The laboratory smelled of formaldehyde and ozone.
It wasn't the Secret City. This was the basement of the Institute for Experimental Medicine in Leningrad.
Jake stood over a stainless steel table.
On it lay a dog. A German Shepherd.
It was awake. Alert. Its eyes tracked Jake with uncanny focus.
"How long?" Jake asked.
"Six days," Kapitsa said. The biologist looked ragged, like he hadn't slept either. "Six days without sleep. No fatigue. No cognitive decline."
"And the aggression?"
"Controlled," Kapitsa said. "We modified the amphetamine compound. It bypasses the adrenal crash."
Jake looked at the dog.
In his timeline, soldiers used Pervitin and Benzedrine. It made them fight harder, but it burned them out. They crashed. They went psychotic.
This was different. This was a sustained, chemical removal of the need for rest.
"The side effects?"
"Increased metabolic rate," Kapitsa admitted. "The heart runs hot. Life expectancy drops by... 40%."
Jake nodded.
"A soldier who lives to be thirty is a luxury," Jake said. "I need soldiers who can fight for a week without stopping."
He looked at the row of cages. Fifty dogs. All awake. All watching him.
"Human trials," Jake ordered.
"Comrade," Kapitsa stammered. "We haven't tested the long-term neurological impact. The brain might... melt."
"Use the prisoners," Jake said. "The Gulag has plenty of volunteers who want a reduced sentence."
"It is unethical."
"It is war," Jake said. "Start the trials. I want a platoon of sleepless men by winter."
He walked out.
He felt the familiar weight in his chest. The hole where his conscience used to be.
He was building zombies. Chemical zombies to fight Nazis.
But as he checked the telegrams from the border—German troops massing, Polish cavalry digging in—he knew he would build vampires if it kept the tanks away.
The Kremlin Apartment.
Nadya was packing a suitcase.
Jake stopped in the doorway. "Where are you going?"
"To the dacha," she said. She didn't look at him. "With Yuri."
"It's not safe."
"It is safer than here," she said. "This apartment... it feels like a tomb."
Jake walked over. He tried to touch her shoulder. She flinched.
"I am saving us, Nadya."
"You are changing us," she said. She zipped the bag shut. The sound was like a zipper on a body bag.
"I heard the rumors," she whispered. "About the Institute. About the 'Super-Soldiers'."
Jake froze. Menzhinsky's security was leaking.
"It is just medicine," Jake lied. "To help pilots fly longer."
"Don't lie to me!" Nadya shouted. "You are poisoning them! You are taking away their sleep, their dreams!"
She picked up Yuri. The boy was heavy now, a solid weight in her arms.
"What will you take next, Koba? Their souls?"
"If I have to," Jake said quietly.
Nadya looked at him with horror. Not anger. Horror.
"I don't know you," she whispered. "The man I loved... he wanted to build schools. You want to build monsters."
She walked past him.
"Nadya—"
"Don't follow us," she said. "Let us have the trees. You can keep the concrete."
The door closed.
Jake stood in the silence.
He could stop her. He could order the guards to bar the exit.
But he didn't.
Because she was right. He was a monster. And monsters shouldn't live with children.
He went to the window. He watched the black car drive away, through the Spassky Gate, into the grey morning.
"Goodbye," Jake whispered.
The Map Room.
Menzhinsky was waiting. He had witnessed the departure from the window.
"She will be safe at the dacha," Menzhinsky said. "I have doubled the guard."
"Good."
Jake turned to the map.
"The trade deal with Hitler," Jake said. "Is it holding?"
"For now," Menzhinsky said. "The grain is moving. The blueprints for the rocket have been sent."
"And the Americans?"
"Hoover is nationalizing the steel industry," Menzhinsky said. "He is copying your Five-Year Plan. They call it the 'New Deal', but with more bayonets."
Jake laughed bitterly.
"I turned America socialist to fight communism. Irony."
"There is a new player," Menzhinsky said. He pointed to the East. To Japan.
"Tokyo?"
"They have invaded Manchuria," Menzhinsky said. "Two years early."
Jake looked at the map.
Japan. The forgotten front.
In real history, the Soviets fought a border war with Japan in 1939. Khalkhin Gol. Zhukov won it, and Japan turned south to attack Pearl Harbor.
But if Japan attacked now... while the Red Army was reorganizing... while the best divisions were facing Germany...
"We can't fight a two-front war," Jake said. "Not yet."
"They know that," Menzhinsky said. "That is why they are moving."
"We need a deterrent in the East," Jake muttered.
He looked at the nuclear file.
"We have one bomb," Jake said. "The Sledgehammer."
"It is mounted on the rocket," Menzhinsky reminded him. "Targeted at Berlin."
"Retarget it," Jake said.
"To Tokyo?"
"To Vladivostok," Jake said.
Menzhinsky blinked. "Our own city?"
"The ocean off Vladivostok," Jake clarified. "A demonstration. Let the Japanese Navy see the sun rise at midnight."
"If we move the rocket," Menzhinsky warned, "Hitler will know. His spies are watching the radar."
"Let him know," Jake said. "Let him think I am distracted. Let him get confident."
He picked up a red pin. He stabbed it into the Pacific Ocean.
"I will trade a pawn in the West to take a knight in the East."
The Secret City.
Turing was running simulations on the laptop.
"The trajectory is tricky," Turing mumbled. "Coriolis effect. Earth rotation."
Von Braun looked over his shoulder.
"It is 6,000 kilometers," the German said. "The rocket barely has the range."
"It will glide," Turing said. "Sub-orbital skip. Like a stone on water."
Jake entered the bunker.
"Is it ready?"
"The math says yes," Turing said. "The physics says maybe."
"Launch it," Jake ordered.
"Now?"
"Tonight," Jake said. "The Japanese fleet is conducting maneuvers in the Sea of Japan. I want to crash their party."
Von Braun hesitated.
"Herr Stalin... if we move the rocket... we leave Moscow undefended."
"I am the defense," Jake said. "Do it."
The launch sequence began.
Jake watched the screen.
He was gambling everything. If the rocket failed... if it crashed in China... the secret was out. The technology would be salvaged by warlords.
But if it worked...
"Ignition."
The roar shook the bunker.
The rocket rose. It turned East. Toward the rising sun.
Tokyo. The Imperial Palace.
Emperor Hirohito sat in his garden. It was peaceful. Koi fish swam in the pond.
A messenger ran in. He fell to his knees.
"Your Majesty! The Navy reports... a star!"
"A star?"
"It fell from the sky! In the ocean! A pillar of fire!"
The Emperor stood up.
"Did it hit a ship?"
"No, Majesty. But the wave... the tsunami... it capsized two destroyers."
Hirohito looked at the sky.
"The Russians," he whispered.
"They have a weapon," the messenger stammered. "A weapon that makes waves."
Hirohito closed his eyes.
He had been told the Soviets were weak. Distracted by Europe.
But this... this was a message.
"Recall the fleet," Hirohito ordered. "Stop the advance in Manchuria."
"But Majesty—"
"Do not wake the dragon!" the Emperor shouted. "We cannot fight fire from heaven!"
The Kremlin.
The confirmation came an hour later.
Target impact: Sea of Japan. Seismic wave confirmed. Japanese fleet retreating.
Jake slumped in his chair.
He had done it. He had checked the East with a single move.
"One bomb," Jake whispered. "Used twice. Once to scare Berlin. Once to scare Tokyo."
"It is the shell game," Menzhinsky said. "But eventually, they will count the shells."
"By then," Jake said, "we will have the chemical soldiers."
He looked at the file on the "Red Pill" program.
The human trials were starting tomorrow. Five hundred prisoners from the Gulag.
If it worked, he would have an army that never slept. An army that felt no fear.
He picked up the phone.
"Connect me to Kapitsa," Jake said.
"Yes, Comrade."
"Kapitsa," Jake said when the line clicked. "Begin Phase One."
"The injection?" Kapitsa's voice trembled.
"The injection," Jake said. "Wake them up."
He hung up.
He walked to the window.
Nadya was gone. Yuri was gone. The apartment was empty.
He was alone in the Kremlin. Alone with his maps and his monsters.
"I am saving the world," Jake told the reflection in the glass.
The reflection stared back. It looked like Stalin.
"But who is going to save me?"
The phone rang again.
It wasn't a general. It wasn't a spy.
It was the operator.
"Comrade... a call from London. A Mr. Churchill."
Jake's eyes widened.
Winston Churchill. In 1929, he was in the political wilderness. A failed Chancellor.
"Put him through."
"Mr. Stalin," the gruff, slurred voice came on the line. "I hear you have been lighting fireworks."
"Mr. Churchill," Jake said. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I have a proposition," Churchill said. "The current government is blind. They think Hitler is a stabilizing force. I know better."
"Go on."
"I have friends," Churchill said. "In Intelligence. In the Navy. We are... concerned."
"About?"
"About the end of civilization," Churchill grumbled. "I want to talk. Secretly. About a common enemy."
Jake smiled.
Finally. The real alliance.
"I'm listening, Winston," Jake said. "But bring your own cigars."