superstition doesn't suit you."

"I've always been a little superstitious. It suits me fine. It's everything else that doesn't suit me."

He exhaled quietly — not a sigh, just a controlled release of air that communicated something between dismissal and the decision to move on. "Enough. Tell me why you were overseeing the shipment personally. That's not your role."

"No," I agreed. "Technically it isn't."

I pushed off the wall and started walking, more or less in the direction of the kitchen, which I had not abandoned as a destination merely because I had encountered my brother in a corridor. He fell into step beside me. This was also his version of warmth — accompanying rather than confronting.

"I don't trust anyone outside the family," I said. "Yagoda. The rank and file. The men loading the crates. If I hadn't been there, someone would have skimmed. Possibly several someones, independently, without coordinating with each other, everyone fucking steals."

He walked in silence for a moment. "You think they won't skim on the Atlantic crossing."

"I think they absolutely will skim on the Atlantic crossing," I said pleasantly. "I'd be pleasantly surprised if they didn't. But I can only be in one place at a time, and I chose the origin point because that's where I can do something about it. If they skim in the middle of the ocean, I can't prevent it. What I can do is make sure we start off right, so that whatever arrives in New York, minus whatever disappears between here and there, is still enough to satisfy our order." I shrugged my remaining shoulder. "Damage mitigation"

"You can't fix everything yourself," Stalin said.

"You're absolutely right," I said. "I cannot. Which remains a consistent source of frustration given that the alternative is trusting other people to do it." We reached the kitchen corridor. "But what's the option? Accept the full loss? No. Do nothing because partial solutions are impure? Also no. A little is better than nothing."

Stalin said nothing for several steps.

"Do you think the shipment will reach New York?" he asked.

"It had better," I said. "Yagoda is competent enough when he believes his errors will be specifically affect him rather than dissolved into collective institutional failure. I have worked very hard to ensure he believes this. If the shipment arrives short, or late, or doesn't arrive at all — " I pushed open the kitchen door and located, with the satisfaction of a man who has earned it, a half-loaf of bread — "then Yagoda's wife will get a visit from me."

I cut a piece of bread. The knife was, as always, awkward left-handed. I had developed a technique. It was not elegant.

"He knows this?" Stalin said. He was leaning against the doorframe, arms folded, watching me with the mild interest of a man observing a process he has already analyzed.

"I only implied it," I said. "Which is why the shipment will probably arrive at approximately ninety percent of what it should be, rather than sixty percent. Yagoda will skim something — he always does, everyone does, but he'll skim at a level I can live with." I poured milk. "This is also progress. I have trained a man to steal from me at a personally acceptable rate. I have become a manager."

Stalin exhaled through his nose. It wasn't a laugh. It was the sound he made when something landed and he had decided not to acknowledge that it landed.

"Get some sleep," he said.

"That was the plan before you appeared in the corridor."

He turned and left. I stood in the kitchen with my bread, listening to his footsteps recede down the corridor, steady and unhurried, until the building settled back into its institutional silence.

I ate the bread. It was hard, stale, for a moment I was back in that Petrograd apartment with Maria. I sobbed a little, then calmed down.

God I missed Maria.

 

[iceknight90]

Vranyo. Never knew about this particular Russian concept before. I love it.

 

[BenMalek]

Vranyo. Never knew about this particular Russian concept before. I love it.

Click to shrink...

Looks like it's also in the Balkans, sadly enough.

 

[Alenco98]

Consider this latest chapter a sort of ret-con if you will. Mostly on Mika's psychology. I've read a bit on Vranyo, though I had never really thought about how I could apply it.

That and part of me wants to, I'm not sure how to put it, have the character blend into the culture more. A lot of fics that I read are good, though it's that's sort of lack of cultural integration/culture shock/frustration that kills realism for me sometimes which is what I'm trying to do with this.

It also adds a lot of potential comedic/absurdist humor. I've always tried to have a sort of death of Stalin like vibe to this fic. God I've rewatched that movie so much

 

[Despacitoleo]

Yaya another chapter umazing

 

[Alenco98]

A British Pathe newsreel released August 15 1941

BRITISH PATHÉ NEWS
"BRODY: THE BATTLE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING"
Produced August 15th, 1941

------

[Dramatic orchestral opening. Maps of Eastern Europe, arrows showing German and Soviet positions near Brody, Eastern Galicia]

NARRATOR: In the first weeks of Germany's invasion of Soviet Russia, the world watched and waited.

Berlin's communiqués spoke of triumphant advances. Of a campaign proceeding precisely according to plan.

Then came Brody.

And the world received its first indication that this war in the east would be like no other war in the long and terrible history of human conflict.

[Cut to footage of burning landscape, columns of smoke rising on the horizon, the flat agricultural plains of Eastern Galicia.]

NARRATOR: The town of Brody lies in what was until recently Polish Galicia — flat farming country, wide horizons, roads that turn to mud in rain and dust in sun. It is not, in the conventional sense, a place that invites great battles. Geography offers no particular advantage to either side.

What it offered, in the last days of June and the first days of July nineteen forty-one, was a meeting point.

A meeting point between the full armoured weight of Germany's southern thrust — tanks, motorised infantry, dive bombers, and the accumulated confidence of an army that had not yet been seriously checked — and something the German High Command hadn't fully anticipated.

[Pause.]

A Soviet field army, led by Marshall Georgy Zhukov that came forward to meet them.

[Dramatic musical sting.]

NARRATOR: What the Wehrmacht encountered at Brody was a combined arms force of a sophistication and ferocity that, by the testimony of German officers subsequently captured or — in certain cases — willing to speak to neutral correspondents, came as a profound and unwelcome surprise.

[Cut to footage of Soviet armoured columns, infantry advancing, artillery batteries firing.]

Infantry. Tanks — in numbers that rivalled the German commitment. Artillery, conventional and rocket-propelled. And the weapon that has already become, in the short months of this campaign, the sound most dreaded by German soldiers on the Eastern Front.

The rockets the Soviets call the "Maria".

[Solemn pause.]

Named, it is reported, by the man who ordered their mass production — Mikheil Jugashvili, Director of the NKVD and architect of the Soviet military modernization programme alongside Peoples commissar for Defense Mikhail Tukachevsky— after his first wife, assassinated more than two decades ago. Whatever one may think of the regime that built them, there is a quality to that particular piece of information that gives one pause.

[Cut to footage of rocket artillery firing at night, the sky illuminated in long streaking lines of fire.]

NARRATOR: The "Maria" rockets arrived at Brody in their hundreds. German forward positions, supply columns, and armoured concentrations were struck by salvoes that witnesses — and there are witnesses among the neutral press — describe as turning night into a kind of terrible daylight. The sound, those same witnesses report, is unlike anything previously encountered in this or any previous war.

It is not a bang. It is a sustained roar. As though the sky itself has caught fire and decided, with some deliberation, to let the stars fall.

[Cut to advancing Soviet infantry, then to German positions under fire.]

NARRATOR: The German advance, which had been proceeding with the momentum of an army accustomed to rapid victory, was stopped.

More than stopped.

[Dramatic pause.]

It was, in the plain language that events demand, thrown back.

For the first time in this war — the first time, it must be said, since the opening of hostilities in September nineteen thirty-nine — a German army group found itself not advancing, but retreating. Disordered. Seeking reinforcement. Seeking, in blunt military sense, rescue.

[Cut to frantic German movement, reserves being rushed forward, supply convoys moving at speed.]

NARRATOR: Berlin scrambled. Reserves were committed. Formations that had been held back for the drive toward Moscow and Leningrad were redirected south with an urgency that neutral military observers — and there are several of considerable experience and reputation — describe as, and we quote directly, "the movement of an army that has received a shock it did not believe possible."

[Long pause. Tone shifts. Grave and careful.]

NARRATOR: And then — we must speak of this, though it is not easy to speak of it — came the weapon.

[Silence. No music. Only ambient sound.]

The Soviet forces at Brody deployed, in the opening phase of their counter-attack, a chemical agent of a type not previously encountered on any battlefield in the history of warfare.

It is not mustard gas. It is not chlorine. It is not the weapons that scarred and killed in the trenches of the last war, terrible as those were.

Military analysts and medical personnel who have examined — at considerable personal risk — the evidence available from the Brody sector describe what they have found in terms that this correspondent will reproduce faithfully, and without embellishment, because embellishment in this instance is neither possible nor necessary.

[Measured, very deliberate pacing.]

Men die within minutes of exposure. Not from burning. Not from choking. The nervous system — the mechanism by which the human body receives and transmits every instruction the brain sends to the limbs — ceases to function. The body forgets how to breathe. The heart forgets how to beat.

Jugashvili, in his usual terrifyingly theatrical and flamboyant flair, has described this weapon with a directness that requires no interpretation.

He calls it, in the official translation provided to neutral correspondents, a "doomsday weapon." This weapon is only the beggining, with him claiming with childlike glee that there are even more terrible, more terrifying weapons in the process of being developed and produced.

[Beat.]

The German High Command, to its credit in this single particular, did not attempt to deny that such a weapon had been used against its forces. It could not. The evidence was too abundant and too visible.

Germany's response — the deployment of its own chemical agents against Soviet positions — checked the Soviet advance. It did not reverse it. It did not undo what had already been done.

[Cut to aftermath footage — scorched earth, destroyed vehicles, the particular stillness that follows catastrophic fighting.]

NARRATOR: After a week of the most sustained and costly fighting yet seen in this war — and this war has not been short of either sustenance or cost — Soviet forces withdrew.

Not in rout. Not in disorder. In the deliberate, organised fashion of an army executing a plan, absorbing losses it had calculated in advance, and falling back to positions it had prepared for exactly this purpose.

[Cut to German forces occupying devastated terrain.]

NARRATOR: The Germans held Brody.

In the narrow, technical sense of that phrase — their flag flies there, their soldiers occupy its ruins — they hold it still.

But the cost of holding it is a figure that Berlin has been careful not to publish in full. And the territory beyond it — the roads, the villages, the farmland stretching east — is not, in any meaningful sense, held by anyone wearing a German uniform.

[Cut to footage of partisans moving through forests, armed civilians in village streets.]

NARRATOR: Because the Soviet government has done something without precedent in the history of modern warfare.

It has armed its population.

Not its army. Not its militia. Its population.

Men. Women.

[Careful pause.]

Children. The elderly.

Every village in the path of the German advance received weapons and a directive that neutral correspondents have had confirmed by multiple independent sources. The directive, in its essential substance, reads as follows.

[Very measured. Each word given weight.]

Resist. By every means available. With every weapon to hand. At every opportunity. The German occupier will not spare you. Therefore — do not spare him.

[Cut to footage of German supply columns moving through hostile countryside, soldiers scanning treelines nervously.]

NARRATOR: The consequence of this directive is a German army that controls, in the strictest sense, only the ground beneath its boots at any given moment. The roads it travels are watched. The billets it occupies are noted. The supply columns it depends upon move through country that is, from horizon to horizon, hostile.

Every kilometre of German advance requires German soldiers to guard it. Every German soldier guarding a road is a German soldier not advancing.

The mathematics of this arrangement are, to any student of military history, entirely familiar.

They are not, however, comfortable reading in Berlin.

[Final musical swell, grave and measured.]

NARRATOR: Brody was, in the official German communiqué, a German victory.

In the technical sense — ground taken, objectives reached — perhaps it was.

But the factories beyond the Urals, evacuated before the first German boot crossed Soviet soil, are working. American Lend-Lease — ships from a nation that has watched these events with growing alarm — is arriving in scale. The mobilisation orders have gone out. Men and women both. An entire nation, in the most literal sense that phrase has ever been applied, is being thrown at the line.

[Final beat. Almost quiet.]

A victory at Brody.

[Pause.]

One wonders what the German High Command makes of its victories, as autumn approaches and the Russian roads turn to mud, and the forests fill with armed and angry people, and the rockets the Soviets named for a dead woman keep falling on positions that were supposed, six weeks ago, to have been left far behind.

[Closing orchestral sting.]

Britain observes. Britain prepares. And Britain does not forget what it has seen at Brody.

[PATHÉ ROOSTER. END CARD.]

 

[Praevalidum]

I'm not familiar with specific gasses in chemical warefare, what was the gas deployed against the Germans?

 

[Iakov]

I'm not familiar with specific gasses in chemical warefare, what was the gas deployed against the Germans?

Click to shrink...

Nerve Gas - horrible, nasty stuff. Sarin gas is one example, Ricin gas is another. You need a full body suit like what the CDC uses to avoid exposure, and then the gas just sits on the terrain.

 

[Praevalidum]

Nerve Gas - horrible, nasty stuff.

Click to shrink...

The description was incredibly disturbing. One last question: is the gas visible when it's deployed?

edit: you also mentioned that it just sits on the ground, how long does that inhibit habitation by people?

 

[BenMalek]

The description was incredibly disturbing. One last question: is the gas visible when it's deployed?

edit: you also mentioned that it just sits on the ground, how long does that inhibit habitation by people?

Click to shrink...

No. Sarin is tasteless, odorless, invisible.

 

[The Overlord]

edit: you also mentioned that it just sits on the ground, how long does that inhibit habitation by people?

Click to shrink...

Hours to outright MONTHS from my understanding, depending entirely on what we are dealing with here, and that's with the knowledge no one is actively making Nerve Gas with the intention to purposefully make places uninhabitable. I don't want to think how long a good enough crack team trying to come with an entirely new strain of Nerve Agent that focuses on long term contamination above all else might be able to accomplish, although that would probably heavily impact how capable the agent is at actually killing things.

 

[Alenco98]

The Internationale (Soviet Version), re-written by Mikheil Jughashvili and made the national anthem in September 1939:

Arise, you who are branded with a curse,

All the hungry and enslaved people of the world!

The Great Rus' has finally begun

The creation of a new world

We will destroy this world of violence

Down to the foundations, and then

We will build our new world,

He who was nothing will become everything!


This is our final

and decisive battle;

With the Internationale

humanity will rise up!


The great Soviet Union

Will lead us to this new world

We will win our liberation,

Through the party of Lenin

And the people that carry the flame

The people of our great union

Shall go forth and strike out boldly

For the sake of a new world


You've sucked enough of our blood, you vampires,

With prison, taxes and poverty!

You have all the power, all the blessings of the world,

And our rights are but an empty sound!

We'll make our own lives in a different way —

And here is our battle cry:

Power to the party of Lenin!

And glory to the Soviet Union!



Contemptible you are in your wealth,

You kings of coal and steel!

You had your thrones, parasites,

At our backs erected.

All the factories, all the chambers —

All were made by our hands.

It's time! We demand the return

Of that which was stolen from us.



Enough of the will of kings

Stupefying us into the haze of war!

War to the tyrants! Peace to the people!

Go forth, sons of the red army!

And if the tyrants tell us

To fall heroically in battle for them —

Then as we dealt with the Tsars

We shall do the same to them



Only we, the workers of the glorious

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Have the right to own the land,

But the parasites — never!

And if the great thunder rolls

Over the pack of dogs and executioners,

For us, the sun will forever

Shine on with its fiery beams.

----------------

July 25, 1921
Deck of the Varblane
Off the Coast of New York City

Varblane. Sparrow.

A small, forgettable bird. The kind no one watches twice.

An appropriate name.

The ship itself was just as unremarkable—modest in size, worn but functional, indistinguishable from the hundreds of vessels drifting in and out of New York Harbor each day. That was the point. In a world governed by paperwork and perception, the safest thing you could be was ordinary.

And yet, beneath its deck, this particular sparrow carried something rather less ordinary.

Ten thousand cases.

Twelve bottles per case.

A little under one hundred twenty-five thousand bottles in total.

Yagoda stood near the railing, hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the distant skyline while silently repeating the numbers in his head, as though they might rearrange themselves into something less dangerous.

He had done the calculations already—several times, in fact. Reed had given him the figures in Tallinn before departure. Fifty dollars per case. Two thousand eighty-three cases designated for this transaction.

Roughly five hundred thousand dollars.

He repeated it again.

Five hundred thousand dollars. Not to mention the value of the timber and potatoes.

It was a number that didn't feel real. Not to a man who had spent most of his life navigating shortages, requisitions, and carefully rationed state budgets. It was not simply money—it was scale. Possibility. Risk.

And it was his responsibility to ensure that it returned to Moscow.

Of course, not all of it. There were expenses—always expenses. Salaries for the crew. Maintenance for the ship. Payments for intermediaries. Coal, supplies.The American side would take its share. Reed's company would require funding. There would be losses. There were always losses.

Those calculations could be managed later.

What mattered now was control.

What mattered now was not making a mistake.

His fingers tightened slightly behind his back.

He remembered Mika's voice. "Don't worry, Yagoda. Once this is finished, you can go home to Ida. She'll be lonely without you."

The words had been almost gentle.

That was what made them linger.

Yagoda exhaled slowly, eyes still fixed on the horizon. He had seen what followed when that same voice lost its softness. He had seen men disappear over less. Families unravel over less. It was not rage that frightened him—it was precision.

He forced himself to focus.

Greed, he told himself, must be measured.

Of course he would take his share. That was understood. That was expected.

But excess?

Excess invited attention.

And attention, in his line of work, was rarely survivable.

He shook the thought away as the ship began its final approach.

Hours later, the Varblane was docked.

Yagoda stepped down onto the pier, boots meeting American soil for the first time. He paused, almost involuntarily, taking in the air—the smell of salt, coal, industry, something unfamiliar beneath it all.

He lifted his gaze.

New York.

The skyline stretched upward, jagged and confident, the setting sun casting long shadows between buildings that seemed almost impossibly tall. For a moment, he allowed himself to simply look.

He had never left Russia before this journey.

Even from here, even at a distance, the difference was unmistakable. The dockworkers alone—better dressed, better fed, moving with a kind of casual certainty he had never seen among Russian laborers.

Abundance.

Not universal, perhaps—but present.

It unsettled him more than he expected.

"Are you Genrikh?"

A hand touched his shoulder.

Yagoda turned, immediately alert, and found himself face to face with a man whose accent—Georgian—was unmistakable.

"You must be Aleksander," Yagoda said, studying him. "Or… Anatoly, I suppose. Though I imagine no one here speaks Russian."

Aleksander gave a faint, knowing look. "It seems Mika gave you the details."

"Mika?" Yagoda repeated before catching himself.

"Ah," Aleksander said, correcting quickly. "My apologies. Not many people are… familiar with that name."

Yagoda inclined his head slightly. Brother-in-law, then. That explained enough.

Another man approached—middle-aged, composed, unremarkable in the way that suggested deliberate effort. He spoke in English, his tone measured. Yagoda did not understand the words, but he understood the posture.

Authority.

Aleksander turned to him, replying fluently, gesturing toward the ship, toward the men already beginning to unload crates. He barked a few instructions in Russian, and a crate was brought forward and set down before them.

It was opened.

A bottle was produced and handed to the newcomer.

The man—Rothstein, presumably—uncorked it, inhaled briefly, then took a measured sip. He paused, considering. Then he nodded.

Approval.

He turned to Yagoda, speaking again in English, extending his hand.

Yagoda hesitated for only a fraction of a second before taking it.

Firm grip. Controlled.

But meaningless without translation.

"What is he saying?" Yagoda asked quietly, turning to Aleksander. "I do not speak English."

Aleksander gave a small nod. "He's introducing himself. Arnold Rothstein. He says it's a pleasure to meet you. Your name?"

"Genrikh Yagoda."

Aleksander relayed it. Rothstein nodded again, speaking further.

Aleksander listened, then translated. "He says the money will be loaded onto your ship shortly. There was… a reduction. Payments to the port authority. Local police."

Yagoda gave a small, pragmatic nod. "Naturally."

Of course there were deductions.

There were always deductions.

Corruption did not exist only in Russia—it simply wore better clothing here.

Aleksander continued. "He also requests another shipment. As soon as possible. He looks forward to continued cooperation."

Yagoda allowed himself the faintest exhale.

"So it seems," he said.

Business, then.

Real business.

Behind him, crates continued to move—carefully, methodically. He watched them without turning his head fully, counting in his mind, measuring, ensuring nothing went missing, or at least not too much of it.

-------------

July 26, 1921
School No. 59, 8-20 Starokonyushenny Lane
Arbat district, Moscow

Yakov Jugashvili stepped through the school gates, the morning air still cool enough to be pleasant against his face. It wouldn't last. Moscow summers never did. Yesterday had already climbed to thirty degrees, and he suspected today would follow the same path—slow at first, then suffocating by afternoon. But for now, there was relief. The Komsomol meetings were held indoors in the mornings, a small mercy, a temporary shield from the heat.

He adjusted his jacket slightly as he approached the entrance and pushed the door open. Out of habit, he paused, turning back just enough to hold it for the men behind him.

The guards.

They followed at a measured distance, silent, watchful. Always there.

Yakov didn't dislike them personally. They were polite enough, efficient even. But their presence was… heavy. An inconvenience that never quite left him alone. In the classroom, they remained outside, but their silhouettes lingered in the doorway, shadows against the glass. On excursions, they watched from a distance—but always watched.

Five of them.

Always five.

It made everything feel… observed. Managed.

He stepped inside and let the door close behind him, then made his way down the corridor toward his classroom. The building smelled faintly of chalk and old wood, the quiet murmur of early arrivals echoing through the halls. He stopped at the door, exhaled softly, then pushed it open.

"Ahh, greetings, Comrade Yakov!"

Arbuzov, the chapter leader, greeted him with his usual enthusiasm—too loud, too eager. Yakov smiled politely, though inwardly he felt the familiar caution settle into place.

You are Stalin's son, Papa had told him more than once. Your father is a very important man. People will come to you, Yakov. They will flatter you. They will try to use you. Do not trust them.

Yakov believed him.

He had no reason not to.

"Greetings, Comrade Arbuzov," Yakov replied, raising his hand in salute. "Long live the world proletarian revolution. Hail Marx. Hail Lenin."

Arbuzov returned the salute enthusiastically, repeating the same phrases with practiced fervor.

Yakov moved to his seat, sitting among the others, careful to appear relaxed. Normal. Just another member of the chapter.

He glanced around the room.

Once.

Then again.

His eyes searched more deliberately now.

Larissa.

She usually sat near the window. Third row. Slightly to the left.

The seat was empty.

He frowned slightly, trying not to make it obvious, and turned to the boy beside him.

"Beglov," he said quietly, leaning just enough to be heard. "Have you seen Larissa?"

Pyotr Beglov shrugged. "I heard she moved away yesterday."

Yakov blinked.

"What?"

"Her father was reassigned," Beglov said. "To Ufa."

Ufa.

The word landed heavier than it should have. It wasn't just distance—it was finality. Ufa might as well have been the edge of the world.

"I see," Yakov said after a moment, his voice steady.

He sat back in his chair.

Slowly, he slipped his hand into his pocket and felt the folded paper there—the letter he had written the night before. Careful, hesitant lines. Words he had rewritten twice before deciding they were acceptable.

Now unnecessary.

He kept his expression neutral, eyes forward, listening as Arbuzov began speaking to the group.

Another one gone.

It had happened before. Not often—but enough times to feel like a pattern he couldn't quite understand. People he spoke to, people he liked, people he thought he might grow closer to… they left.

Transferred. Reassigned. Gone.

He exhaled quietly.

He felt the tightness in his chest, the urge to let it show—to frown, to react, to ask more questions—but he pushed it down.

He knew better.

He was Stalin's son.

He could not cry here.

Not in front of them.

So he sat still, listening, the letter crumpled slightly in his pocket, and told himself it did not matter.

The pain in his heart would pass.

It always did.

The morning lessons passed as they always did—orderly, structured, full of certainty. For the past few weeks, they had spoken of Karl Marx, of Friedrich Engels, and of Vladimir Lenin—their writings, their struggles, their ideas, all presented as something inevitable, something almost sacred. Yakov listened as he always did, attentive, quiet, absorbing what he could, even if much of it felt distant and abstract.

Today, however, was different.

Today, the lesson turned to the October Revolution.

And that, inevitably, meant them.

It always did.

He felt it before Arbuzov even began—felt the shift in the room, the subtle change in posture, the anticipation. When Arbuzov spoke of Papa, of the man who had "taken decisive action," who had "helped secure victory," Yakov kept his gaze forward, but he could feel it—the glances, the curiosity, the quiet awe. Children stealing looks at him as though he carried some piece of that history in his pocket.

The stories grew larger as they were told. Papa became a figure who had stormed through history itself—who had shot Kerensky, who had taken the Winter Palace, who had led men into battle and broken enemies before they could stand. Yakov knew enough to understand that stories changed as they traveled, that truth and embellishment often walked together. Still, hearing it spoken aloud like that, in a classroom, with everyone watching… it made something tighten in his chest.

Then Arbuzov spoke of his father.

Of Joseph Stalin—the organizer of Petrograd's defenses, the man who stood with Leon Trotsky as the Red Army held the city against the Whites. The others listened with open admiration, some leaning forward slightly, as if proximity to the story might grant them something.

Yakov sat still.

He felt exposed.

Not proud—not exactly—but visible in a way he did not like. As though the room had quietly turned toward him without asking.

They will ask questions, he thought. They always do.

He remembered Papa's voice clearly, from before his first day at the Komsomol.

"Don't reveal too much about us, Yakov. The less people know, the better."

So he said nothing. He never did.

Eventually, the lesson moved on. Arbuzov spoke now of Lenin again, then Trotsky, then the structure of the government, all it was doing for the people. There was so much detail, so many terms, so many explanations layered on top of one another. Yakov followed as best he could, but much of it slipped past him. What he understood was simpler: Father sat close to Lenin. Papa worked in security. They both did important things. They did not speak of those things at home.

"We can talk about it when you're older," Papa would say.

Yakov often wondered when that would be.

His thoughts drifted, as they had all morning.

Larissa.

The empty seat.

The letter in his pocket.

Midmorning came, and with it, something more tangible—the Subbotnik.

They filed out of the school and onto Arbat Street, each carrying a broom. Arbuzov lined them up, his voice carrying easily over the group.

"Comrades! Today we clean the street. As Comrade Lenin himself cleared rubble from the Kremlin during the first all-Russian Subbotnik, we will follow his example."

They set to work.

Yakov began sweeping the stretch in front of the school, then further along the street, moving steadily, methodically. Around him, other Komsomol cells were doing the same—some working earnestly, others less so, their movements slower, less precise. He noticed it, of course.

He always noticed.

"You are not like them, Yakov," Papa had told him. "You must work harder. If you don't, they will say you are hiding behind us. That you are weak. You must be your own man."

So he worked.

Carefully. Thoroughly.

He did not rush. He did not slacken.

For a while, his mind quieted. The rhythm of the broom against the ground, the dust rising in faint clouds, the growing warmth of the day—it all narrowed his focus. He thought about simple things. The heat. The dryness in his throat. How much he would prefer to be inside, sitting at a table with a glass of lemonade.

For a few minutes, he forgot.

Forgot Larissa.

Forgot the letter.

Forgot the empty seat.

He was just… working.

He glanced up occasionally. The guards were there, as always, watching from a distance. Arbuzov too, moving between groups, occasionally pausing near Yakov, observing, asking small questions.

"Doing well, Comrade Yakov?"

"Do you need to rest?"

Yakov shook his head each time, polite but firm. He did not stop.

If they offer something, Papa had said, they want something.

So he kept sweeping.

The whistle came at last, sharp and clear. One hour.

Relief moved through the group almost immediately. Brooms lowered. Shoulders relaxed.

Yakov exhaled softly, only then noticing something slip from his pocket and fall to the ground.

He bent and picked it up.

The letter.

He stared at it for a moment, the paper slightly creased now, the edges worn from being handled. For a second—just a second—something in his chest gave way, and a quiet, involuntary sob escaped him.

He stopped it immediately.

He straightened.

He was Stalin's son.

Papa had told him—more than once—he could not cry in front of others.

So he didn't.

He folded the letter carefully and slipped it back into his pocket, his expression steady once more. Then he turned and followed the others back into the school, the noise of the group rising around him, the moment already closing behind him like it had never happened at all.

 

[Praevalidum]

So, was it Mika, Stalin, or their enemies who have been reassigning anyone Yakov likes?

Surely Mika isn't so obsessed that he'd remove anyone that Yakov has a childish crush on?

 

[MaHaL]

Surely Mika isn't so obsessed that he'd remove anyone that Yakov has a childish crush on?

Click to shrink...

He absolutely is. But you're still right there are plenty of possibilities for who could be responsible.

The wonders of the Soviet system.

 

[Visual Bliss]

Let it be known, that the Soviet Union stands with the Arab people and will vote against Resolution 181. If this plan goes through, it guarantees nothing but decades of war and suffering for the Jewish and Palestinian people. We will not back a Jewish state in land that has been occupied by Arabs for thousands of years. If they wish to settle and live side by side among Arabs and under Arab rule we are not opposed. But outright invasion, colonization, occupation, and annexation of this land as the Americans did to the Native Americans is unacceptable.

Excerpt from Mikheil Jugashvili's speech at the United Nations shortly before the vote on Resolution 181

Click to shrink...

*Reading this as a native american myself and being reminded of the recent things going on in the world right now*
Alright Mikey you got a fan in me

 

[Alenco98]

September 7, 1921
Lubyanka
Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

I stood in the counting room, watching my men move stacks of American dollars from one pile to another with the sort of reverence usually reserved for religious icons. It was almost funny—men who would quote Marx in the morning now carefully straightening foreign banknotes by evening, as if capitalism itself might become offended if handled improperly.

Yagoda had arrived to Moscow earlier that day. Punctual. Efficient. Alive—which, given the stakes, was already a positive indicator of performance. He had handed me a ledger the moment he stepped off the train, the pages filled with neat figures, itemized costs, projections, actual returns. It was all very professional.

Too professional.

I flipped through it again, letting my eyes drift over the numbers, not really reading them so much as feeling them out.

A little over half a million dollars from the alcohol alone.

Another seventy thousand from potatoes and lumber—because nothing says ideological purity like exporting vegetables and timber to fund state reconstruction through illegal liquor distribution.

Total: roughly five hundred seventy thousand.

Then came the deductions.

Operational costs. Salaries. Fuel. Supplies. Payments to Reed and Bryant's little Estonian façade. And, of course, the bribes—always the bribes. Fifty thousand, give or take. A necessary tax for moving reality through bureaucracy.

Which left us with about five hundred twenty thousand.

Minus a few thousand more for "miscellaneous acquisitions" I had Yagoda pick up in the United States. Personal interests. Strategic curiosities. One has to invest in the future. And in your own mental health, god knew I needed what I was about to do.

All of this, of course was according to the ledger.

And that was the problem.

Because in Russia, numbers are not facts.

They are… suggestions.

Vranyo. My quiet, ever-present distortion field and friend.

Things get "miscounted."
Things get "lost."
Things are "approximately correct."

I closed the ledger slowly.

Even I wasn't immune. I would take my cut too—cleanly, precisely, invisibly. Not out of greed, but out of foresight. Plans require resources. Resources require flexibility. And flexibility, in this country, requires not being entirely honest on paper. God, I hated living in Russia.

Hypocrisy? Perhaps.

Efficiency? Definitely.

"How long?" I asked, not looking at Yagoda, who stood at my side like a man waiting to be evaluated.

"Sir?"

"How long will it take to count everything?"

He hesitated. I didn't even need to look at him to know what was coming.

"And before you say anything," I added calmly, "be honest. Remember the train station."

I finally turned my head.

I watched him deflate. It was subtle, but unmistakable—the small surrender of a man abandoning his first instinct.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Another hour. Possibly two."

I nodded.

"Was that so hard?"

"No sir."

"Good."

I let my gaze drift back to the men counting money, their fingers moving carefully, methodically. Some of them were new—fresh recruits. Faces still carrying traces of idealism, of belief.

"And the goods?" I asked.

"I secured them sir."

"Good," I said, allowing myself a faint smile. I was actually looking forward to that part. Joe would appreciate them, even if he pretended not to. He always pretended not to. Bro was a Tsundere before the word became a thing.

I watched for another moment, then felt the familiar calculation forming.

Stay, supervise, ensure absolute accuracy.

Or leave, and trust the system to function to the best of its abilities for once. A dangerous gamble in this country, like playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun.

"Yagoda," I said, turning fully toward him now. "How honest are these men?"

He straightened slightly. "They're new recruits. All Komsomol."

"Ah."

I nodded slowly.

True believers.

For now.

Which meant: Less practiced in lying; More eager to prove themselves; Still clinging to the idea that truth matters

A temporary advantage.

"That's a relief," I said. "That buys us a few weeks of relative honesty."

I stepped closer and placed my hand on his shoulder. He stiffened immediately. Good. Awareness is healthy.

"Make sure everything is accounted for," I said quietly. "Every note. Every figure." A small pause. "And say hello to Ida for me."

There it was—the flicker. Barely visible, but real. A tightening at the edge of his expression. Fear always works better when it doesn't raise its voice.

"Yes… sir," he said.

I removed my hand and stepped away, already losing interest in the room. The money would be counted. Or it wouldn't. Adjustments would be made either way. That was the nature of things here. Vranyo didn't disappear. You just learned to navigate it. I yawned as I walked toward the door. Five hundred thousand dollars, not bad for a smuggling operation.

September 7, 1921
The Kremlin
Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

Joseph Stalin paused briefly outside the door before entering.

Mika had sent word for him—unusual in itself. More unusual still, he had returned early. Five in the afternoon. Mika was not a man who left work unfinished, nor one who abandoned supervision without cause. Stalin did not believe in coincidence, not in politics, not in war, and certainly not when it came to his brother.

He opened the door.

The smell reached him first.

Thick. Pungent. Foreign. It carried something burnt, something sweet, something decaying beneath it—an unpleasant mixture that clung to the air and settled into the room like an uninvited guest. Smoke lingered everywhere, curling slowly upward, weaving through the light, settling into fabric and wood alike.

Stalin stepped inside and closed the door behind him without a word.

Mika sat in the center of it all, as though the room had been arranged around him. Reclined, loose, almost careless. There was a glass beside him, half-filled with some dark liquid, a bottle within reach, and in his hand a pipe, still faintly glowing.

"Hey, Joe," Mika said, his voice light, almost amused. He gave a soft, private laugh. "Man… this is…fucking amazing."

Stalin did not respond immediately. His eyes moved slowly across the room, taking in every detail—the smoke, the posture, the objects, the tone.

"What is that?" he asked at last.

"Marijuana," Mika replied casually, as though discussing a curiosity rather than a deliberate act. "Had Yagoda bring it from New York. Try some."

Stalin's gaze lingered on the pipe, then returned to Mika. Self-indulgence.

Not dangerous in the immediate sense—but dangerous in implication.

"And where," Stalin asked evenly, "did you learn about this?"

Mika chuckled. "You forget—I was a cop. We used to raid opium dens. Sometimes they had this. I tried it back then." He tilted his head slightly. "You'll like it. Healthier than cigarettes."

"Health is not the point," Stalin replied flatly.

"No?" Mika leaned back, amused. "Come on, Joe. One puff. We're brothers."

He drew again from the pipe, exhaling slowly, deliberately, as though testing Stalin's patience. Stalin watched him, He saw no immediate loss of control. No slurring, no weakness. Only looseness—restraint lowered, not removed.

Carelessness.

Mika extended the pipe toward him.

"See? I'm still alive." He laughed again.

Stalin hesitated—not from fear, but from calculation. Then, deliberately, he took the pipe, inspected it briefly, and brought it to his lips. He inhaled.

The taste was unfamiliar. Not tobacco. Something sharper, yet strangely muted.

He exhaled and handed it back.

"It tastes… unusual."

"You won't feel it yet," Mika said. "Give it time."

Stalin studied him again, more carefully now.

"Will I become like you?" he asked.

Mika smirked faintly. "Not unless you spend an hour on it like I did. You'll feel a little hungry, maybe a little calmer."

Stalin's expression did not change.

"If you were anyone else in the Party," he said, his tone flattening into something colder, "I would accuse you of bourgeois indulgence."

"Well, fuck what the Party says," Mika replied without hesitation, "unless it's you or Lenin. The rest can go f—"

"Mika."

The word cut cleanly.

Stalin's voice dropped, quiet but firm, the kind of tone that did not need volume to carry weight.

"Watch your tongue. Reputation does not protect a man from foolish words."

For a moment, Mika said nothing. He glanced toward the door, as if remembering the world beyond the room, then exhaled slowly.

"I know," he said, softer now. "But tell me—what's wrong with enjoying something once in a while?"

Stalin did not answer.

Because to him, the answer was self-evident.

Everything.

Indulgence was not a single act. It was a habit. And habits became weakness. Weakness became vulnerability. Vulnerability, in time, became death.

Mika set the pipe aside and reached for the bottle, pouring the dark liquid into a glass.

"Here," he said, extending it. "Coca-Cola. Try it. Helps."

Stalin took the glass, examining it briefly before taking a cautious sip.

Sweet.

Too sweet.

"What is this?"

"Coca-Cola. American. Had Yagoda bring it."

Stalin set the glass down slowly. Foreign goods. Foreign tastes. Foreign influence. All of it carried political implications. All of it required consideration.

Mika stood and moved toward a chest at the foot of the bed, opening it with deliberate care. From within, he withdrew something wrapped in cloth. He unfolded it.

A weapon.

Stalin stepped closer, his attention sharpening immediately. He did not recognize the exact model, but he understood its nature at once.

"This," Mika said, a trace of pride entering his voice, "is a Thompson. A Tommy gun."

Stalin took another step forward, examining it closely. Compact. Efficient. Industrial. Designed for speed.

"Where did you get this?"

"Yagoda. From the Americans. Through the mob. It's unloaded. High rate of fire. Very effective."

Stalin's eyes lingered on it, already measuring its utility, its implications, its place within a future he had not yet fully shaped.

"Why?" he asked.

Mika's tone shifted—not entirely serious, but no longer careless.

"Because the war isn't over," he said. "Not really. Give it ten, fifteen, twenty years—we'll see another one. Bigger. Worse. When it comes, we need to be ready. The Americans have technology we don't. Tools. Weapons. Systems. We can use that. Import it. Learn from it. Adapt."

Stalin said nothing, but he did not dismiss it.

He rarely dismissed anything outright.

"I want to bring this to Lenin," Mika continued. "Push modernization. Equipment, tactics, industry. We can build something better if we start now. Can you arrange a meeting?"

Stalin considered.

A pause, deliberate and measured.

"I will see what can be done," he said.

Mika smiled faintly and extended the weapon toward him.

"Keep it. There's more. Ammunition too. Think of it as an early birthday gift."

Stalin took the gun, He weighed it in his hands, feeling its balance, its precision, its potential. Behind him, the room still smelled of smoke—of indulgence, of loosened restraint, of something he did not trust.In his hands, the weapon represented something else entirely.

He glanced once more at Mika.

Relaxed. Amused. Drifting somewhere between clarity and carelessness.

That was the problem.

Stalin could not understand him. He never had.

From childhood to now, Mika spoke too freely, laughed too easily, carried himself with a looseness that bordered on recklessness. And yet—Stalin had seen him in other moments. Moments that did not laugh. Moments that did not hesitate.

He had seen him kill without pause. Lead without doubt. Do things that hardened men avoided.

It did not make sense, It did not need to. Better, Stalin thought as he turned toward the door, that such a man stood beside him as his brother rather than against him.

He left the room without another word, the weight of the weapon steady in his hands, the scent of smoke lingering behind him like a question he had no intention of answering. He felt himself loosen up for a moment, he felt a little hungry.

September 9, 1921
The Kremlin
Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

We stood in the courtyard of the Kremlin, right in front of the Dormition Cathedral—holy ground, historically speaking, which made it the perfect place to demonstrate something profoundly unholy. I had a few target dummies set up in a neat little row, like obedient soldiers waiting to be sacrificed for the sake of progress, and across from me stood the entire circus—the Politburo in full attendance. I had asked for Lenin, just Lenin, a quiet little demonstration between reasonable men, but Joe, being Joe, had apparently decided this needed an audience. So there they were: Vladimir Lenin, watching with that sharp, calculating interest of his; Leon Trotsky, already mentally rewriting military doctrine in his head; Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, looking like they'd rather be anywhere else; and the supporting cast—Vyacheslav Molotov, silent and attentive, Mikhail Kalinin with that calm, almost peasant-like demeanor, and Nikolai Bukharin, who looked like he might actually enjoy this. And of course, Stalin, standing just off to the side, arms folded, watching me the way one watches a puzzle that refuses to solve itself.

I crouched slightly and opened the box, letting the weapon inside reveal itself slowly, deliberately, like a magician who knows the trick is already won before the reveal. "Comrades," I said, straightening, tone light but measured, "this here is called the Thompson—though in America they prefer 'Tommy gun.' It is currently unloaded, because contrary to popular belief, I do enjoy not accidentally killing members of the Politburo." A faint pause, just enough for that to settle, though no one laughed—tough crowd. I nodded toward Patruchev, who stepped forward, efficient as always, loading the drum magazine with a practiced hand. The click of metal, the weight of it, the quiet tension in the air—it all came together beautifully. He flipped off the safety, raised the weapon, and for a brief moment the courtyard felt very still, as if even the cathedral itself was waiting to see what would happen next.

Then he fired.

The sound tore through the courtyard, rapid, mechanical, relentless—nothing like the measured cracks of rifles they were used to. In less than five seconds, the dummies were shredded, reduced from standing figures into splintered, collapsing shapes. No pauses. No hesitation. Just a continuous stream of force. Patruchev released the trigger, the silence returning just as abruptly as it had been broken, and set the weapon down.

I let that silence breathe.

"Now," I said, turning slightly, "let's compare that to what we currently use." I gestured, and one of the guards stepped forward, handing Patruchev a Mosin-Nagant. Familiar. Reliable. Slow. He took aim and fired—one shot, then another, each followed by the deliberate motion of cycling the bolt, spent casing ejecting, chamber reset, aim again. Five rounds, then a reload, then more. It was disciplined, controlled, almost ceremonial in contrast to what they had just seen, but it took time—precious, measurable time.

Patruchev finished, handed the rifle back, and stepped aside.

I looked back at them, hand loosely at my side, as if this were all terribly casual and not, in fact, a quiet argument for the future of warfare. "As you can see," I continued, voice steady, "the Thompson offers a superior rate of fire. One burst—five seconds—and everything in front of it ceases to be a problem. With the Mosin, you have accuracy, yes, but you also have delay. Seconds. And in combat…" I let my eyes drift briefly toward Trotsky, because if anyone here understood time as a weapon, it was him, "…seconds are not theoretical. They are the difference between advancing and dying, between holding a position and losing it."

I clasped my hand behind my back, tilting my head slightly. "Now, I'm not suggesting we replace everything overnight—that would be insane, even by our standards—but I am suggesting we start thinking ahead. The next war will not look like the last one. It never does. And if we walk into it with the same tools, the same assumptions, the same comfortable little lies we tell ourselves about adequacy…" I gave a small, humorless smile, "…then we deserve exactly what we get."

I glanced at Joe for just a second, then back to the rest. "This is not just a weapon. It's a direction. Faster, more adaptable, less… patient. We can learn from it, replicate it, improve on it. Or we can ignore it, call it unnecessary, and pretend our current methods are sufficient." I shrugged lightly. "But that would be lying wouldn't it? And I've already had my fill of lies from my men this week."

Silence again, but a different kind now—less confusion, more consideration.

I stepped back slightly, gesturing toward the weapon on the table. "Anyway," I added, tone softening just enough to pass as casual, "that's my presentation. No explosions, no speeches about destiny—just a very efficient way to kill our enemies."

Lenin's gaze lingered on the weapon a moment longer before shifting back to me, his expression thoughtful rather than impressed, which was exactly what I preferred—impressed men make speeches, thoughtful men make decisions. "It's an interesting demonstration," he said at last, voice measured, almost conversational. "This weapon clearly has potential. Tell me, Comrade Jugashvili, what exactly is it that you are proposing?"

"I'm glad you asked," I replied, allowing myself a small smile, the kind that suggests confidence without quite crossing into arrogance—presentation matters, especially when you're asking men like this for money and power. "I'm sure you've all read my reports regarding our little… entrepreneurial venture in the United States. One ship. One trip. Roughly half a million dollars. And that's not theoretical—that's after costs, after bribes, after the usual tax we pay to reality. Half a million dollars from 125 thousand bottles. Now, let's be conservative for a moment—imagine we scale this. Increase the number of ships, increase the frequency, increase the volume. One million bottles, not even pushing capacity, gets us roughly four million dollars per shipment. A standard cargo vessel can carry two to three million bottles if we pack it properly and nobody decides to 'lose' inventory along the way."

I paused briefly, glancing at a few of them, because that particular joke was less a joke and more a national condition. "We run two, maybe three shipments a week, rotate routes through Estonia, Canada, Cuba—wherever the Americans are least competent at looking—and suddenly we're not talking about survival anymore, we're talking about scale. Half a billion dollars in a year, comrades. Enough to rebuild infrastructure, fund industrialization, import machinery, feed cities, and maybe—just maybe—get ahead of our problems instead of constantly reacting to them."

I stepped back toward the crate, picking up the Thompson again and holding it with casual familiarity, not like a soldier showing off a toy, but like a man presenting a tool. "And this," I continued, lifting it slightly, "is just one example of what that money buys us. Factories producing weapons like this at scale, modern small arms, mechanized units, aircraft—we don't just rebuild, we leap forward. We steal designs where necessary, we buy what we can, we replicate the rest. The Americans have already done the research for us, it would be almost disrespectful not to take advantage of it." I gave a small shrug. "Efficiency is a virtue, after all."

Lenin said nothing, which meant he was listening. Trotsky, on the other hand, was already leaning forward slightly, the way he does when he smells something military. Good. That made this easier.

"What I'm asking for," I went on, tone shifting just enough to signal this was the important part, "is permission to redirect a third of the funds from this operation under my direct management. Not unchecked, of course—I'm not suicidal. You can assign auditors, inspect the books, put the entire thing under military oversight if it makes you sleep better at night. I'll open factories, begin production of modern weapons, and more importantly, I want to establish an airline. Not for luxury—for logistics. Rapid transport of personnel, equipment, intelligence. The next war won't be won by who has the most rifles—it'll be won by who moves faster."

I set the gun back down carefully, letting the weight of what I'd just said settle into the air. "If, however," I added, glancing around the group, "you're uncomfortable with me handling this directly, I understand. Truly. I have a reputation, and not all of it is… reassuring, frankly I'm a bloodthirsty monster in the eyes of even most in the party." I smiled and shrugged. "In that case, we can hand this off to the army. Keep it clean, keep it institutional, let someone else take the credit while we quietly benefit from the results. I have someone in mind actually."

Trotsky's eyes narrowed slightly. "Someone in the army?" he asked. "Who do you have in mind?"

"Tukhachevsky," I said without hesitation. "I fought alongside him in Kronstadt. He's competent, disciplined, not entirely an idiot—which already puts him ahead of most people. He understands modern warfare, or at least understands that the future won't look like the past. If you don't want me managing it, he's a solid alternative." I tilted my head slightly, the faintest hint of humor creeping back into my tone. "Though between us, comrades, if you trust him with it, you may as well trust me. I at least have the decency to tell you when I'm about to do something morally horrendous."

A brief pause followed that—just long enough to let the implication land without pressing it too far. I folded my hand behind my back again, posture relaxed, as if I hadn't just outlined a plan to fund the state through organized crime while modernizing the military with stolen technology. "So," I finished lightly, "that's the proposal. Money, industry, modernization, and many moral compromises—which, if we're being honest, is already our most abundant resource. Provided by yours truly." I pointed at myself.

They did not speak immediately after I finished. That was always the tell—when men like this went quiet, it meant the idea had landed somewhere uncomfortable, somewhere useful. I stepped back, my hand clasped behind me, face relaxed, like I hadn't just proposed funding the state through organized crime while jump-starting industrial and military modernization. Let them talk. That was the game.

Lenin was the first to break the silence, though not decisively, not yet. He leaned slightly forward, fingers steepled, eyes half-lidded in that way he had when he was already turning something over from three different angles. "The proposal has merit," he said slowly, each word deliberate, as if he were testing it before letting it exist in the room. "The scale of revenue alone would address several… pressing issues." A pause, then a slight narrowing of his eyes. "However, such an operation requires structure. Oversight. We are not merchants, Comrade Jugashvili—we are a state."

Trotsky spoke next, almost immediately, like a man who had been waiting for his turn rather than listening for consensus. "The weapon is the more important point," he said, gesturing briefly toward the Thompson, though his attention remained on me. "If this is the direction warfare is taking—and I suspect it is—then we must integrate it properly. This cannot be handled as some… side enterprise. It must be under military management. Discipline, doctrine, logistics. Otherwise, you create chaos." His gaze sharpened slightly. "And chaos, Comrade Jugashvili, is something you have too much experience with."

A faint smile tugged at my lips. I said nothing. No need. He wasn't entirely wrong, and arguing with a man like Trotsky in front of an audience was less a debate and more a performance—and I had no intention of giving him one.

Stalin remained silent for a moment longer, then spoke in that flat, controlled tone of his, the kind that never rose but always carried weight. "The revenue is necessary," he said. "Reconstruction requires capital. Industry requires capital." His eyes flicked briefly toward Lenin, then back to the group. "The operation has already proven effective. It would be… a waste not to expand it."

Molotov nodded slightly, as if confirming something already obvious. "It can be organized," he added. "With proper accounting, layered oversight, and clear chains of command, the risks can be minimized. The structure is the issue—not the concept."

Bukharin, unsurprisingly, leaned forward with more enthusiasm than restraint. "It aligns with our current economic direction," he said quickly, almost eagerly. "A temporary measure, yes, but a necessary one. We use the market where it serves us, we discard it where it does not. If this funds industrialization, then it serves the revolution."

Zinoviev let out a short, sharp exhale—something between a scoff and a laugh. "Serves the revolution?" he repeated, his tone edged with open disdain. "Or serves Comrade Jugashvili?" His eyes settled on me, and there was no attempt to hide the hostility there. "We are discussing handing a third of this operation—this criminal enterprise—to a gangster who already operates beyond Party norms, beyond discipline, beyond ideology. And we are meant to trust that this will not become… something else?"

Ah. There it was. Personal. Predictable. Almost comforting in its honesty.

Kamenev spoke next, more measured, but no less cautious. "Zinoviev's tone is… excessive," he said, glancing briefly in his direction before returning his attention to Lenin, "but the concern is not without basis. Concentrating this level of financial and logistical control in one individual—regardless of competence—creates imbalance. Even if the intention is sound, the structure must prevent… dependency."

Kalinin, for his part, remained where he was, hands folded, expression neutral. "It will help the people," he said simply after a moment, as if that were both the beginning and end of his contribution. Which, in fairness, it usually was.

Lenin tapped his fingers together lightly, drawing the crowd back to him. "Then we are not debating whether to proceed," he said, voice firming slightly, "but how." His gaze moved from one man to another, measuring, weighing. "The operation expands. That much is clear. The revenue is too significant to ignore." Another pause. "But it will not exist outside the structure of the state."

Trotsky inclined his head slightly. "Army oversight," he said. "Full integration where necessary."

"And Party oversight," Stalin added quietly.

"And administrative control," Molotov said.

"And ideological alignment," Bukharin offered, though even he sounded slightly less certain on that last part.

Lenin's eyes settled back on me. "A joint arrangement," he said. "For now." He exhaled slowly. "Tukhachevsky is still occupied in Tambov. When he returns, he will be placed in charge of the military aspect of this operation."

There it was. The compromise. Predictable. Sensible. Annoying.

"He will have final authority in matters of military coordination," Lenin continued, "while you, Comrade Jugashvili, will oversee the existing network and its expansion. The funds will be audited—jointly—by the army and the Cheka. No independent control."

Of course not. That would be too easy.

I nodded slowly, as if considering it, though in truth I had already expected something like this the moment I saw the full Politburo standing in front of me instead of just Lenin. "That's fair," I said, tone even, agreeable, the picture of cooperation. "Tukhachevsky is competent. I can work with that."

Zinoviev didn't look convinced. Kamenev looked relieved. Trotsky looked satisfied. Stalin looked… thoughtful.

Lenin gave a small, decisive nod. "Then it is settled."

Just like that. Half a billion dollars a year, a pipeline for foreign technology, and the foundation of military modernization—all wrapped neatly in a compromise designed to keep everyone just uncomfortable enough to stay involved.

I suppressed the urge to smile.

Joint control meant scrutiny. Scrutiny meant friction. Friction meant opportunity—because in a system built on vranyo, the more hands you added, the more gaps appeared between what was said, what was written, and what actually happened. I knew then, I was going to be a fucking millionaire, maybe a billionaire if I played my cards right.

 

[IG884HIRE]

This continues to be a terribly interesting character study in affable evilness. One thing that did jump out at me though is that there are a couple of references to Mika clasping his hands together, and considering one of them is a hook you might want to rephrase those bits.

 

[Alenco98]

This continues to be a terribly interesting character study in affable evilness. One thing that did jump out at me though is that there are a couple of references to Mika clasping his hands together, and considering one of them is a hook you might want to rephrase those bits.

Click to shrink...

Done, rephrased

 

[Alenco98]

September 11, 1921
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour
Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

Sunday. I liked Sundays. I had very deliberately carved them out as my day off, which in this country and in my line of work was about as close as one could get to a religious miracle. Five days buried under paperwork, executions, logistics, and whatever fresh disaster the state decided to cough up, Saturdays spent at Subbotniks pretending to be a model citizen—because appearances matter, even when you're the one writing the rules—and then Sunday. Sunday was… quieter. Predictable. Manageable.

I walked beside my mother, her arm lightly hooked into mine, a dozen guards trailing behind us like an overprotective shadow that refused to disperse. We crossed the bridge over the Moscow River, the Cathedral rising ahead of us, massive, imposing, eternal—everything the state wasn't, really. I could already feel it, that small, rare sense of stillness creeping in. Church helped with that. Close your eyes, listen to the prayers, pretend for an hour that you're not the architect of half the nightmares people pray about. Very therapeutic.

Then I noticed the crowd.

And the shouting.

And the uniforms.

I sighed before we even got close. "Komsomol," I muttered under my breath, the word tasting like a mild inconvenience that was about to become a major one.

As we approached, the situation clarified itself. A group of young Komsomolets had formed a loose line in front of the Cathedral, stopping people, turning them away, puffing themselves up with that particular brand of revolutionary enthusiasm that usually came packaged with very little actual authority and far too much confidence. They spotted me almost immediately—of course they did—and snapped to attention like someone had pulled a string.

I stopped a few feet from them, taking a moment to look them over. Kids, mostly. Eager. Nervous. Trying very hard to look like they belonged there.

"What the hell is this?" I asked, my tone calm, almost conversational, which usually made people more uncomfortable than shouting ever did. "Where is your cell leader?"

They pointed, almost in unison, toward a slightly older boy standing a bit behind them. Dirty blond hair, green eyes, trying very hard not to look like he wanted to disappear. I stepped closer.

"Name?"

He swallowed, then stammered, "S-st-stanislav… Stanislav Nazarov."

"Stanislav Nazarov," I repeated slowly, as if committing it to memory—which, to be fair, I was. "Care to explain why you're harassing people trying to go to church?"

He straightened slightly, clinging to his script like it was armor. "The Party says religion is the opiate of the masses. We must eliminate it and replace it with scientific materialism. It is necessary for the creation of a communist society."

I nodded thoughtfully, as if he had just said something profound rather than recited a slogan. "Tell me something, Nazarov. Where, exactly, in Das Kapital or the Communist Manifesto, did Marx and Engels say we should harass churchgoers, close churches, and assault priests?" I tilted my head slightly, watching him. "If you can name the passage, I'll personally have my men shoot everyone inside. Not just the men—the women, the children too. We'll make a proper demonstration of ideological purity out of it."

He froze.

"Can't remember?" I reached into my coat and pulled out my revolver, smooth, practiced, the motion almost casual. I raised it, aiming directly at his head. "Then you have ten seconds to clear the way. Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, last I checked. So… let's start. One." I cocked the hammer, the click echoing just enough to carry. "Two."

He didn't make it to three.

He looked at the others, panic cutting through whatever ideological clarity he'd been holding onto. "Let's go," he said quickly, voice breaking, and just like that, the line dissolved. They scattered, clearing the path as efficiently as they had tried to block it.

I lowered the gun and slipped it back into my coat. "That's what I thought," I said, more to myself than to them. "Now get out of my way and stop wasting my time. It's my day off. I'm not in the mood to kill anyone today."

They didn't need to be told twice.

I turned to my mother.

The look on her face was… complicated. Disgust, certainly. Relief, undeniably. And beneath it, something sharper—fear, maybe, or sorrow, the kind that doesn't go away just because the immediate problem does.

"Don't worry, Mama," I said softly in Georgian as we resumed walking. "They're gone. They won't bother anyone. At least not today."

She shook her head slightly, her grip tightening on my arm as we stepped through the Cathedral doors. "They will come back," she said quietly. "I have heard what they have done to churches, to priests, all across the country. This does not end with boys at the door, Mika."

"I know," I replied, because I did.

She looked at me then, really looked, and there was no softness in her eyes now. "Why did you and Iosif involve yourselves with these Bolsheviks?" she asked, her voice low but steady, carrying more weight than any accusation shouted in anger ever could. "You would have been better men as priests than what you have become."

I let out a small breath, something between a laugh and a sigh, as we moved further inside, the scent of incense replacing the smoke and shouting outside. "You know," I said, glancing up briefly at the icons, "I ask myself that sometimes." I paused, then added, quieter, "You're not wrong. I'd probably still have Maria. And both my eyes. And both my hands." I flexed my remaining one slightly, out of habit more than anything.

We walked in silence after that.

I closed my eyes as we reached our place, letting the prayers begin, letting the sound wash over me, trying—just for a moment—to be something other than what I was.

-------

September 11, 1921
The Kremlin
Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

I sat in my room, leaning back in the chair, pipe in hand, letting the smoke curl lazily toward the ceiling like it had nowhere better to be—unlike me, unfortunately. I took a slow drag, held it for a moment, then exhaled, watching it drift and dissolve into nothing. God… pot was therapeutic. Ever since I started using it, the nightmares had stopped—no more waking up drenched in sweat, no more seeing faces I'd personally ensured would never breathe again. I actually looked forward to sleep now, which was a novel experience considering the last few years had turned rest into a form of psychological Russian roulette. Even the phantom pain in the stump had dulled; not gone, never gone, but distant enough that I could ignore it. In short, I felt… functional. Almost human. Which, given my résumé, was a borderline miracle.

I took another puff, slower this time, letting the warmth settle in. There was, of course, the minor issue that I was still smoking, and smoking had the unfortunate side effect of slowly murdering your lungs. Trade-offs, I suppose. I made a mental note to increase my walks, maybe add some basic exercises, keep the body from collapsing under the weight of everything else. No point surviving revolutions just to die of poor cardiovascular discipline.

A knock came at the door.

"Who is it?"

"Stalin."

I let out a small breath, half amused, half resigned. "Ah, Joe. Come on in."

He opened the door and stepped inside, immediately pausing as the smell hit him. His face twisted—subtle, but unmistakable. Disgust. Understandable. He shut the door behind him with that same controlled precision he applied to everything, like even a door closing had ideological implications.

"You're still smoking that filth?" he asked flatly.

"That filth," I said, lifting the pipe slightly and offering it toward him, "is the reason I don't wake up screaming anymore. I sleep. Properly. You should try it sometime. Sleep is good for your health, and I know for a fact you don't get enough of it."

"No," he said, already moving to sit down, as if the conversation had been decided before it began.

"Come on, Joe," I pressed lightly, more out of habit than expectation.

"I'm not here to casually talk," he cut in, tone sharpening just enough to draw a line. "There is something serious we need to discuss."

That got my attention. I set the pipe down carefully and straightened in my chair, the fog in my head parting just enough to let something more focused take its place. "Serious? What happened?"

"You," he said, pointing at me—not dramatically, just enough to make it clear this wasn't going to be a pleasant conversation. "Your churchgoing habits. And your… confrontation with the Komsomol today."

"Oh." I leaned back again, tension easing slightly, though I kept my eyes on him. "That."

"Yes. That."

"What about it?" I asked. "The state guarantees freedom of religion. They were harassing civilians. You know how Mama is—she likes going to church. I go with her. It's quiet. Peaceful. A rare commodity these days."

"That is exactly the problem," he replied. His voice didn't rise, but it hardened. "You know what the Party stands for. And you—someone with your position, your record—openly attending church. Our mother, openly religious. It is… inconvenient. Politically—"

"Embarrassing," I cut in, tilting my head slightly. "You want to say she's embarrassing you, Right Joe?"

He didn't answer that directly. He never did when something hit too close to the truth. Instead, he continued, more measured now. "I believe it would be best if Mama returned to Georgia. Moscow is not a safe place for… this. The war has just ended. The situation is unstable. We must secure the state."

"Fuck off."

The words came out sharper than I intended, but I didn't take them back. I leaned forward slightly, resting my elbows on my knees, fixing him with a look that made it clear this wasn't negotiable. "Joe… you're my brother. We grew up together. I would do almost anything for you. But sending Mama back? Over my dead fucking body. She's old. She needs her family. If you send her away, I'm going with her. And I'll take the kids with me."

He stiffened, just slightly.

"I'll step down from the Cheka if I have to," I continued, voice quieter now, but heavier. "Do you want that? Do you want to lose your most useful asset because Mama goes to church on Sundays?"

"Mika," he said, raising his voice just a fraction—not shouting, but enough to signal strain. "This is not the Civil War anymore. We cannot afford to be so openly flexible. We cannot afford to be reckless."

"So what?" I shot back. "Have you forgotten who we are? Who I am?" I leaned back again, spreading my arms, half incredulous, half amused. "I killed Kerensky. I took the Winter Palace without firing a shot. I sat on the throne and kept it warm for Lenin while the party sorted itself out. We held Petrograd. We saved the city. We saved the revolution." I gave a small, humorless laugh. "Men like us don't get to pretend we're ordinary functionaries. Have you forgotten what I told you, I could care less about Marx, Lenin, Engels or Communism, its all bullshit to me. I'm only here because my family benefits from this, and you're part of my family. But so is mama."

His eyes narrowed.

"The rules say freedom of religion," I went on, calmer now, almost conversational again, which somehow made it worse. "So I will practice it because I can as the law says. And so can Mama. And if the Komsomol has a problem with that, if they threaten her, or try to assault her as I heard from the churchgoers today how they did that to them before I stepped in…"

I reached over, picked up my pistol, and set it down on the table between us with a soft, deliberate thud.

"…I'd like to see how pretty their faces look after I've shot them."

Silence followed.

Thick. Heavy. Not uncomfortable—just… loaded.

I leaned back again, picking up the pipe like the conversation had been about something trivial, something forgettable. "Relax, Joe," I added lightly, taking another slow drag. "It's Sunday. I'm off duty. I'd prefer not to start a civil war in the living room."

"Mika," Joe said, his voice tightening just enough to signal that whatever patience he had left was being rationed very carefully, "never speak that way again. Especially not in front of other Party officials."

He gave me that look—the one that wasn't quite anger, wasn't quite warning, but lived somewhere in that cold, controlled space he operated out of. I sighed, rubbing my temple with my thumb, the faint buzz in my head softening the edges of the moment. I had, for a brief second, forgotten who I was talking to. Not my brother. Not Soso from Gori. But Stalin—Joseph fucking Stalin, the man who killed millions to bring Russia to the industrial age. Oops is putting it lightly, but I couldn't just back off, double down it was.

"Joe…" I said, leaning forward slightly, tone quieter now but no less firm, "you and I both know you need someone like me. You really think your people—Molotov, Yagoda—are ever going to speak to you the way I do? Blunt. Honest. No performance, no careful wording, no little ideological dance to make sure they don't offend you." I gave a faint, humorless smile. "They tell you what you want to hear. I tell you what's actually there. There's a difference."

He didn't respond. Of course he didn't. He just watched me, eyes steady, unreadable. That was his way—absorb, evaluate, say nothing unless it mattered.

"And yes," I continued, gesturing vaguely with my hand as if we were discussing something mundane instead of the quiet architecture of power, "I know about Yagoda. I know he's your man. I know you placed him where he is to keep an eye on me. That's fine. Honestly, I'd be disappointed if you hadn't. I wasn't born yesterday." I leaned back slightly, letting the chair creak under my weight. "But that's not the point."

I tapped the table lightly with my fingers, letting each word land cleanly. "Mama stays. I keep going to church. I'm not breaking any laws, not even bending them, which is more than I can say for most of what we do on a daily basis. So I will continue."

Joe's jaw tightened just slightly. Not enough for most people to notice. Enough for me.

"This cannot go on forever," he said. "It is unsustainable. When Lenin is gone…" He paused, choosing the phrasing carefully, because even speaking about that reality required a certain discipline. "The knives will come out. You think Trotsky—or anyone else—won't use this against us?"

I glanced down at the revolver still sitting on the table between us, resting my finger against it, tapping it lightly as if it were part of the conversation—which, in a way, it always was. "I don't care who it is," I said simply. "Let them try."

There was no bravado in it. No raised voice. Just a statement.

Joe studied me for a moment longer, and for a brief second, something flickered there—not doubt, not quite concern, but something closer to calculation mixed with something older, something personal. Then it was gone. He stood up, smoothing his coat as if resetting himself back into the version of him the world understood.

"Then…" he said, turning toward the door, "I hope you can shoot first."

I let out a small breath, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, and reached for the pipe again, lifting it slightly as he moved away. "Are you sure you don't want some?" I asked, tone light again, almost teasing. "I arranged for more to be brought in from the States. Consider it a diplomatic import."

He stopped at the door, glanced back at me, expression flat.

"No."

Of course not.

I was alone again, the door closing behind Joe with that quiet finality he always had, like even exits were calculated. The room filled back in around me—the smoke, the dim light, the low hum of a place that had seen too many conversations that never made it into official records. I leaned back in my chair, pipe still in hand, and closed my eyes for a moment, letting the last of what he said settle in my head. "The knives will come out." I repeated it under my breath, almost amused. He wasn't wrong. He was rarely wrong about things like that. When Lenin was gone—and he would be gone sooner rather than later, anyone with eyes could see it—the entire thing would turn into a feeding frenzy. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, whoever else thought they had a shot—they'd all start circling, smiling in public, sharpening blades in private. Standard procedure. The question wasn't if, it was how bad, and more importantly, what I was going to do about it before it reached my throat.

I opened my eyes and exhaled slowly, watching the smoke curl upward like it had all the answers and was just refusing to share them out of spite. Preempt it, Joe had implied. Or at least be ready. He always defaulted to control, to tightening the system until nothing could slip through. Me? I preferred… adjustments. Nudges. Building little safety nets under the tightrope everyone else insisted on walking blindfolded. I had some ideas. Dangerous ones, probably. But then again, everything that worked in this country tended to be.

I pushed myself up from the chair and crossed the room to my desk, the familiar weight of routine settling in as I pulled open the drawer. Papers, scattered notes, half-finished reports, the usual bureaucratic graveyard of intentions. I found a pen, a small bottle of ink, and a clean sheet—rare enough to feel almost ceremonial. I dipped the pen slowly, watching the ink gather at the tip, then set it to paper.

What is to be done?

I paused, then let out a quiet laugh to myself. Nothing like stealing from Lenin directly. If you're going to plagiarize, you might as well aim high. I could practically hear him already, half amused, half irritated, which in his case usually meant you were doing something worth paying attention to.

Beneath it, I added another line, slower this time.

On the question of religion and its future in our new society.

I leaned back slightly, looking at the words as the ink settled into the paper. Religion. Of all the things to potentially get me killed, that might be the most ironic. Not the mass murder, not the purges, not the little extracurricular activities I ran on the side—but going to church with my mother. I could almost appreciate the absurdity. If I were watching this from the outside, I'd think the whole thing was a badly written play.

I glanced at the clock. Five in the afternoon. Still enough daylight to be productive, assuming I didn't get distracted—which, given the circumstances, was unlikely. I tapped the pen lightly against the desk, thinking through what I'd need. Marx, obviously. Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Das Kapital, though God help me if I actually had to reread that brick of a book. The Bible, of course—Mama would probably insist on blessing it before I even opened it, given her ongoing crusade against my entire profession. Maybe a Russian translation of the Qur'an if I could get my hands on one, the Torah too, maybe something on Buddhism and Hinduism if I could find it. If I was going to write something halfway convincing, I might as well cover all the major world religions. Build a framework. Something that let the Party save face while not turning every church into a battleground.

I shook my head slightly, another quiet laugh escaping me. A butcher, a hangman, a man who had personally ensured more than a few families would never sit together again… sitting here about to write theory. If someone had told me that in my previous life, I would've assumed they were drunk or insane. Probably both. I wondered, briefly, what my family from that life would think if they could see this—me, in a Kremlin office, high off imported marijuana, drafting ideological essays on religion while planning how to survive the next power struggle. They'd probably ask if I'd finally lost my mind.

Fair question.

I dipped the pen again and hovered over the page, the words forming slowly now, more deliberate. This wasn't just about religion. It was about control.

"Alright," I muttered to myself, setting the pen down for a second and rubbing my eyes. "Let's see if I can bullshit my way into writing theory now."

Because if the knives were coming—and they were—then I needed more than just a gun on the table.

I needed something people wouldn't want to stab.

Note: I've been planning the next few chapters in my head for the last few weeks, I think I could probably crack out another chapter in a few hours

 

[MaHaL]

Can your brother not toke up in peace Joe?

 

[BenMalek]

I too remember when I was an edgelord teenage atheist redditor. Thank God I am not anymore, and did not have guns when I was.

 

[OverseerEX]

Ah, the State Religious Administration, or whatever equivalent. Priests need a permit, and so on and so forth.

Better, Stalin thought as he turned toward the door, that such a man stood beside him as his brother rather than against him

Click to shrink...

That's the closest thing to praise or acknowledgement of his brother that we've seen so far.

I knew then, I was going to be a fucking millionaire, maybe a billionaire if I played my cards right.

Click to shrink...

Comrade Oligarch. Welcome to Mother Russia.

 

[Zecevic081]

Brother Commissar Millionaire Supreme passes you the boof.

Do you accept Comrade?

 

[Alenco98]

October 19, 1921
Lubyanka
Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

I came into Dzerzhinsky's office with a folder under my arm and murder in my heart.

The folder mattered more.

Murder, for all its charm, is just sentiment unless it comes with planning. The folder was planning. Routes. Safehouses. Intermediaries. Contact chains in Poland. Railway schedules. Telegram intercepts. Names of men who would never officially exist and would, if this operation went well, disappear back into the walls the moment it was done. It was beautiful work, honestly. Precise. Lean. No theatrics, no waste. A scalpel instead of a hammer.

Which was a shame, because Boris Savinkov deserved worse.

Dzerzhinsky sat behind his desk as if he'd been born there, back straight, expression set in its usual configuration of moral constipation. He glanced at me once, then at the folder, and held out his hand. I gave it to him and sat down without being asked. We were long past ceremony.

He opened it and began to read.

I watched his face the whole time, always the face. People tell you much more with their eyebrows than with their mouths. A twitch means irritation. A frown means resistance. No expression at all usually means they've already decided something and are now pretending not to have done so.

That last one is the dangerous category.

For a few minutes there was only the sound of paper shifting and the faint hum of Lubyanka in the background—boots in corridors, doors opening and closing, somewhere far off a scream.

Finally, Dzerzhinsky closed the folder.

"It's thorough," he said.

That wasn't praise, not from him. That was a prelude.

"I know," I replied. "That's why I brought it to you before we moved. If all goes well, Savinkov gets taken alive near the border and brought back under sedation. If it goes poorly, he dies in transit. If it goes catastrophically wrong, my men kill him before the Poles can extract him."

Dzerzhinsky rested one hand on the folder. "No."

I blinked once.

"No?" I repeated, because sometimes men say stupid things by accident and deserve the chance to correct themselves.

"No," he said again, perfectly calm. "This operation will not proceed."

For a second I just stared at him.

It's funny, rage doesn't always arrive dramatically. Sometimes it enters the room quietly and sits beside you like an old friend. My pulse didn't spike. My breathing didn't change. Something in my chest just… hardened.

"Why?"

"The government has reached an arrangement," he said. "Savinkov is to be exiled from Poland."

I let the silence sit for a moment because surely there had to be more. Some hidden clause. Some punchline. Some detail that would stop this sentence from being as stupid as it sounded.

"There's more, right?" I asked.

"No."

I leaned back in the chair and looked at the ceiling.

Then I laughed.

Not because anything was funny. More because my soul has developed several defensive reflexes and one of them is laughter right before homicide.

"You're telling me," I said slowly, looking back down at him, "that I have spent months building assets inside Poland, sending men into the country, setting up routes, paying informants, preparing contingencies, all to finally get my hands on the man who had my wife murdered—"

"Your wife was not his only victim," Dzerzhinsky said flatly.

"She wasn't." I nodded. "But you and I both know this is more than just work for me."

He said nothing.

I continued.

"—and the government, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to pay the Poles to exile him instead?"

"Yes."

I smiled.

That was never a good sign, according to most people who knew me well enough to still possess functioning instincts.

"And this is final?"

"It is."

I leaned forward.

"We have everything ready," I said, keeping my voice low. "Men in place. Safe houses. Papers. Vehicles. If you sign this today, Savinkov can be in a cell in Moscow before the month is out. Or buried in a ditch. I'm not picky. This is not theoretical anymore, Felix. Its all ready to go."

"No," he repeated. "You cannot."

I wanted to murder him right then and there. Not politically, obviously. I mean physically. The thought crossed my mind with such casual ease that it almost impressed me. One pull of the pistol. Then I would have to run, but thinking seriously, it would be a stupid decision.

"Who made this decision?"

"Lenin approved it."

I closed my eye.

Of course he did.

Savinkov exiled. Neatly moved off the board. A diplomatic irritant disposed of without spectacle. Practical. Contained. Civilized.

I hate civilized solutions. They always come at someone else's expense.

"You know," I said softly, "that this is not just political for me."

"I understand that perfectly."

"Do you?"

His eyes sharpened, just slightly. "Yes."

"Then you also understand," I continued, "that I do not give a shit. Not in this case. Not for him. Not after Maria."

Dzerzhinsky's face remained unchanged.

"That may be," he said. "But this is a state matter. Not a private vendetta. And if you defy Lenin's orders, even your position won't save me from what we will do to you."

I stared at him for a long moment.

Then I stood.

The chair scraped across the floor sharply enough to make a guard outside shift his weight.

"Private vendetta," I repeated. "Have you forgotten it was my private vendetta that made sure Petrograd ran in the darkest days of the civil war?"

He didn't deny it.

Of course he didn't. Felix was many things, but he was not a sentimental man.

I picked up the folder and tucked it back under my arm.

"So that's it?" I asked. "Lenin has him sent away, you veto it, and I'm supposed to nod like a good little soldier of the revolution?"

"Yes."

I laughed again, quieter this time.

"As you wish," I said, moving toward the door, "But, when Savinkov goes back to causing trouble for us. Don't forget, we could have had him, but Lenin chose otherwise."

Then I left.

Later in the day

Stalin's office door was half-open. He looked up from his papers as I entered, took one glance at my face, and set his pen down without comment.

"What happened?"

I slammed the door behind me.

"Dzerzhinsky vetoed the operation."

He didn't ask which one. That told me Yagoda probably reported it to him, I did vent to him extensively after leaving Dzershinsky's office.

"The government paid the Poles to exile that son of a bitch."

Stalin sat back slightly.

For a moment, something passed over his face—not surprise, exactly. More like irritation finding a familiar chair.

"I see."

I paced once across the room and back. I wanted to smash something. His office was too orderly for it. You break one thing in Stalin's office and he looks at you like you've personally betrayed geometry.

"Did you approve this decision?" I asked him. "You sit in the politburo. Did you even try and talk Lenin out of it? You know how much I've wanted to do this."

He didn't say anything, just kept looking at me. That specific, do you think being my brother means I can talk Lenin and the government into approving all your schemes?

"We had everything ready," I said. "Everything. Trust assets, transport routes, fallback teams, border coverage. If Dzerzhinsky had signed it, we would've had him."

He nodded once.

"I know."

That almost made it worse.

"He killed Maria," I said. "Not directly, not with his own hand, but he ordered the attempt. He set it in motion. And now he just gets to vanish west and rot in exile while I sit here, stewing and seething over this?"

That got the faintest movement from him. Not pity. He doesn't do pity. But recognition, perhaps.

"She was my sister-in-law," he said quietly. "I haven't forgotten."

There it was.

That was as close as Stalin came to sympathy without accidentally becoming human.

"So talk to Lenin."

He gave me a look.

Not dismissive. Not mocking. Just final.

"It won't matter."

"You don't know that."

"Yes," he said, "I do."

I stared at him.

He held my gaze steadily.

"Even if I spoke to him," he continued, "I would not convince him. The rest of the Politburo approved the decision unanimously, I tried telling them about your operation. But they said otherwise. The civil war has only just ended, operating in Poland and targeting Savinkov so overtly would only jeopardize our peace treaty with them. There's nothing more I can do."

"And my vengeance?" I asked.

Stalin folded his hands.

"That," he said, "You know that is not what Lenin is calculating."

I sighed.

Of course he wasn't calculating it.

Because why would the state ever calculate personal cost honestly when abstract utility was available? Another small triumph for political reason over ordinary human decency. We do love our victories.

"He gets away," I said.

"For now."

I stopped pacing and looked at him carefully.

That phrase could mean anything from reassurance to threat to empty noise designed to keep me from doing something stupid tonight.

"For now?"

Stalin's face remained unreadable.

"Don't force the issue," he said. "Not now. Be patient Mika. I already told you before, we cannot afford to be reckless."

I understood immediately.

I exhaled slowly and rubbed at my eye with the heel of my palm.

"I'm sorry Joe. You're right."

"I know."

"Thank you Joe, sorry. You know how I become when Maria is bought up. Even now, it feels like someone ripped my soul out of me. Like a wound that never heals."

That, at least, got the faintest nod out of him. He understood grief well enough, I remembered the day at Kato's funeral, me dragging him out of the grave.

"Go to your quarters." He said. "Cool your head, smoke some of that filth if it will make you feel better."

I looked at him. I smiled, I felt a little lighter. Joe acting human, like seeing rain during a sunny day. "Do you want to join me?"

"No." He shook his head. "I have work to do."

"You always say that."

"Because its true."

Evening

My room was quiet. Too quiet. No Maria. No Elsa. No children bursting in without knocking, dragging noise and life in with them whether I wanted it or not. Just the desk, the lamp, a carefully stacked pile of books, and the draft pamphlet I'd been torturing myself with for weeks—my little exercise in ideological self-defense, or maybe self-preservation dressed up as theory. Same thing, really, just different branding.

Everything I needed was spread out in front of me like some kind of intellectual crime scene. Marx. Engels. The Bible. Cheka files. Tsarist records I had very generously "borrowed" and never returned. A translated copy of the Qur'an courtesy of Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, who, annoyingly, spoke more languages than I did—ten to my four. I had, for a brief, hopeful moment, entertained the possibility that he might also be reincarnated. It would've been nice, having someone else who remembered how things were supposed to work. A colleague, maybe even a friend. But after a few careful questions, a couple of subtle references, it became painfully clear he was just… gifted. Naturally. No hidden memories, no shared cosmic joke. Disappointing. The universe could've thrown me a bone there.

I looked back down at the top page, where my own handwriting stared back at me with far more confidence than I actually felt.

What is to be done?
On the question of religion and its future in our new society.

Perfect. Subtle as a brick to the face, but effective. If you're going to steal a title, steal it from the best. Lenin would either appreciate the irony or have me shot for it. Fifty-fifty.

I picked up the pages and started reading through what I had so far. It was… decent. Part argument, part shield, part carefully constructed pile of bullshit designed to look like doctrine. Pathos, logos, ethos—all the classics. Enough Marxist vocabulary to make it feel legitimate, enough layered reasoning to make it annoying to argue against without looking like an idiot. The core idea was simple, almost offensively so: we didn't need to wage open war on religion if we could absorb it, regulate it, tax it, and quietly turn it into another arm of the state. Why shoot priests and create martyrs when you could license them, monitor them, and make them useful? Why crush belief and spark resistance when you could shape it, guide it, make it serve you?

Control was always better than destruction. Destruction was messy. Control was elegant.

I'd started writing this because of Mama. Because of that little incident at the church, the Komsomol boys puffing themselves up while quoting slogans they barely understood. But that wasn't the only reason anymore. No, this had grown into something else. If I wasn't going to get my revenge immediately—if Savinkov and his friends were going to be neatly packaged and handled through "official channels"—then I needed another outlet. Politics. Influence. Structure.

If I couldn't kill the man who took Maria from me right now, then I would do something far more patient.

I would make the people that blocked it live in a world I shaped.

I leaned back slightly, the chair creaking under me, and let that thought settle. I would remain the humble security chief. The loyal brother. The useful tool. I had Stalin's ear, and more importantly, he needed me. We were tied together—too many shared actions, too much mutual leverage. As long as I remained useful, as long as the cost of removing me stayed higher than the benefit, I could get away with more than anyone else in that room.

That was the trick.

Not power. Leverage.

I smirked faintly to myself. If I couldn't take my revenge directly, then I'd make everyone who stood in the way of it pay interest. Slowly. Systematically. A long-term investment strategy in resentment.

"Congratulations," I muttered under my breath. "You've managed to turn grief into policy. Maria would be proud. Or horrified. Probably both."

I picked up the pen again, dipped it in ink, and wrote a few lines. Stopped. Reached for the Qur'an, flipped through a few pages, scanning for phrasing, tone, anything I could re purpose. Set it down. Wrote again. Stopped. Grabbed Marx, skimmed a section, ignored half of it, stole the useful parts, went back to the page.

It was a rhythm by now. Write. Read. Steal. Rewrite. Repeat.

Not quick. Never quick.

This was my 5th draft.

Fifth.

I had entire stacks of notes off to the side—arguments, counterarguments, phrasing variations, little rhetorical traps designed to force agreement or at least hesitation. A few hours passed without me noticing. The lamp burned lower. The room grew heavier.

Eventually, I stopped.

I looked down at the finished draft, ink still fresh in places, and read it once. Then again. Slower this time.

I leaned back in the chair and sighed.

"I hate it."

It wasn't wrong. That was the problem. It was correct, structured, defensible… but something felt off.

I stood up without another word, walked over to the fireplace, and tossed the entire stack in.

The paper caught quickly, the edges curling, blackening, turning into something unrecognizable.

I watched it burn for a moment, arms crossed, expression blank.

"Alright," I said quietly, more to myself than anyone else. "Let's try that again."

 

[Alenco98]

The New York Times
October 7, 1972
Soviet Paratroopers Crush Afghan Anti-Royalist conspiracy, Back Royal Government

Airborne Forces Land at Bagram; Mass Arrests and Purges Follow

KABUL — Two regiments of Soviet airborne forces landed at Bagram Air Base late Friday on October 6th and joined royalist Afghan troops in the suppression of a conspiracy against King Mohammad Zahir Shah, according to State Department officials and diplomatic sources in Kabul. The operation represents one of the most overt Soviet military interventions in a non-CSTO nation since the Second World War.

The plot was organized by Mohammad Daoud Khan, the King's cousin and former Prime Minister, who had recruited the hard line Khalq faction of the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan to provide organizational support within the armed forces. The conspiracy unraveled after members of the party's rival Parcham faction obtained intelligence of the planned uprising and transmitted warnings to Soviet authorities.

Soviet paratroopers, operating alongside Parcham-aligned army units and Royal Guard elements, arrested Mr. Daoud along with Khalq leaders Nur Muhammad Taraki, Hafizullah Amin, and Shahnawaz Tanai before the coup could be set in motion. The Afghan government announced trials for all detainees, with death sentences widely anticipated. Widespread purges of Khalqist party members followed, with thousands reported killed within hours.

Washington expressed concern and announced expanded military and economic aid to neighboring Pakistan. The Soviet government offered no public comment. Aleksander Jugashvili, head of the KGB and Politburo member, did not respond to requests for a statement.

November 20, 1921
The Brandstrom Residence
Stockholm, Sweden

Elsa sat alone in the living room, hands folded loosely in her lap, her gaze fixed on the fireplace that had long since gone cold. She had not bothered lighting it in days. There was no real reason to anymore. The house, once full of quiet routine and familiar presence, now felt hollow—too large, too still, as though it had outlived its purpose. Eleven days had passed since her father's death, and yet time did not seem to move forward so much as settle around her, heavy and unmoving.

For most of the past year, she had remained in Stockholm for him. She had watched over him as his strength faded, as fevers came and went in restless cycles, as the man who had once stood so firmly in her life diminished piece by piece. She had cared for him with the same steadiness she had shown in the camps and prisons during the war—measured, patient, unwilling to look away from suffering even when it offered nothing in return. And still, it had not been enough. It never was, in the end. Illness did not negotiate. It simply took.

Now he was gone.

Her mother had died eight years earlier. Her brother, Erik, remained in the military, distant both in geography and in life. They had once been close, inseparable in the way children often are, but time had a way of quietly undoing such bonds. Letters came, occasionally. News. Formal concern. But it was not the same. It would never be the same again.

She was alone.

Her eyes drifted, almost unwillingly, toward the small stack of letters resting on the table nearby. Mika's letters. They had arrived over the last several months, moved occasionally, never opened, but never discarded. And beside them, the chest. That cursed chest. She had not opened it again since the day it arrived, had not spent a single coin from it, had not allowed herself to forget what it represented. When guests came, she had it removed, hidden from sight like something shameful. When they left, it returned to its place—silent, waiting.

She reached for the first letter.

The one that had started all of it.

Her fingers traced the edges of the paper for a moment before she unfolded it, her eyes moving quickly over the lines she already knew by heart. She did not need to reread it, not really. And yet she did. Perhaps hoping it would say something different this time. It never did.

Her gaze slowed near the end, settling on the passage she could never quite escape.

"Finally, should your father recover—or God forbid, should something happen to him—know that you will have a place in Moscow if you wish. The famine continues, and you are the most competent person I know. Things are stable for now, but who knows how long that will last. If you return, I know millions more lives could potentially be saved."

She closed her eyes briefly, as if the words themselves had weight.

A place in Moscow.

Millions of lives saved.

The phrases repeated themselves, not as persuasion anymore, but as inevitability.

She let out a slow breath. "Bastard," she said softly into the empty room.

It was not said with anger alone. There was frustration in it. And something else—something far more uncomfortable.

Because he was right.

That was what made it unbearable.

She had seen it before—what coordinated effort could do, how supplies moved at the right moment could mean the difference between life and death for entire groups of people. She had stood in camps where a single shipment had turned despair into something survivable. She knew, with a clarity that did not allow for denial, that her work mattered.

And she had been absent.

For good reason—she knew that, she reminded herself of it—but absent nonetheless. While she sat here, tending to her father, how many had gone without aid? How many had died waiting for someone like her to arrive?

The thought sent a faint shiver through her, one she did not try to suppress.

Her eyes moved again, this time to the final lines of the letter.

"You are entitled to a third of the funds my colleagues have brought. If you do not wish to return to Russia, you may use it to open the orphanage you once spoke of."

She stared at that for a long moment.

An orphanage.

Her dream. Something clean. Something good. A place for children who had lost everything, where care could be given without compromise, without moral ambiguity. It was what she had told herself she would build when the war ended. A way to continue helping without… entanglement.

Her gaze shifted, almost reluctantly, toward the chest again.

There was enough there. More than enough. She could build it. Sustain it. Do real good with it.

But then—

Moscow.

She leaned back slightly, her fingers tightening around the letter.

If she went there… if she accepted his offer, his resources, his access…

How many orphanages could she build then?

How many hospitals?

How many lives could she reach—not just in one place, but across an entire country struggling to survive?

The scale was different.

The cost was different too.

She knew exactly what she would be tying herself to. Not ignorance, not naivety—she had long since lost the luxury of either. She knew what Mika was, what he had done, what he continued to do. She knew the origin of that money. She knew the kind of system she would be stepping into.

And yet—

She closed her eyes again, briefly, as if that might quiet the thought.

It did not.

When she opened them, she was already moving. And she hated herself for it.

She rose from her chair, crossed the room, and pulled open a drawer, retrieving a pen, paper, and ink. Her movements were calm, practiced, almost detached—like someone carrying out a duty rather than making a choice.

She sat back down and placed the paper in front of her.

For a moment, she did not write.

Her hand hovered, the pen poised just above the page, as though waiting for permission she knew she would not receive.

Then she began.

The first line came slowly. The next more easily.

And as the words formed, steady and deliberate, she felt the familiar weight settle in her chest—not doubt, not hesitation, but something heavier.

Understanding.

And beneath it—

Disgust.

Not at him.

At herself.

Because she knew, even as she wrote, that she had already decided.

December 1, 1921
The Kremlin
Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

I sat in my study, flipping through a stack of old Cheka records, the paper rough under my fingers, the ink slightly faded in places. Reports. Always reports. Each one neatly documenting another little act of revolutionary enthusiasm—violence dressed up as necessity, cruelty justified with a stamp and a signature. I skimmed one in particular, exhaling through my nose as I read. Some priest—Ivanovich, apparently, from some godforsaken village in the middle of nowhere Russia—dragged out, tortured, shot by the local soviet. According to the report, he'd prayed before they killed him. Asked God to forgive the men who were about to put a bullet in his head.

I set the paper down and sighed.

"Stupid," I muttered.

Then, after a brief pause, "Inefficient."

I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my temple with my thumb. Honestly, I was surprised the USSR lasted as long as it had, given the sheer volume of pointless violence we'd directed at religion alone. Not dissent. Not organized opposition. Religion. As if terrorizing a few priests would somehow accelerate industrial output or rebuild a collapsed economy. Then again… power did come from the barrel of a gun. And we had the most guns.

I frowned slightly, the thought lingering.

"Someone said that," I murmured to myself. "I know they did."

I couldn't quite place it. Somewhere, sometime, in another life. I grabbed a small notebook off the side and scribbled the phrase down anyway. No point wasting a perfectly good line just because I couldn't remember who said it first. Wiki-quotes—if it ever existed here—would have a field day with me. Half the things I said would end up attributed to someone else, or worse, to me.

I picked my draft back up, flipping through the pages. Tenth draft. Maybe eleventh. I'd lost count somewhere between burning the sixth one and deciding that incremental improvement was preferable to dramatic destruction. This one… was better. Sharper. More coherent. But something still felt off. It lacked… bite. Or maybe conviction. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Still, I kept writing.

I dipped the pen in ink, added a few lines, paused, checked my notes. Opened Das Kapital, skimmed a section, pulled out a phrase I could twist into something useful. Set it aside. Grabbed the Bible, flipped through a passage, cross-referenced tone and structure. Back to writing. It was a rhythm now—steal, reshape, justify, repeat.

Five minutes passed. Maybe less. Time had a habit of collapsing when I worked like this.

Then came a knock.

I didn't even look up at first. "It's open."

The door creaked, and Joe walked in, closing it behind him with that same deliberate motion. I glanced up then, immediately noticing the difference. Subtle, but there. His expression was tighter than usual, his eyes sharper. Something had already irritated him, or perhaps intrigued him. In his hand—paper.

A letter.

He didn't bother with small talk. Just grabbed a chair, dragged it closer, and set the letter down on the table beside my notes.

"A letter," he said evenly. "From the Swede."

My heart betrayed me for a moment—just a slight flutter, barely noticeable, but enough to irritate me. "Elsa," I said quietly, more to myself than to him. I picked up the letter. It had already been opened. Of course it had. I didn't even bother hiding the faint smirk. "You read it, didn't you?"

"Yagoda intercepted it," he replied. "He sent it to me."

"Efficient," I murmured, nodding slightly. "Invasive, but efficient. Give me a moment."

I unfolded the letter and began reading.

Greetings Mika,

I apologize for not having responded to your letters. I have spent these last few months taking care of my father, and that was consuming all my attention. Unfortunately for me, my father died on November 9th.

I paused, lowering the paper slightly, exhaling.

"Her father died," I said, not really addressing anyone.

Joe didn't react. "And?"

"And," I said, lifting the letter again, "it means she's coming."

I kept reading.

I will be spending the next few weeks arranging my father's affairs…

The words flowed exactly as I expected them to. Regret. Duty. That familiar moral calculus she operated under, weighing suffering like it was something that could actually be balanced.

Even now, I feel like I have given a part of myself away… I can't help but feel disgusted at myself for it…

I smiled faintly.

Of course you do.

Yet, as much as I hate to say it, you're right.

There it was.

I can't just sit here… while millions face hunger… I feel as if I could make up for this should I come to Moscow…

I finished reading, letting the last lines settle.

I will most likely begin making my way to Moscow sometime on the first or second of December.

But don't think for a moment I feel to you what you feel to me… I come to help the people, not to absolve you.

I hope you will respect those boundaries.

Regards,
Elsa Brändström.

I set the letter down slowly, staring at it for a moment longer than necessary. Then I leaned back and exhaled.

"It worked," I said quietly.

I smiled.

And immediately hated myself for it.

Maria flickered through my mind, uninvited and unwelcome, like she always did at moments like this. The smile faded just as quickly as it came.

"She's soft," Joe said, breaking the silence. "Just like you."

I glanced at him, my expression settling back into something neutral. "And I already told you," I replied calmly, "someone who walks into Siberia alone, knowing exactly what's waiting for her, just to help strangers… is anything but soft." I tapped the letter lightly. "She's braver than anyone in this Party. Especially me."

His eyes narrowed slightly. "It would be in your best interest if no one else heard you say that."

"You're not wrong," I said with a small shrug. "But you also know what I think about the Party. About communism." I tilted my head slightly, watching his reaction. "I'm doing this for you. Remember that."

"And if I fall?" he asked.

I couldn't help it—I smiled again, this time more openly.

"If?" I leaned back, crossing one leg over the other. "Come on, Joe. Let's not pretend." I paused, then added, almost casually, "How about we make a bet?"

He groaned softly, rolling his eyes. "Oh God. Go on."

"Ten years," I said. "No—less. By the end of the decade, Lenin will be gone. You'll be the most powerful man in the country. Our enemies will be crushed, or begging for mercy. And we'll be standing on top of it all."

He didn't respond immediately. Just looked at me, long and hard.

"Never say that again," he said finally. "And keep your Swedish woman under control when she arrives. The coming months will be… delicate." He paused, then added, "Which brings me to the news I have for you."

Ah.

There it was.

I leaned forward slightly, interest replacing amusement.

"Go on," I said.

"The next Party Congress is in March," Joe said, his tone even, controlled, like he was reading off a report rather than altering the trajectory of my life. "And I have arranged for your name to be placed among those being considered for candidate membership in the Central Committee."

I let that sit for a moment, turning it over in my head the way I did with anything that could either elevate me or get me killed—usually both. Then I nodded slowly. "I see. So I finally step into politics proper." I leaned back slightly, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth. "About time, given I've been doing the dirty work that keeps it all standing."

He didn't smile. Of course he didn't.

"Which is why," he continued, folding his hands behind his back, "your relationship with the Swede is… problematic."

"A liability," I corrected calmly, glancing at him. "Come on, Joe. You're my brother. We don't need to dress it up. Euphemisms are just lies wearing perfume, and you know how I feel about liars."

He ignored that, pressing on like he always did when he decided something wasn't worth engaging. "As I was saying, your association with her is a liability. I've read the reports from Kronstadt. The sailors were quite clear. They demanded that you and your 'Swedish whore' be arrested and shot when you attempted to negotiate."

My jaw tightened before I could stop it. I scowled, the memory hitting sharper than I liked. "As if I needed a reminder of that day." My eyes flicked, almost unconsciously, to where my right forearm used to be. Phantom pain had a way of showing up when it was least welcome—like a ghost that refused to respect boundaries.

Joe noticed. He noticed everything.

"The others in the Party," he went on, "those who oppose us—Kamenev, Zinoviev, Trotsky—all those little yids—"

My expression hardened instantly. "Yids? Really, Joe?" I cut in, sharper now. "Come on. You know I don't like it when you talk like that." I exhaled slowly, forcing my tone back under control. "I don't like Trotsky. I don't like Zinoviev. But we don't need to reduce it to that. You remember what Lenin said about anti-Semitism."

He dismissed it with the slightest movement of his hand. "That is not relevant."

Of course it wasn't, not to him. It never was. Still, I held his gaze for a second longer, just enough to make it clear I wasn't going to let it slide quietly, even if I wasn't about to turn it into a crusade. There were battles worth picking, and then there were battles that got you isolated before you had the power to matter.

"As I was saying," he continued, "just as the sailors at Kronstadt used your association with the Swede against you, what makes you think the Party will not do the same?"

I leaned back, letting out a small breath, the tension easing into something colder, more deliberate. "They're free to try," I said, almost casually. "Especially Zinoviev. I look forward to putting him in his place." I paused, then added, quieter, "Permanently."

Joe didn't react outwardly. He never did when something interested him. But I saw it—that brief flicker in his eyes, the calculation, the quiet acknowledgment that I wasn't entirely joking.

He stood up, smoothing his coat, resetting himself back into that composed, immovable figure everyone else dealt with. "Make sure," he said, his voice low and precise, "that if you do, it does not embarrass me."

I let out a faint, humorless chuckle, leaning back in my chair again. "Joe," I said, glancing up at him, "When have I ever let you down?"

He didn't respond to that. He simply turned and walked toward the door, leaving me with the letter, and my draft.

 

[OverseerEX]

Lenin, Lenin, Lenin... I get the rationale, but that rationale is wrong, lmao. They could've done the operation without anyone even knowing that it happened. Comrades at the CIA do it all the time. What a waste of a good loyalty-building task.