The Bavarian Alps were silent. Snow muffled everything, turning the world into a black and white photograph.
Schloss Adler sat on a crag like a vulture. Its windows were dark.
In the forest below, two hundred shadows moved. They didn't crunch the snow. They flowed over it.
Jake watched through binoculars from a ridge a mile away. Beside him, Winston Churchill adjusted his own field glasses.
"Your men move like ghosts," Churchill whispered. "Are they Gurkhas?"
"They are... specialists," Jake said.
"They aren't carrying rifles," Churchill noted. "Just knives."
"They prefer close work."
A flare went up from the castle. Red.
"They've been spotted," Churchill grunted. "Here comes the alarm."
Sirens wailed. Searchlights swept the tree line. Machine guns opened up from the battlements, tracers tearing through the pines.
But the shadows didn't stop. They didn't take cover. They accelerated.
Jake saw Ivanov—Subject 45—sprint across the open drawbridge. Bullets kicked up snow around him. One hit his shoulder. He didn't even stumble.
He leaped. Ten feet in the air. He caught the top of the wall with one hand and vaulted over.
"Good God," Churchill gasped. "Did you see that?"
"Watch," Jake said grimly.
More shadows swarmed the walls. They climbed the sheer stone like spiders.
The machine guns fell silent. Not because they ran out of ammo, but because the gunners stopped shooting.
Screams drifted across the valley. Terrible, wet screams.
"They are inside," Taranov reported from the radio set. "Team Alpha has breached the lab."
"Any resistance?"
"The SS guards are... confused," Taranov said. "They are shooting the subjects, but the subjects don't die."
Jake closed his eyes.
He imagined the scene. The Red Pill soldiers, hearts beating at 200 beats per minute, pain receptors turned off, adrenaline flooding their veins. They were unstoppable killing machines.
And they were hungry.
"Are they securing the anthrax?" Jake asked.
"They are securing everything," Taranov said. "And everyone."
Inside the castle.
Obersturmführer Klein backed away, firing his Luger until it clicked empty.
The thing in front of him wasn't a man. It was a blur of violence. It had taken three rounds to the chest and was still smiling.
"Stay back!" Klein screamed.
Ivanov lunged. He didn't use a knife. He used his teeth.
He tore the officer's throat out.
Ivanov stood up, blood dripping from his chin. He felt amazing. The world was slow. He was fast. The colors were so bright.
"Find the vials," he hissed to the others. "The shiny glass."
They moved deeper into the castle. They smashed down oak doors. They threw SS troopers out of windows.
In the central lab, scientists in white coats cowered under tables.
Ivanov swept the glassware onto the floor. He found the steel canister marked with the biohazard symbol.
"The prize," he whispered.
He grabbed a scientist by the hair.
"Open it."
The scientist wept. "It... it is sealed. Pressure lock."
Ivanov didn't wait. He gripped the steel lid. His muscles bulged, tearing the fabric of his black uniform.
With a shriek of tortured metal, he ripped the lid off.
Inside were glass vials of amber liquid.
"Beautiful," Ivanov said.
His radio crackled.
"Alpha One, report," Taranov's voice.
"Target secured," Ivanov said. "We have the juice."
"Plant the charges," Taranov ordered. "Burn the rest."
"Burn?" Ivanov looked at the cowering scientists. He looked at the blood on his hands.
The drug was peaking. The aggression was a physical need.
"No," Ivanov said. "We are not done playing."
He dropped the radio. He crushed it under his boot.
He looked at the scientists.
"Run," Ivanov grinned.
On the ridge.
"Radio silence," Taranov said. "They aren't responding."
Jake felt a cold dread.
"The drug," he said. "It's degraded their obedience. They've gone rogue."
"Rogue with anthrax?" Churchill asked, his face pale. "Man, you have unleashed a nightmare."
"We have to finish it," Jake said.
He grabbed the radio handset.
"Air support," Jake barked. "Now. Level the castle."
"We have men inside!" Taranov protested.
"They aren't men anymore," Jake said. "Do it!"
High above, engines roared.
Three Tupolev bombers, flying under British colors, broke the cloud cover.
"Target marked," the pilot radioed.
The bomb bay doors opened.
Incendiary bombs tumbled out.
The castle vanished in a wall of fire. The stone tower crumbled. The screams were silenced by the roar of the inferno.
Jake watched the flames reflect in Churchill's eyes.
"Efficient," Churchill murmured. "Brutal. But efficient."
"It's done," Jake said.
He turned away. He couldn't watch.
He had just burned two hundred of his own soldiers alive. Men he had drugged, weaponized, and discarded.
Menzhinsky was right. Monsters always came home. But sometimes, you had to burn down the house to stop them.
The flight back to Moscow.
Jake sat alone in the rear of the plane. He drank vodka straight from the bottle.
Taranov sat opposite him. The giant looked shaken.
"Ivanov," Taranov said. "He was a thief. But he had a daughter. In Kiev."
"I will send her a pension," Jake said.
"A pension won't bring back her father."
"Her father died a hero," Jake lied. "He stopped the plague."
Taranov looked at him.
"Did he? Or did we just burn the evidence?"
Jake didn't answer.
He looked out the window. The sun was rising over the Ukraine. It looked like blood spilled on snow.
He felt the hole in his chest growing wider. He was losing pieces of himself with every victory.
The Kremlin.
Menzhinsky met them on the tarmac. He looked grave.
"Success?"
"The anthrax is destroyed," Jake said. "So is the battalion."
"There is a problem," Menzhinsky said.
"What now?"
"Japan," Menzhinsky said. "They didn't retreat."
Jake stopped.
"We dropped a rocket in their ocean. We made a tsunami."
"They took it as a challenge," Menzhinsky said. "The Emperor declared it a 'Divine Test'. They have accelerated their advance in Manchuria. And..."
He paused.
"And they have invaded Mongolia. Our protectorate."
Jake closed his eyes.
He had tried to scare them. Instead, he had provoked them. The Samurai spirit didn't bow to fire; it walked into it.
"We are at war," Jake realized.
"And not just in the East," Menzhinsky added. "Hitler knows about the castle. His spies saw the bodies before they burned. He knows we used chemical soldiers."
"He can't prove it."
"He doesn't need to prove it," Menzhinsky said. "He is using it as propaganda. 'The Bolsheviks create monsters'. He is rallying Europe against us."
Jake laughed. A dry, mirthless sound.
"So I am the villain," Jake said. "The Frankenstein of geopolitics."
"You are the scary story parents tell their children," Menzhinsky agreed.
Jake walked to the car.
"Fine," Jake said. "If they want a monster, I will give them a monster."
"What are your orders?"
"Mobilize the Siberian divisions," Jake said. "Send Zhukov to the East. Tell him to push the Japanese into the sea."
"And the West?"
"Fortify the border," Jake said. "And get Kapitsa. We need a new batch of soldiers."
"Koba," Menzhinsky warned. "You saw what happened."
"Fix the formula," Jake snapped. "Make them obedient. But keep them hungry."
He got into the car.
He needed to see Nadya. He needed to see Yuri. He needed to remember what he was fighting for.
But as the car drove toward the dacha, he realized he was afraid.
Not of Hitler. Not of Japan.
He was afraid of looking into his son's eyes and seeing his own reflection.
The Dacha.
The house was empty.
The fire in the grate was cold. Dust covered the table.
There was a note on the mantelpiece.
We have gone to Leningrad. To my sister. Don't follow us. You are dangerous.
Jake crumpled the note.
"Leningrad," he whispered.
He looked at the map in his head.
Leningrad was close to the border. Vulnerable. If Hitler attacked... if the Finns attacked...
She had taken his son into the crosshairs.
"Taranov!" Jake shouted.
The giant ran in.
"Get the train ready," Jake ordered. "We are going to Leningrad."
"To bring them back?"
"To build a wall around them," Jake said. "I will turn that city into a fortress. Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out."
He threw the note into the cold fireplace.
He lit a match.
"Burn," Jake whispered.
As the paper curled into ash, he made a vow.
He had lost his soul. He had lost his wife.
But he would not lose the war.
And he would not lose his son.
Even if he had to burn the world to save him.