Leaving Tbilisi felt like shedding a skin.
The cart rattled through the narrow streets, its wheels wrapped in rags to muffle the sound. Behind him lay months of shadows—safe houses, whispered passwords, and the constant dread of discovery. Ahead was only darkness and distance.
For the first time since waking up in this life, Jake wasn't Soso.
He was Vissarion Lomidze, tea merchant. Nobody. A ghost on the move.
His journey was no ordinary travel. It was a crawl through the hidden arteries of the revolution.
For a week he was smuggled from one contact to another like contraband—sleeping in dirt-floored cellars that smelled of potatoes and damp, traveling by night under carts or through black forests known only to old smugglers.
He saw what the revolution looked like up close.
Not ideas or theories, but faces—tired peasants who shared their bread, students whose eyes burned with impossible hope, workers who whispered about justice while hiding him from the Tsar's patrols.
In Tbilisi, revolution had been a game of strategy. Here, it was blood, sweat, and faith.
He had been its mind. Now, for the first time, he was touching its heart.
Two weeks later, he reached Berlin.
The shock was instant. The city roared like a living machine—electric lights, trains, and iron everywhere. Tbilisi suddenly felt like a forgotten village.
Berlin was a crossroads for exiles and dreamers, each one scheming a different future. Jake's instructions led him to a smoky café in a working-class district, where the air was thick with cheap tobacco and the sound of Russian being spoken too loudly.
He ordered a coffee and laid a small book of Georgian poetry on the table.
It was the signal.
A man sat down across from him a few minutes later. Young, thin, pale. A pointed goatee. Eyes sharp enough to cut glass.
"Comrade from the Caucasus," the man said in flawless Russian. "I have your final documents."
His name was Felix. Nothing more.
They waited as the forger worked in the back. Felix questioned him relentlessly—about Georgia, the Mensheviks, the morale of the workers. Each question was a test, his tone cool and surgical.
Jake played the part of Stalin perfectly: hard, disciplined, pragmatic. "Sentimentality," he said, "is the luxury of people who don't expect to die."
Felix's mouth twitched. Not a smile, but something close. "You think like a Chekist," he said. "You understand the sword of the revolution must stay clean."
The words hung between them like a secret handshake.
When the papers were ready, Felix stood. "We'll meet again, Comrade Stalin," he said. Not a wish—an inevitability.
Jake froze for a heartbeat. Felix Dzerzhinsky.
He knew the name. The man who would one day create the Cheka—the secret police that would rule Russia through fear.
He had just met his mirror.
The final leg was the most dangerous: the crossing from Calais to Dover.
The ports crawled with agents from every nation, but the Tsar's spies were the ones that mattered.
Jake stood in line at customs, his forged papers in hand, every breath deliberate.
His new name read: Vissarion Lomidze, merchant of Georgian tea.
The officer glanced at the photo, then at Jake. His expression was bored, but his eyes were sharp. "Business, is it, Mr. Lomidze?"
Jake forced a smile. "The finest Georgian tea for the finest British teacups," he said in his thick accent, just clumsy enough to seem real.
The man grunted, stamped the passport, and waved him through.
Jake walked onto the ferry, legs trembling. He didn't breathe again until the shoreline of France was a fading line in the mist.
He had done it.
He was free.
London was another shock—a gray colossus of smoke, fog, and empire.
Everything here screamed power. The wide streets, the marble facades, the endless rhythm of industry. It was a city that ruled the world by habit.
Yet it was the East End, grimy and alive, that felt more familiar. The smell of coal and sweat reminded him of Tbilisi.
He followed the directions to a narrow pub called The Crown and Anchor. The air inside was thick with beer and frying fish. Dockworkers shouted at each other over the noise.
He approached the bar. "A dark one," he said evenly. "For a long journey."
The bartender, a mountain of a man with a stained apron, gave a slow nod. "Private meeting in the back," he said, jerking his thumb toward a closed door. "They're expectin' you."
Jake lifted his pint, moved through the haze, and opened the door.
The room was small and thick with smoke. A handful of men sat around a wooden table, arguing in Russian. Papers littered every surface.
At the head sat a man with a high forehead, narrow eyes, and a precise beard. His words cut like blades, and when he saw Jake enter, he fell silent.
Every gaze in the room turned toward the newcomer.
The man at the head studied him for a long moment before speaking.
"So," Vladimir Lenin said, voice clear and sharp. "You are the man of steel from the Caucasus."
He gestured to an empty chair.
"Sit, Comrade Stalin. We have much to discuss."
Jake obeyed, steadying his hands on the table. He had faced Okhrana agents and ordered men to their deaths, but this was different. These minds were scalpels. This room was an operating table.
Lenin leaned through the haze, studying him with bright, hard eyes. "Your letter was compelling," he said. "But letters are theory. I deal in facts. This split with the Mensheviks—how real is it?"
The test began.
Jake drew a slow breath. "It's complete, Comrade Ulyanov. We still share halls, but the ideology is beyond repair. They cling to the bourgeois phase, dreaming of alliances with Kadets. They think history can be negotiated."
Lenin's gaze stayed fixed. "And the oil workers in Baku? Organized?"
A trap. Testing field knowledge.
Jake didn't hesitate. "Angry, but scattered. Companies pit Armenian against Azeri, Russian against both. The Mensheviks exploit it well. They feed the workers bread while we feed them theory. We must give both."
Lenin's eyes sharpened with interest.
Jake continued, voice low and certain. "The railway workers in Tbilisi are the same. The Mensheviks promise safer hours and higher wages. We promise historical destiny. The revolution must first prove it can change tomorrow—not just grandchildren's futures."
For a heartbeat the room stilled. He had spoken Lenin's language—vision fused with practical force.
Then Zinoviev sneered. "Action? Your Caucasus comrades call it banditry. Expropriations, robberies—ideology painted over crime."
Before Jake could respond, Lenin cut in with a sharp gesture. "A party at war needs weapons," he said coldly. "And war costs money." He turned back to Jake. "Tell us about Orlov."
The room leaned in. This was the real trial.
Jake straightened. "Orlov was rot in the bone. He hid behind old friendships, using the party's sentimentality as cover. When I confirmed his treachery, the Okhrana was hours from ending us. We didn't have time for debate."
He let the silence stretch. "The infection had to be cut out. So I cut it."
Flat. Controlled. Ruthless.
The silence that followed was dense. Even Zinoviev looked uneasy.
Lenin leaned back, a faint smile flickering. "Correct."
One word—but enough. Jake felt air return to his lungs. He had passed. Not just as a minor organizer, but as someone worthy of the table.
The discussion shifted to logistics, but Jake barely heard. His attention snapped back only when a new voice spoke—smooth, ironic, edged with arrogance.
"Sharp analysis, comrade from the Caucasus," the man said.
Jake turned. Wild hair. Intelligent eyes. The unmistakable goatee.
Leon Trotsky.
"You think like a manager," Trotsky continued. "Efficient. Disciplined. A policeman of the revolution." His smile was thin. "But revolutions are not managed—they are imagined. Tell us, comrade: what is your vision?"
A challenge. A dagger.
Eyes turned to Jake—especially Lenin's. Facts wouldn't shield him. He needed a future. A prophecy.
Zinoviev spoke first, launching into his practical proposal. "We must concentrate on the industrial heartlands—Petersburg, Moscow. Win the factory committees, and we win Russia."
Trotsky scoffed. "Peasant thinking. Alone, Russia will be crushed by Europe. Germany is the key. Revolution must be international, or it dies."
Lenin turned to Jake. "Comrade Stalin. Where do we strike?"
Safe answers waited. Jake took neither path.
"Comrades," he said softly, "you are all looking at the wrong map."
The room stilled.
"You study the map of 1907," he said. "Factories, borders, today's alignments. We must study the map of 1914."
A meaningless number to them. A loaded gun to him.
Jake nodded to Zinoviev. "The industrial centers matter." Then to Trotsky. "And the international wave is our end goal." He leaned forward. "But both will be reshaped by a conflict that is not about class at all."
Eyes narrowed.
"Britain fears Germany's fleet. The Kaiser fears encirclement. Austria fears Serbia. The Balkans are a powder keg. These contradictions will explode—in steel, not pamphlets."
He wasn't debating. He was foretelling.
"There will be a war," Jake said calmly. "Not a limited one. An inferno. It will devour a generation. Millions of Russian peasants will die in trenches for the Tsar. And there, in the mud, their faith in the Little Father will break."
Horror flickered across the room.
"Our true recruiting ground," Jake continued, "is not today's factory. It is tomorrow's trench."
A breathless silence fell. Shock. Fear. Fascination.
"Our priority must be the army. Quiet infiltration. Cells in key regiments. Pamphlets addressing officers' cruelty, pay, land—not abstract theory. When the imperialist war begins and the state is weakest, we turn their guns. Not at German workers—but at the Romanovs."
His final words were a whisper, sharp as a blade.
"That is our real objective."
No one spoke. The air had changed. He hadn't just contributed—he had redrawn the battlefield and the century.
Trotsky stared, arrogance replaced by unwilling respect.
Lenin leaned in, fingers white on the table's edge, eyes burning.
"Explain this 'inevitable war,'" Lenin said quietly. "Explain it from the beginning. In detail."
Jake had won the room.
Now he had to defend a prophecy that only a time traveler could know.