The armored train smashed through the snowdrifts outside Leningrad.
Inside the carriage, Jake stared at the map of the Karelian Isthmus. His finger traced the line where the Finnish border met the suburbs.
"Too close," Jake muttered. "Artillery range."
General Zhukov sat opposite him. The future Marshal of Victory was young, blunt, and unafraid.
"The Finns are digging in," Zhukov said. "They have the Mannerheim Line. Concrete bunkers. Heavy guns."
"We can't have enemy guns twenty miles from the Winter Palace," Jake said. "Move the border."
"Diplomatically?"
"With a bulldozer," Jake said. "Demand the land. Offer them Karelia in exchange. If they refuse..."
"They will refuse," Zhukov said. "The Finns are stubborn."
"Then we break them," Jake said. "Before Hitler uses Finland as a springboard."
The train slowed. The spires of Leningrad appeared through the fog, grey ghosts against a grey sky.
This was the city of Peter the Great. The cradle of the Revolution. And now, the hiding place of his wife and son.
"Lock it down," Jake ordered. "Checkpoints on every road. AA guns on every roof. I want this city to be a porcupine."
The apartment on Nevsky Prospekt was small. Peeling wallpaper. The smell of damp wool.
Nadya opened the door. She looked thinner. Her eyes were dark circles.
She didn't invite him in.
"You found us," she said.
"It wasn't hard," Jake said. "The Cheka watches everyone."
He looked past her. Yuri was playing on the floor with a wooden horse.
"He needs winter clothes," Jake said. "The draft is bad here."
"He has clothes," Nadya said. "We are fine."
"You are in a war zone, Nadya."
"There is no war here," she said. "Only the one you bring with you."
Jake stepped inside. He closed the door against the cold draft of the hallway.
"The Japanese are in Mongolia," Jake said. "Hitler is screaming about Jewish-Bolshevik monsters. The world is burning, Nadya. You can't hide in an apartment."
"I am not hiding," she said. "I am living. There is a difference."
She picked up Yuri. The boy looked at Jake with curious, unrecognizing eyes.
"Who dat?" Yuri asked.
The question hit Jake like a physical blow.
His own son didn't know him.
"It's Papa," Nadya whispered to the boy. "Say hello to Papa."
"Hello Papa," Yuri said shyly.
Jake reached out. He touched the boy's cheek. It was warm. Soft.
"I am building a wall," Jake said to Nadya. "To keep you safe."
"Walls keep people in, Koba," she said. "They turn cities into prisons."
"Better a prison than a grave," Jake said.
He pulled an envelope from his pocket. It was thick with ration cards. The red ones. Priority A.
"Take these," Jake said. "Buy food. Hoard it. Tinned meat. Sugar."
"Why?"
"Because winter is coming," Jake said. "And it's going to be a long one."
The Kremlin. Two days later.
The telegram from Helsinki was brief.
Finnish Government rejects land swap. Mobilization ordered.
Jake crushed the paper.
"They chose the hard way," Jake said.
Menzhinsky stood by the window.
"They have friends," the spy warned. "The British are sending volunteers. The Swedes are sending guns. They want to see us bleed in the snow."
"Let them come," Jake said.
He picked up the phone.
"Get me the Secret City."
"Kurchatov?"
"No," Jake said. "Von Braun."
The line clicked.
"Wernher," Jake said. "The guidance system. Is it precise enough for tactical support?"
"Tactical?" von Braun's voice was confused. "You mean hitting a city?"
"I mean hitting a bunker line," Jake said. "The Mannerheim Line. Can you drop a conventional warhead on a specific pillbox?"
"With the new gyroscope? Maybe. Within 100 meters."
"Good enough," Jake said. "Load the V-2s with high explosives. Train them on the Karelian Isthmus."
"But Herr Stalin... using ballistic missiles for artillery... it is expensive."
"Blood is more expensive," Jake snapped.
He hung up.
He turned to Zhukov, who had just entered the room.
"You have your artillery," Jake said. "From space."
Zhukov looked skeptical.
"Rockets are noisy toys," Zhukov grunted. "I prefer howitzers."
"You'll have both," Jake said. "I want a symphony of fire. Break that line in three days."
"And the Japanese?" Zhukov asked. "They are pushing toward Lake Baikal."
"Let them stretch their supply lines," Jake said. "General Winter fights for us in the East too."
He looked at the map.
He was fighting a two-front war in 1929. Finland in the West. Japan in the East. And Hitler watching from the center, waiting for the bear to stumble.
"I need a victory," Jake whispered. "A fast one."
The Finnish Front.
The snow was blinding white. The forests were silent.
Then, the sky tore open.
It wasn't the whistle of shells. It was a roar.
Five V-2 rockets descended from the stratosphere. They were traveling at Mach 4.
They slammed into the concrete bunkers of the Summa sector.
The explosions were massive. Earth, concrete, and trees were thrown a thousand feet into the air. The shockwaves shattered the eardrums of the Finnish defenders miles away.
Before the dust settled, the T-34s roared out of the treeline.
They didn't stop for the trenches. They rolled over them. The wide tracks floated on the snow.
Zhukov watched from his command tank.
"It works," he muttered. "The bastards actually did it."
The Mannerheim Line, thought to be impregnable, was breached in an hour.
Tokyo.
The Emperor read the report.
Soviets using "Meteor Weapons". Front line disintegrated. Heavy casualties.
Hirohito put down the paper.
"They have magic," he whispered.
"It is technology, Majesty," his general said. "German rockets."
"It does not matter," Hirohito said. "We cannot fight meteors."
He looked at the map of Mongolia.
"Halt the advance," the Emperor ordered. "Dig in. Do not provoke them further."
"But Majesty—"
"If they can hit a bunker in Finland," Hirohito said, "they can hit this palace."
He touched his neck.
"We wait. Let the Germans fight them."
The Kremlin.
"Victory," Menzhinsky said, placing the vodka bottle on the desk. "The Finns are suing for peace. The Japanese have halted."
Jake didn't drink. He was staring at the laptop screen.
It was running on the grid power, humming softly.
Turing had decrypted a new file.
Operation_Barbarossa_Timeline.pdf.
Jake scrolled through it.
June 1941: Invasion.
He looked at the calendar on the wall. December 1929.
He had bought time. But he had also accelerated the timeline. Hitler wouldn't wait for 1941. Not with the Soviets showing such terrifying strength.
Hitler would strike sooner. Maybe 1930. Maybe 1931.
"We need to industrialize faster," Jake said. "We need more aluminum. More oil."
"The people are at the breaking point," Menzhinsky warned. "The famine in Ukraine... it is real now. Not a prediction. The grain requisitions are stripping the villages bare."
Jake closed his eyes.
The Holodomor. The terror-famine. In real history, it killed millions.
He was doing it again. To feed the rockets. To feed the army.
"Open the reserves," Jake said. "The strategic stockpile."
"That is for the war," Menzhinsky said.
"The war is here," Jake said. "If the peasants die, who will build the tanks?"
He stood up.
"Feed them. Even if we have to empty the silos."
"And when the silos are empty?"
"Then we take it from the Germans," Jake said. "They owe us for the oil."
The Secret City.
Kapitsa stood over the vat. It bubbled green.
"Penicillin production is up 500%," the biologist reported.
"Good," Jake said. "Send it to the hospitals. And the barracks."
He walked to the next room.
The cages were empty.
"Where are the test subjects?" Jake asked.
"The Red Pill program is suspended," Kapitsa said. "We... ran out of volunteers."
"Use the political prisoners," Jake said.
Kapitsa looked at him.
"We did," he whispered. "They all died. The heart failure rate is 100% after two weeks."
Jake looked at the empty cages.
He had created a suicide drug. A berserker potion that burned men out like cheap candles.
"Can you fix it?"
"We need genetic modification," Kapitsa said. "Not chemistry. We need to breed them stronger."
"Breed them?"
"Eugenics," Kapitsa said. "Like the Nazis."
Jake felt a wave of nausea.
He was becoming indistinguishable from the enemy.
"No," Jake said. "No breeding. No eugenics."
He turned away.
"Find another way. Cybernetics. Armor. Anything but that."
He walked out.
He had crossed many lines. But that line... the line of breeding humans like cattle... he couldn't cross it. Not yet.
Leningrad.
The snow was falling softly on the Neva River.
Nadya walked with Yuri. They were bundled up.
She stopped at a kiosk. The headline of Pravda screamed: VICTORY IN FINLAND! STALIN'S GENIUS SAVES THE NORTH!
She looked at the photo of Jake. He looked tired. Grey.
"Your papa is a hero," the kiosk owner said, smiling at Yuri.
"My papa is a mechanic," Yuri said, repeating the line Nadya had taught him. "He fixes trains."
Nadya bought a newspaper. Not for the news. For the paper. To stuff in her boots for warmth.
"Come," she said to Yuri. "Let's go home."
As they walked, a shadow fell over them.
Nadya looked up.
A massive poster was being pasted onto the side of a building.
It showed a soldier in futuristic armor, holding a rifle that looked like a lightning bolt.
The caption read: THE SOVIET MAN OF TOMORROW.
Nadya shivered.
It wasn't the cold. It was the future.
She held Yuri tighter.
"We have to leave," she whispered. "We have to go further."
"Where, Mama?"
"America," Nadya whispered. "Where the monsters are only in the movies."
She didn't know that America was blockading them. She didn't know there was no way out.
She only knew that the city of bones was getting crowded. And she didn't want her son to be next.